Map Graphics Thread part III

[Gary Thomas]

This is a great relief. I am looking forward to incorporating the coasts, just as soon as I get the tiles.

I have been giving a bit of thought to the idea of larger gifs with several tiles (like all the roads) on them. The day will come when we have, perhaps, thousands of tile gifs. There is an overhead to opening and reading each separate file, and at that point we will need composite files, so maybe now is the time to do it, since there are quite a few coast tiles.

Cheers

[sas]

I've finally finished the coastal tiles, not a moment to soon I gather. Sorry about the delay though.

Obviously they will need adjustment when we get to see how they look in game. So for now I will only send them to Gary and let him take a look at them.

I've also made some adjustments on some of the other tiles.
I'm not completely satisfied with the current standard on the tiles. Especially looking at the quality on the mods created for Civ3.

So here’s a "preview" of the new forest tile:

Old one:

New one:

Comments?

Really, some people will use just any old lame excuse

Hehe, I'll leave you guessing....

I have been giving a bit of thought to the idea of larger gifs with several tiles (like all the roads) on them..

As you probably remember, I initially thought that was the way you already did handle the graphics. I fully support this way of organising the graphics. Partly due to the fact that I’m used to it from Civ 2 and 3. And partly because in the long run we will probably end up with lots of tiles. This way will make it easier to handle the large number of tiles later on.

just my 2 cents...


-Stian-

[Gary Thomas]

Do you want to put the coastal tiles in a single grid gif. As long as they are in numeric order I can disassemble them.

It wouldn't be a bad idea if you did the same with the tiles you have been developing. I can then incorporate them.

We have a minor problem with Fiera's new cities which are not correctly centred - when I display them they are way down to the bottom left of the tile.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Stian:

I do like the new forest better than the old one! And it will be Very cool to see the coasts in the game.

One thing... We had planned long-term to have some tiles like forest built-up from individual trees or groups thereof. That way we can show things like the gradual clearing of Europe as people spread and converted forest to farmland. I think the detailed discussion is in the preceeding thread. This is not needed for now, but just to put the idea into your mind.

[sas]

We had planned long-term to have some tiles like forest built-up from individual trees or groups thereof

I'm glad you reminded me of that one Mark. To be honest, i knew about the plans, but i forgot later on. I see two ways to implement this. Either with individual/groups of trees as overlays, or make several tiles "showing" the transformation from forest to farmland.

Is it possible to make individual or groups of trees as overlays look good ? Meaning, will they look like a forest ?

I would guess from a programming point of view, the severeal tiles option is the easiest... am i right ?

Do you want to put the coastal tiles in a single grid gif?

Its certainly no problem for me to do it now. It dependes on what you prefer.....

We have a minor problem with Fiera's new cities which are not correctly centred

I'll look into it.

-Stian-

[Gary Thomas]

I would guess from a programming point of view, the severeal tiles option is the easiest... am i right ?

At the moment that is true.

Its certainly no problem for me to do it now. It dependes on what you prefer.....

We might as well get it done now.

I'll look into it.

Thanks.

Cheers

[Kenjura]

I don't feel qualified to comment on the major aspects of the map graphics, so here's a quick, minor, and easy-to-implement idea.

If you plan on using fog of war, why not make it actual fog color? I always thought black fog was a little...dark. Ahem. But actual fog would be kind of nifty.

[Gary Thomas]

I suggest that you play the demo. The fog of war is an actual fog colour, but partially transparent. The unexplored terrain is black.

Cheers

[Gar]

Hello, tossing in here my willingness to do some graphics...

Just give me some ideas on something you need that I can get my feet wet with. Or is there a master list somewhere?

I do most graphics with Paint Shop and/or TrueSpace (3d modeller/renderer/animator) and enjoy researching things.

Thanks

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gar:

Last I knew, Specials like Gold, Tin, Salt, and Cloth aren't spoken for. The format is gif 89a (or is it 87a?) the transparent gif one. You can grab tiles out of the jar file of the demo using winzip to get a feel for sizing. If you skim this file you can find where I tell sas about it in detail.

