High(er) Resolution Tilsets

[maubp]

Hi Folks,

Having recently bought a new monitor, I am now running at a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels.

Personally I think that the existing tilesets (both trident and isotrident) look too small at this resolution.

I prefer the non-isometric view, and also the isometric tileset looked more scary, so:

I have made my own enlarged version of the trident tileset by scaling up the trident set from 30x30 sprites to 60x60 sprites, and edited the spec files to match. This new bigtrident tileset works fine.

However, it doesn't look nearly as good as it could do. I have started tinkering with the terrain file by hand - given a few more evenings work that should look much better.

Its the units that need the most work.

So, does anyone have access to the "original" artwork for the units (or anything else)?
i.e. before they were scaled down to 30x30 pixels

Peter

Edited to remove some of the spelling mistakes

[CapTVK]

Guess, I'll have to settle for 1024x768.

Maubp, could you include the spec end graphics file in an attachment here? I don't have the originals but I would like to have a look. Are they in the XPM or in the PNG format?

[maubp]

There should be a file called bigtrident.zip attached to this post. The images are in PNG fortmat and have only been tested on Windows 2000, freeciv 1.13.0 and 1.14.0 beta 1.

The graphics files were copies of the trident set, enlarged to twice the height and width. Similarly the spec files were copies of the trident set, edited to change the tiles from 30x30 to be 60x60.

The terrain image has been edited by hand. I think the transaparency color messed up - black is now transaparent. This makes the oil tile and the "fog" tiles useless. This should be easy to fix, if I can find a better image editor than Microsoft Paint Brush.

I have tried to touch up some of the "specials".

Regarding the terrain itself, so far I have only touched up the plains and the ocean tiles. I have essentially taken four of the trident tiles to make each of the bigtrident tiles.

I am wondering if the new coast lines are too smooth.

For future reference, this can be called the bigtrident tileset v0.0.1

Peter

[CapTVK]

Thanks, I'll play around with them this weekend.

[maubp]

CapTVK, I have done some more work on the terrain. Only the hills, mountains and rivers need work now.

I am wondering about doing the hills and mountains with more than three tiles each - at the moment they do not attempt to join up vertically, just horizontally. Read the tiles.spec file

So far I have only changed the tiles - due to the limited functionality of the tools I have been using, I have switch to using a nasty yellow as the transaparency colour, rather than having two sorts of black as described in this thread.

I also grabbed the the Walrus from the HiRes/Lexxy tileset to use for "Artic Ivory" because I think it looks better than some tusks (white tusks on white artic terrain doesn't stand out). I have added this to a free spot in tiles.png and edited the tiles.spec to use the new walrus rather than the tusks.

There are still a few things on tiles.png that need to be touched up - the rivers, the "specials" and the text.

That still leaves PNG files for the cities and roads, and most importantly now, the units.

In the case of the units, I really need some high resolution sources. Does anyone know who did the original tile sets? Should I be asking on the mailing list rather than this forum - which seems rather quite?

Peter

Edited to expand on the changes in version 0.0.2 of bigtrident

[CapTVK]

Well, here's the first view. I've got a 2nd Freeciv session running on the left with the original trident set. The bigtrident is on the right. I'm playing on 1024x768, so the bigtrident appears a little 'bigger' than on 1280x1024.

[maubp]

Thanks for posting your screenshots CapTVK - I will do some myself once I'm happy with the revised terrain.

Now a slight diversion to railways with the trident tileset.

I have edited this because the forum seems to only let me do one pitcure per post.

Reading the roads.spec and looking at the roads.png file, there are actually two sorts of railways in in the trident tileset.

This is with the original trident railways (no longer the default):

[maubp]

This screenshot shows the default, dwp style railways in the trident tileset.

(Anyone know what dwp style means? Was DWP the artist's initials?)

[maubp]

In this third screen shot I have anotated the dwp-style trident railways screenshot with some "problems"

• Bad bends - where a railway goes from diagonal to cardinal. This can be improved by tweaking the tileset images.
• Bad junctions - where things overlap to much or not enough. This can be improved by tweaking the tileset images.
• Diagonal railways - The there is a "neck" because the neighbouring two tiles do not have a tiny bit of railway in their corners.

These are easier to spot when you zoom in (which effectively what I did for my bigtrident tileset).

I think I can fix the first two problems for both trident and bigtrident.

The third problem, diagonal railways, may need coding changes...

[maubp]

And finally, for today, this screenshot is the current version of my bigtrident tileset, with dwp-style railways.

The roads and railways are just enlargements of the trident version - If I feel like it I will go in and touch them up by hand...

I have edited the railway tiles in roads.png to try and fix the Bad Bends problem (as shown in my previous post).

P.S. I have replaced the pheasant with the one from the HiRes/Lexxy tileset. Good or bad choice?

[Thue]

dwp is David Pfitzner, a former freeciv admin.

Yes, the diagonals would require coding changes. To make the bends and junctions look real nice you would probably also need to draw all the possible combinations by hand, which would then require (a simple) code change to use.

There are similar problems in the isometric tilesets where the roads need a few more pixels to be completely connected. That one would require more code.

[maubp]

Thanks Thue,

I haven't looked at the code (I'm not sure I want to) but I assume that the code that renders the map is "modular" so changes here shouldn't have too many side effects.

At the moment there are only about twenty railway tiles (guessing - I don't have the tiles to look at right now). Doing this "properly" would take 2^8 = 256 tiles.

Do you think having all these extra bitmaps would have memory problems?

i.e. Define 256 tiles with names like "railway00100100" where the eight numbers mean: If there a railway going north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-west, west, north-west.

Peter

[Thue]

256 tiles would take about 230kb (#*width*height*bits for color=256 * 30*30 *8) RAM, which is much but not catastrofic. A solution would be to only draw tiles for the middle where the rail meet and then draw the ends of the rails seperately and paste them on later (easy to code).
Or some other smart system where you could compose the final picture, like the current one, except that it should look good in all cases. The coding changes for all this will be simple no matter the solution.
It is possible that you can find a solution that would not involve drawing 256 tiles. Please try if you think you can.

[Thue]

On second though the change to make the diagonal rails look good would be easy too .

[maubp]

For the trident size tiles, as you say (number of tiles * width * height * bytes for color) gives just over 200kb, but bigtrident size tiles, this comes to just over 900kb - Which does seem excessive!

I still think that the existing tilesets could be tweaked to solve Bad bends (where a railway goes from diagonal to cardinal) and Bad junctions (see image in earlier posting).


In order to deal with diagonal railways, we need just four new tiles - all transparent except for a little bit of railway in a corner. The existing code already makes a railway tiles by overlaying multiple railway tiles - so adding up to four more images shouldn't hurt.

i.e. add four tiles:

• rail_passing_ne_corner
• rail_passing_se_corner
• rail_passing_sw_corner
• rail_passing_nw_corner

If these are not defined in a tileset, then use nothing.

Something similar could be done for isometric tiles.

The screenshot below should show what I mean - the grey grid is meant to be a 4 by 3 section of map, and the black parallel lines are railways.

The bits in red are what we need to add to make the diagonal railways look better. In the case of the tile in the middle of the loop, this can be acheived by combining the three new tiles rail_passing_se_corner, rail_passing_sw_corner and rail_passing_nw_corner.