TERRAIN: Muddy flood plains

[Yurt]

I made these flood plains to look like the recently flooded Nile, with thick gooey brown mud lining the banks and some grassiness between the mud and the river.

VERSION 4
The mud has been lightened to fit better with the rest of the terrain. I also added a bit more variety to the mud's colours.

version 3 replaced after 167 downloads
version 2 replaced after 74 downloads
version 1 replaced after 33 downloads

[Yurt]

Screenshot. Version 4.

[Level]

Looks good, the one that is not muddy is a desert coast tile.

[Yurt]

It is flood plain, I checked in CivEdit. You can see the green around it but the brown doesn't show up.

Is this going to get moved to the files forum any time soon? It is a complete file.

[Humphman2]

How do you change .pcx files?

Yurt, how did you modify/create these pcx files??! I have tried to change some of the terrain files using Photoshop, but the saved .pcx files do not compute when I try running the game! Pink triangles everywhere! It seems that they have a locked format which won't accept cutting and pasting of jpg colour samples..

Please help me!

[Gramphos]

You need to keep it in 8 bit pallette format.

[Yurt]

I used PaintShop Pro but they're pretty similar. All I did was save the palette and then load it when I was done. The mud was more colourful before but the palette reduced it.

[Humphman2]

Thanks guys! I'll try that..

It's still a bit lousy to restrict the spectrum of colours that you can use in the pallette, don't you think? Oh, well.. There goes my idea to put a Guernica on every hilltop!

[Yurt]

I will probably release a version two sometime in the near future, with larger mud banks and more green.

[Yurt]

Version 2 added - more mud, more green. I updated the file and screenshot above.

[kvn299]

Getting the colors/transparencies right

I saw some discussion about color problems. I spent some time today playing with the graphics and here's how I was able to use my own colors without losing the transparencies.

I used Paint Shop Pro 7.

1. I opened the original file.
2. I increased the number of colors to 16 million to give me something to work with.
3. I made the changes I wanted.
4. I converted the image back into 256 colors, with custom (optimized octree) palette.
5. Now here's the tricky part and it's not the easiest, I'm sure... however, I'm learning this like most of you... In order for the transparencies to work, you need to have the Light Green (0.255.0) in the 254 spot (it should be the next to the last color on the palette). Likewise, Magenta (255.0.255) needs to be in spot 255 (the last color). You have to edit the palette to add these colors.
6. Now, I had problems because the green and magenta colors were in the palette but not in those spots. Simply adding them into the right spot didn't work. That's because the existing magenta/green areas are painted from the wrong color location. You need to add green/magenta to spots 254/255, then paint them into the areas they will be active. To do this, I just edited the palette and changed the "bad" green/magenta some other colors (that change will be seen in the image), then painted the transparencies from spots 254 & 255.

Voila.. wordy and probably not as detailed as it should be but the two important things are: green and magenta = 254 & 255; transparencies must be painted from those spots.

Kevin

[Yurt]

I'll try that. You change a colour by double clicking on it when you're in edit palette, right?

[Yurt]

Version 3 posted. See top for details.

[kvn299]

Yes... you're right..

Colors - Edit Palette, double click on colors to turn on Dropper tool. Select new color.

The tileset is looking very nice, by the way!

[sieboldii]

Less Brown Mud

Yurt,

Over at CvfFanatics you mentioned that you were going to try a less brown mud. What ever happened to that idea?

The dark brown mud does seem to be a little stark in contrast to the normal terrain colors.