A large standard library of tile art (from DeBray Bailey's free tileset) is provided with Hephaestus in 'images/'. You are not restricted to these images, however. When you create your adventure, create a directory with your game's name, store your images there, refer to that in your 'th.setTile()' calls, and make sure you include that directory in your adventure's zip file.

The following directories are under 'images/':

creature

Various animals and monsters. All 48x70, with 2 animation frames, most have 2 facings but some have only 1.

dungeon

Dungeon/town features, most 48x70.

floor

Dungeon/town floors, all 48x48.

ground

Wilderness grounds, all 48x48.

icon

System icons.

item

Items you can pick up, all 48x70, 1 frame, 1 facing.

people

Various humans. All 48x70, with 2 animation frames, most have 2 facings but some have only 1.

player

The standard player, all 48x70, 2 frames, 2 facings.

wall

Dungeon/town walls, all 48x70, 1 frame, 1 facing.

wild

Wilderness features, all 48x70.

Tile images must be 48x48 or larger GIFs, and must be named in a particular way: 'basefile_<frame><facing>.gif', where facing is 'n', 's', 'e', or 'w' and frame is a number from 0 to nframes-1. Tiles that have only one facing use only 'n'; tiles that have only two facings use only 'e' and 'w', and reuse 'e' for 'n', and 'w' for 's'. 'basefile' is a path relative to Hephaestus, and always uses '/' between pathnames, just like a URL or a Unix filename.

For instance, the basefile 'images/creature/bunny' refers to the files below, so it has 2 facings and 2 frames.

• images/creature/bunny1_0e.gif
• images/creature/bunny1_1e.gif
• images/creature/bunny1_0w.gif
• images/creature/bunny1_1w.gif

Tile images are animated in sequence, the frame changing every time the view updates, every half second.

If your GIF is larger than 48x48, it will extend above and to the right of the grid it is placed in - this is useful for giving the appearance of 3D, for lamp posts, trees, windows, etc. that you can pass behind. If you're so inclined, you can make everything rise up like that.

Even though tile images are GIF, which are restricted to 256 colors per image, the standard assumption of Hephaestus is that anyone with any sense has at least a 1024x768x24-bit display, as you can get a computer for well under $500 that does that (check Ebay). Therefore, feel free to use a custom palette for each image.