Map Graphics Thread, Part II

[sas]

Hi again !

Clearly I should have done more research before making assumptions about how things are done in this game. Your ideas are good and manageable, although from a "graphic" perspective not as good as "my" approach

But as Gary pointed out , there is the workload to consider. To manage 1500 tiles is not impossible if I "cheat" a bit, but agreeably is a lot of work. Overlays sounds like a great idea, although I hurts a bit to skip the corners. I might have to make them later on just to satisfy my ego

After reading your arguments about rivers, I agree with you. Bridges sounds like a good idea Gary, I hope we will be able to implement it. Considering the strategic importance of bridges in previous wars, we really should have it.

So to sum it up, I will first make coast from the tiles we already have with some exceptions were you will get some brand new ones instead. Is there some tiles we don't want next to water, like mountains ?

-Stian-

[sas]

Tiles !

I've made some tiles. They dont fit next to the old terrain (looks ugly). So i will only show eatch individual tile for now, untill the other ones is worked out.

Btw, i havent forgotten the oceans..

Hills:

-

Irrigation:



Swamp:



Tundra:



Water/Ocean:





Comments? ( be honest )

-Stian-

[axi]

Can you make a try to turn the hill graphic to an overlay, which can be placed above the grass/dirt/snow/forest/jungle/whatever terrain? This has not been tested yet.

I tried to do this with some mock-up tiles myself, but I'm inexperienced with graphics and I am unable to overlay them to see the effect.

I don't like you hills and irrigation very much, but the others are cool.

[LDiCesare]

Could you show a few of these files together (like 2x2 tiles or 3x3)? I have some doubts about the water tile, but maybe it is ok when seen as a bunch. Along with axi I so not like the irrigation tile because:
1)it looks like it comes from simcity
2)there are many colors
3)it is too "square"
I also feel the swamp is too light-colored. I'd rather have it dark green than yellow-green.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi sas:

Before I forget, we do have some coastal tiles from the demo 4 graphics set. If you download demo 4 and open the jar in winzip you should be able to grab them. They assume that coasts project beyond a land square as in civ, but they still might be of use to you.

I don't think we should skip corners for coast, we'll just need to think of a clever way to do it. It should be doable with some small number of "patchup" overlays applied after the "side" coast overlay.

Thanks for putting up the work, here are my first thoughts:

Hills:
I prefer the ones already in the demo. I'm not sure what Gary doesn't like about them, unless he wants to try to make the terrain to scale. My specific criticism of yours is that they dont grab attention, and will too easily IMO fade into the other tiles.

Irrigation:
Same as Axi and Laurent's opinions. Also things like irrigation and deforestation in clash don't happen all in one big step. So things like irrigation and forest will eventually require several little icons that can be added in steps to show at least 4-5 levels of irrigation or forestation. There has been discussion about this a ways back, but I don't expect you to have read everything yet!

Swamp and Tundra look pretty good to me, but I'd need to see them next to other things to be sure.

Ocean looks good, but again I'd have to see it next to the others. One idea is that if you make your tiles the same gif size as those in the demo, you can do a replacement of the existing ones, then run the demo and give us a screenshot!

Great to see your fast start!

-Mark

[sas]

New/ Updated tiles

Thanks for all the feedback !

I agree with you comments, and have taken some measures to remedy some of it. I'm still not completely satisfied, but I hope they looked better. They are in the right size for the game 120*60, but still need some tweaking to fit perfectly.

I've also included a "screenshot" , not from the game, but where I have placed the tiles next to one another manually.

Here goes:

New Hills:



Rougher hills (i will remove or modify the river) :



Updated irrigation:



Darker swamp:



Tundra again unchanged:



Water unchanged:





Any comments ?


-Stian-

[axi]

Your tile edges are not straight, that's why they don't fit well with eachother.

I have noticed that the demo tiles have "fuzzy" edges. Why is this Mark?

sas, to be honest, your new irrigation looks even worse that the previous.

I like the new hills, OTOH.

[Mark_Everson]

I like the new hills and mountains a lot! The hills especially would be amenable to doing 3 or 4 different tiles, and using them randomly to give a less regular appearance.

New Irrigation I don't much like... We don't even necessarily need to show irrigation since the people and local governments will do it automatically in Clash without need for direct player intervention. So my suggestion is to forget irrigation for now.

Upon looking at the water all together, I think the image needs to be run through a filter to smooth out the bright strings into broader 'whitecaps'.

BTW I thought your roads were better than the quickie ones Gary did, in terms of contrast with other tiles. At some point if you could prepare a set of 8 tiles that could potentially replace the ones in demo 6, I'd like to give them a shot. But coastline and river demos are probably more urgent.

Axi:

I'm not sure about the fuzzy edges. It could be because they were resized at some point.

[sas]

Ok, the terrible irrigation if buried and forgotten.

