Tolkien Style Tileset

[maubp]

Some of you may have read this thread where I have been working on a high resolution version of the trident tileset.

Rather than doing anything on the units, I instead spent some time on a Tolkien Style isometric tileset - see the screenshot on this post.

While this probably wouldn't be to most peoples tastes for normal games, this would be good for some mod packs...

So, is it worth my while pursuing this? And if so, any suggestions for

• Plains and grassland. As you can see, I have done one as solid colour, and one with a few dots.
• Artic - how do you draw snow?
• Tunra - Again, how do you draw tundra?
• Desert - How do you draw a dune? Or should I just do the odd little cactus and prickly pear?
• Ocean - Looking at tolkien's maps he usually does the sea with lines following the coast line - a bit dificult to descibe - but this will not be possible due to the way the tilesets work. Stylisted waves?
• Jungle - I guess I need to draw little palm trees...

Any finally, specials, improvements and units and cities.

I plan to leave cities and units in colour for the moment - they stand out well. Although, for mod pack use, tolkein style cities would be fun, likewise units.

Having the specials in colour on this tileset does make them easy to see. I have also tried using small specials in the bottom right corner of easy tile as well.

Peter

[CapTVK]

So if I understand correctly the map tiles will be done in the style of Tolkien's handdrawn maps and units cities etc...in colour? I have to say it does add a unique style to your modpack. I've never seen a modpack done this way.

I like it!

[paulz]

I haven't been working on it lately, but have you seen the Tolkien modpack I have started?

www.dunedain.net/modpack

It is of a very different style, but perhaps we could work together?

[maubp]

Hi paulz,

I knew there was at least one Tolkien based mod on freeciv, which is partly why I started playing with this.

Do you have a predefined map? In which case, which terrain types do you use? See my points in the first post - I'm at a loss for how to draw some tiles.

CapTVK - the main reason that the Units (and cities etc) are in colour was because it was easier. When/if I finish the terrain, I would be in a position to start on them. In the meantime, I kind of like the way the units and cities standout against the simple background.

Incidentally, I was wondering about a more complicated setup. Terrain that you have seen yourself is done in colour as at the moment. Terrain that you only know about from your allies/swaping maps would be shown using a different tileset - something representing an actual map, possibly like the Tolkien tiles. Crazy? Maybe, and it would need some serious code changes!

[CapTVK]

Maubp,

That Tolkien style has struck a chord with me. It kind of reminds of Mike Singleton's Lords of Midnight and Doomdarks Revenge done for the ZX Spectrum. But that's ancient 8-bit history left for another time....

I'll try a few doodle attempts to come up with a few map squares. For the units I would advice some sort of a color coded system: Elves -green; Gondor- Blue; Mordor -Black etc...

The complicated setup I would leave for a later stage.

[Per]

maubp, that looks very promising. I can't think of any slightly modern game which has tried to look that way. Could turn out to be very cool. Keep it up, and let me know if a Tolkien ruleset requires any (hopefully trivial) code changes, and I'll see what I can do.

[maubp]

Per said:

... let me know if a Tolkien ruleset requires any (hopefully trivial) code changes, and I'll see what I can do.

Would it be easy to add code for four new railway tiles and four new road tiles as discuessed in this thread ? This is a more general request for any high resolution tileset. Might apply to isometric tiles as well.

I have had a go doing the ocean in Tolkien's style:-

[MarkG]

awsome idea

[CapTVK]

This is starting to look the part... Now we need some nice terrain specials.

[maubp]

Given the positive feedback, I have done the mountains properly (16 tiles instead the one I was using). This is better than the trident tileset (and others like it) that only use four tiles - their mountains only join up east-west!

These should look good for any middle earth maps, the mountain ring arround Mordor is quite important

For the hills, given the style I have chosen, using just the four tiles which join up east-west seems to be good enough.

I might do the forests next weekend (i.e. do the extra tiles to make them join up north-south as well as east-west).

But before that, I really think the other terrain types need doing.

For swamp I have a plan - based on the marshes on a few of Tolkein's maps.

I still want suggestions for:

• Desert - maybe a couple of "sand dunes"
• Artic - how do you "draw" ice?
• Tundra - ?
• Jungle - palm trees?

Rivers are also on my todo list - but I think I can cope with them. What about roads and railways?

Anyway, as mentioned at the start of this post, mountains that join up:-

[maubp]

I have now done the rivers.

[Bart Coppens]

Very nice! But could you make the lines of the sea fit in a bit more? So they're a bit vaguer, like the rest of the terrain types.

[maubp]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I'm not sure what you mean Bart. Doing them in a slight range of colours? Or a softer/browner colour than the grey I picked?

As to what I am trying to mimic, have a look here at some scanned in Tolkien maps:

http://www.jrrtolkien.org.uk/lotrmaps.htm

This image is quite a good example:

http://www.jrrtolkien.org.uk/Images/lotrmap1.jpg

You can see how he does his ocean? The "coastal wave lines" echo the landscape - with the lines closer together nearer land, repeating out into the ocean.

Now at the moment this would be impossible in freeciv without code changes. It also has a major drawback from a gameplay point of view - the lines tell you about coast locations which you may not be able to see.