That is my take on a good thing to do. If anyone has a better idea, just squawk!

[Gar]

I've put together some ideas, to not excessively abuse the free geocities website, I've gone ahead and put it all into a web page.

One thing I didn't catch flying through threads here, was how many resources would be visually displayed on a tile?

Here's da link to my new site:
Gar's Graphics

Debatable essentials from this:
These special resource graphics are 17 x 12. I've added a yellow line under each image as a unifying theme.

These are the resources I am currently aware of for graphics and basic concept for graphic of each:
Gold (gold bar)
Tin (tin ore)
Salt (stack of shiny white cubes)
Cloth (bolt with rough weave partially unrolled)
Horses (um... horses)
Metalwares (a cook pan or an anvil)
Fish (yep... a fish)
Game (a pheasant or a really mean bunny)
Iron (iron ore)

Maybe I should bring out my old Avalon Hill, Advanced Civilization board game for inspriation (btw, my all time favorite game amongst all computer or board.)

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gar:

Originally posted by Gar
One thing I didn't catch flying through threads here, was how many resources would be visually displayed on a tile?

Only one type per tile.

Debatable essentials from this:
These special resource graphics are 17 x 12. I've added a yellow line under each image as a unifying theme.

I think they need to be bigger. You were probably keeping 'em small with the notion that we might need more than one per tile... My take is they images should fill roughly the middle half of the tile. We will need to work out what happens in the conflict between a city image and a Special one. My take is the special loses, but maybe we can show it offset in the detail frame.

For the gray ones you may need to outline 'em in yellow or something. I think they'd really get lost on a lot of tiles. And the fewer gray ones, the better IMO. At least that's my take.

One idea is to show the metals in finished form, making the letter symbolizing them. Tin would be two gray ingots, making a T, etc. Gives the best of both worlds (maybe!).

These are the resources I am currently aware of for graphics and basic concept for graphic of each:
Gold (gold bar)
Tin (tin ore)
Salt (stack of shiny white cubes)
Cloth (bolt with rough weave partially unrolled)
Horses (um... horses)
Metalwares (a cook pan or an anvil)
Fish (yep... a fish)
Game (a pheasant or a really mean bunny)
Iron (iron ore)

Maybe I should bring out my old Avalon Hill, Advanced Civilization board game for inspriation (btw, my all time favorite game amongst all computer or board.)

I wouldn't use advanced civ, there's too many specialty ancient ones like ochre that we'd never use (at least it was that way in the civ board game, can't remember if I ever played advanced civ). If you can dig up a list of the civ3 ones, I expect our list would be fairly close. It will be an evolving thing anyway. I think there are threads in the civ3 creation forum talking about improved resources icons, you should be able to find a list there. I think the vicious rabbit deserves its own image .

Thanks for the demo!

[edit] fix a quote formatting problem

[Gar]

OK, Mark, thanks for the feedback. Rather than spread myself too thinly I've decided to focus on one resource (Tin) until I get the sizing and style/approach nailed down. Since I can't get the images to hotlink, I will continue to do examples and updates on my website. I realize it dillutes the information captured in the threads, but seems like best way for now. I've added the website link to my signature, currently there is a new example of Tin there.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gar:

I think the new tin is getting a lot closer! Like I said, I'm not sure we'll even show resource icons when there is a city icon on the tile. Lets see if anyone else has an opinion on that. I do like the idea of offseting it a bit so it doesn't get completely obliterated by a military icon in the square.

Thanks for composing the list of potential specials! BTW, now that you have the one image, it might be worth it to put it in a zip and post it here. That way when Gary has time, he can put in the code and xml changes to handle resources. That way you'll be able to see them on the map as you develop 'em.

Good start! I'm looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

-Mark

[LDiCesare]

Hi Gar; I like the tin offsetted near the city. I think it would need more contrast (shading).