Map Graphics

[Fiera]

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 03-30-2001 09:24 PM Initial Graphics test. I have no artistic capacity, so the only art demos I can generate are thru software It ain't much, but its a start. The placement within the tile isn't right, but that's easy to fix.

Well, it seems great to me! I just can't wait to get my hands on the demo...

I see the terrain graphics have a different palette now. Is that the one you plan to use in the game? I ask it for I would have to make some slight modifications in the units colors, so that units and terrain don't get confused... If you accept suggestions, I'd take out the brown zones off the grassland...

quote: See Fiera, I try to give immediate gratification where possible .

Thanks much! I'm just sorry that I couldn't reply earlier to this thread, I've just come back from the countryside...

quote: Can you express an approach for getting the TF sprites placed right? If the image is w pixels wide, and h high, and if the tile has W and H, how should I do the math to figure where the image goes with respect to the tile? It is close to TF image center goes over top vertex of the tile. Can you give me a shot at what the right approach is? I know it may just be intuitive, but it would help if you can formulate it...

Yes, I used an ituitive approach for the demos, but I think it's an easy approach. I just tried to make sure that the base of the unit (not the shadow, but rather the last pixel of the unit feet) was placed in the center of the tile. I indeed think that the "TF image center over top tile vertex" is a very close approach... Anyways, you can play around with the pic and see which formula looks better...

I've already replied to your e-mails and sent you the images and units width and height. If you need something else, just ask...

[Fiera]

OK. Are you already playing around with the map palette, or at least do you plan to do it before releasing the demo? I think it would be interesting to have a general idea about the colors that we will finally use...

Sorry if you're currently too busy with other things, but I'm looking forward to try and make some graphics for the terrain too...

[Mark_Everson]

The changes you saw were mostly just artifacts of the resizing of the tiles and use of a new 'plains' tile. I'm really not going to do any experiments on the tiles right now. If you want to try some 80-wide tiles expressing some options for the palette I can almost certainly get them into D5.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Fiera:

quote: I see the terrain graphics have a different palette now. Is that the one you plan to use in the game?

Everything is extremely preliminary now, so I wouldn't make any changes based on what you see so far.

[Fiera]

Hi again,

I've been playing around with the palete and I must say that setting an appropriate and appealing palette is a difficult task, much tougher than just drawing units...

My goal is to get a palette that makes the terrain stay in the background, thus allowing the units to be shown as foreground objects without any confusion, but without making the terrain gloomy. I think you'll get what I mean.

I thought I'd just share this idea with the rest of the team members and anyone else who's interested in the terrain graphics, to see if you don't generally like it, before I keep on working on it. So, any thoughts? Has any of you previously worked with the terrain graphics palette?

[Mark_Everson]

Sorry Fiera, I can't intelectually debate the issues, and it looks like nobody else here at the moment is up to it either.

But if you show me pictures I can say if I like them or not

BTW maybe you could see if some of the people from Civ2 Creation are interested in discussing ideas or evaluating what you come up with.

[Lord God Jinnai]

My suggestion is to make the terrain graphics slightly darker on the whole and the units more moderate in color. There are exceptions for example, sand dunes in the Sahara shouldn't be dark, nor polar ice. Also the water should be very dark at sea and lighter near the coastline.

[Fiera]

Hi there again!

Mark,

I can't show you any pictures yet. I'm still getting to grips with my Paint Shop color palette system, and I haven't been able to come up with anything good enough.

And sorry if my questions sounded too "specific". I'll take in mind that the best way to ask for an opinion about graphics is showing some of them.

Do you have separate GIF files for each terrain tile, such as the ones I sent you for the units? If so, could you send them to me? My work would be easier that way.


LGJ,

I think that we have similar opinions on the issue, I just don't quite sure about what you mean for "units more moderate in color". I think the units should have very "bright" colors (as my current Horde and Phalanx units), so that they're easily distinguished by the player.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Fiera, yes the terrain tiles are each in its own gif. That makes life much easier at the experimental stage where we are now!

[Lord God Jinnai]

Yes, they should be able to distinquish the units from the terrain

I guess it really depends on the unit. For human character units, i'd say go with bright colors for some things, but when using things made from metal or wood, only make the highlights bright. For ships, no (although highlights are good). They should still be moderate to contrast with both the shallow and deep sea areas. For modern units, it will depend on what they are. Planes I'd say bright/moderate and tanks and stuff. dark with highlights in moderate colors.

This allows the player to still distinquish the units without having them be overly present.

Also something you may want to consider is putting differnt layers for some things so that say there is a forest, it might cover a little of the unit in the front part instead of it looking like the unit is more or less floating above the forest. Same thing with cities...its just a thought.

[Fiera]

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 04-07-2001 03:05 AM Hi Fiera, yes the terrain tiles are each in its own gif. That makes life much easier at the experimental stage where we are now!

Yes, but do you still keep the ones you used for Demo 4, or any terrain square GIF that I could use as a guide? I'm afraid I'm terribly stuck if the only thing I've got to start working on the terrain are the screenshots on the Clash site.


[This message has been edited by Fiera (edited April 08, 2001).]

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Fiera:

Sorry I didn't understand that you wanted the tiles. What I have is not scaled to 80-wide, but mostly 120 or 93. But I'll send you both the old and new sets (there's some overlapping between).

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Fiera, I've got a question for you... This thread is about to exceed the 150-post limit, and we need to start another one. Would you like the honor of starting the next one ? If so, please start a thread with a sensible title like Map Graphics II, and in the first post, put a link back to this thread. Then, if you're amenable, also put a final post in this thread that gives a link to the new one. Finally, if you like, you could put a post in the Web requests thread notifying, that he needs to update the location of the current thread for map graphics. If you'd like me to do this stuff, just let me know.

We also have a new guy interested in coding graphics and GUI stuff named Eric. Hopefully he will drop by the new thread and say hi shortly. Anyway, this will probably slow things down to a little bit short-term, but be a big long-term plus. That's because I'm not very good at graphics/GUI stuff, and so my progress is relatively slow compared to what it could be. When I get things ready to hand off to Eric, I will try and post a final screenshot so you can know where things are at this moment.

[Fiera]

Alright. I will gladly bear the honor of opening a new Map Graphics Thread.

But now, some quick coments. First of all, thanks for the GIF files. They allow me for a much faster way to do my work- mainly comparing how things look before and after changes, etc. I think that I've got a lot of work to do, I definitely don't like the current colors, but we'll discuss these things later.

LGJ, thanks for your suggestions, I'll try to reply to them at the new thread, so please take a look there.

Here's the link to the new thread:
http://www.apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000357.html
[This message has been edited by Fiera (edited April 08, 2001).]