The reason the sides of the tiles are not straight is because I don't want to complete the small details before I get a positive or negative response. No need to labor unnecessary over something that wont get used anyway right ?

Just to emphasize; the graphics I'm showing you for comments and feedback is not the finished product. Its a "betaversion" of the graphics. Just enough to show how its going to look like.

I guess I was a bit eager to show my willingness to work on this project.

I will work more on the stuff you like and improve it, and make some new ones as well. I still need to balance the colors, because right now they look funny/unnatural next to each other.

Mark: I will take a look at the roads over the weekend, since I'm away until monday. They shouldn't take long to work out.
And 3 or 4 hill and mountain tiles ? Will do

Can you make a try to turn the hill graphic to an overlay, which can be placed above the grass/dirt/snow/forest/jungle/whatever terrain?

That shouldn't be a problem. I know how to do it, so its just a matter of when I will do it.. Soon I hope.


Finally, I've updated the tiles "again" , and that will be the last until I have something more impressive to show you guys

Forest:



"updated" ocean:



Mountain without river:



Improved hills:



Well, that's it!

Have a nice weekend....

[LDiCesare]

I like the new ocean and hills.
I also feel the darker swamp looks better than the previous one.
The forest looks hard to see to me. If it is to be an overlay, could you replace the green background by a transparant one? The trees might stick out better.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by sas
Just to emphasize; the graphics I'm showing you for comments and feedback is not the finished product. Its a "betaversion" of the graphics. Just enough to show how its going to look like.

I guess I was a bit eager to show my willingness to work on this project.

No need to apologize Stian, I think the level of stuff you were putting out was just right. As you say, no point in refining something that just isn't going to work out.

Please don't accelerate things like 3-4 mountain tiles above coastlines and rivers. I think those are more important to get into the game. The 3-4 hills and mountains was just something to put at low priority and do eventually IMO.

The new forest, I don't like as well as what's in demo6, but then again your forest you can put a road through or a coastline on and it wouldn't look weird. Have to see what other think. The new ocean looks good, but we'll have to see what it looks like in a demo.

[Gary Thomas]

Wow, has this thread been active!

I really like your new tiles, Stian, particularly the hills and mountains.

The existing tiles are slightly oversize, and overlap each other from the north on down. This gets rid of the necessity of accurate edge matching. The present edges are actually quite fuzzy, and having them like that makes my life easier. So instead of going to a point at the middle of each side, they should be a little wider. Have look at the existing ones to get the idea.

We also need, urgently, a broken type of terrain, between hills and mountains.

Also I believe we do need agriculture and irrigation, but suggest that they be overlays, to allow progressive increase of these factors. Sililarly, the forest could be a series of overlays to allow deforestation.

I can't see how the hill tile can be an overlay without hiding the terrain underneath.

On the subject of coasts, I don't mind having 8 overlays, I just wasn't going to do it myself! The difficulty arises at the corners when two adjacent sides are sea, the coast on the last drawn edge square will cover the sea on the other one if the edges go right to the end. We may need seven corner overlays for each corner, corresponding to sea/sea/sea (for an edge, the diagonally adjacent tile, and the next edge), land/sea/sea, land/land/sea, land/sea/land, sea/land/land, sea/sea/land, and the isthmus one sea/land/sea. We don't need land/land/land. This will mean a total of 28 corner overlay tiles which is manageable.

Cheers

[axi]

Gary, are you assuming that the coast overlays are inside the land tile or inside the sea tile?

Assuming that they are inside the land tile, we only need 4 overlays for the sides (1 for each) plus 8 overlays for the corners (2 for each).

However this assumption means that we can't have the tile graphics extend outside the boundaries of the tiles.



I checked civ2 out and it uses a table with 32 tiles, but they are covering all possible 3-tile combinations: 0.5*8^2
(8 combinations for each of the 2nd and 3rd tiles, divide by 2 for symmetry)

I have started creating some coast and river tiles myself, among other things, which are rather primitive but work well enough.

I did some primitive stuff with mountain, hills, trees and roads overlays too.

It's fun being an artist after all!

[Gary Thomas]

The coasts overlay the land squares.

There is an ambiguity in the last few square in your picture. There is nothing to stop specifying that the land squares are joined (as opposed to separated by sea). Your picture assumes that they are islands. However, a land unit would be able to cross from one to another (the gap would be treated as a river).

I can't see how two corner overlays would be sufficient.

Cheers

[axi]

You mean that we can't have an isthmus, but we will always have a strait. However, unless there is a channel, we can't have both an isthmus and a strait, so the problem persists. In civ2 the boats are jumping above the isthmus, IIRC. This can only be solved if we specify if there is land/sea/bridge/channel on the spot, but this is a problem for you, the coders. We could suppose that a strait is the default and put a special overlay on top of the joint if we want anything else. In the sides of the squares, straits/or rivers can likewise be added after the basic map is generated.