I realised that without some major code changes (and the problem about information mentioned above), I could only have the coastal "wave lines" to a distance of about half a tile.

This is what I have done, and I choose to have three wavey lines. The deap ocean will have to be "blank" or have a simple repeating pattern.

Alternatively, we could abandon this style for ocean totally - and go for some stylised waves instead...

Anyone care to post some pictures of their ideas? I've still got a few problem terrain types to do - the my earlier postings.

Peter

[Bart Coppens]

Originally posted by maubp
Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I'm not sure what you mean Bart. Doing them in a slight range of colours? Or a softer/browner colour than the grey I picked?

To see what I mean, zoom in on the image on the section where the river flows into the ocean. As you can see, the river is actually a mixture of different hues of green, red and brown, giving an impression of a pencil-made drawing. (also notice the slight antialiasing these different hues make).
Now look at the wavy lines: they have all the same grey colour, and are not antialiased. Because of these two things, these lines do look a bit 'misplaced' in the image.

[maubp]

OK Bart, good point, thanks for clarifying that.

I think you're right, that would be better. Any graphics expects care to suggest a quick/easy way to do this?

The current waves were all done in the very primative Microsoft Paint Brush (a little app included with Windows), almost pixel by pixel. The reason I did the wavy lines all the same colour was because it was easier and quicker!

I wasn't confident that the wavy line look would "work" at all. I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out.

Right now I think the remaining land terrain is more important, but I'll put tweaking the coast line on my mental to do list.

[Mercator]

Excellent work!

You could simply make the Arctic terrain white(r) or slightly blue-ish to make it look cold (although I'm not sure if the latter would fit very well with the beige of the rest) and perhaps add some icy cracks.

If you're going to make the Arctic terrain fairly white, Tundra could be a mixture of some sort of this white and the "regular terrain" color.

About the desert, maybe the attached Civ2 terrains (left by MicroProse, right by Harlan Thompson) are enough inspiration to get you started...

( Somehow, attaching an image doesn't seem to work )

[Mercator]

Here it is...

[maubp]

Thanks for digging out those images Mercator.

I have done some pencil sketches of dunes that look reasonable. This is my first attempt to turn them into bitmaps, and I'm not that impressed with my handiwork.


Oh, and before anyone asks, my pencil drawings do join up the dunes - a bit like the sprawling dune by Harlan Thompson for Civ 2 - while the bitmap version below is rather primative.

I probably won't have time to do anything else on this till the new year now...

[maubp]

You could simply make the Arctic terrain white(r) or slightly blue-ish to make it look cold (although I'm not sure if the latter would fit very well with the beige of the rest) and perhaps add some icy cracks.

As a short term measure, along these lines, I decided to use the existing arctic terrain from trident/bigtrident with the borders changed from green to the dull yellow/brown I'm using.

I actually did this a while back, but didn't post here.

Its usable, but I'm not satisifed with this yet. Mainly because its using whites and greys, rather than browns:-

[St Leo]

You might enjoy my two-colour compression of The Discworld Mapp. It looks remarkably Tolkienesque.

[CapTVK]

i experimented a bit with your artic sample and tried different colours and edges.

I'm not happy with the ice in general but I'll have to experiment a bit for something different. Anyone else in the meantime?

[maubp]

OK, as promised before Christmas, an update to the deserts:

[maubp]

So far its just the one desert tile - joining them up should not be too hard, just time consuming.

Still to do:

Jungle, for which I need to draw some more trees - probably palm tree style.

Swamp, I plan to use rushes and small lakes.

I'm not happy with the Arctic (as shown earlier in the thread) yet.

I need ideas for Tundra...

[maubp]

Swamp, I plan to use rushes and small lakes.

Well so far just the rushes, and just the single tile, but seems to look OK.

This screenshot also includes a city and a few units - as discussed earlier they are in colour (for the time being at least).

Now - How can I change the colour of font used for the city names & production? As you can see, the current white text does not show up very well.

The .tileset file has entrys that seem to control font size...

[LarryN]

What about ths project?
It's alive?

[maubp]

Well Larry - I haven't touched it for a while. Holidays, work, playing Civ III, etc...

I would really like to get the terrain "finished" (i.e. at least one tile for each type) but I'm still stumped for how to draw tundra and arctic. Its not perfect but leaving the arctic white will do as a stop gap measure. There is also the Jungle still to do but I don't think that will be too bad once I get round to it.

Any ideas anyone?

[maubp]

I'm still looking for suggestions on how to do tundra (or the arctic) tiles. And I still want to know how to change the colour of the city text from white.

But today's work was a first attemt at doing the jungle. This is a sinlge tile only (so no fancy joining up bits) and I think its adequate. I never did like the use of palm trees for Jungle in the default trident tileset, but I must admit its difficult to draw trees and make the different from the jungle ones...

Suggestions please...

[maubp]

Jungle:

[LarryN]

It's looks very nice. But mayby more palms less normal trees?

[CapTVK]

The palm trees are a nice touch but the square looks a bit like a desert oasis now. We need more jungle. Make the normal trees a bit higher and add some vines hanging from the trees.