homunculus's two pixels

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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

Unless someone surprises me with some C&C action, I am done with lantern houses (open in new tab to see how it actually looks less blurry).
shot.png
I must say spriting seems more fun, no worries about how things look after scaling.
Problems with colors changing in-game, though, I guess I might ask about it in tech support some day.
So, I made a unit sprite (maybe fur cap, TC shirt, arm wrappings and weapon later).
unit.gif
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unit-slowmo.gif
unit-slowmo.gif (50.63 KiB) Viewed 5011 times
Last edited by homunculus on October 16th, 2011, 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

As expected, the C&C activity has been sort of low.
But a good boy will stroke himself if no one else strokes him, so I'll also try to be a good boy and crit myself if no one else does.
Although this tends to be less effective than crits from other people, because those come from a different attitude than the flaws in the drawing by myself.

The tree with the 4 lanterns is bit dominant, and the greens are bit too sharp.
Might be better is scaled bit smaller, and greens blurred a bit.

The spring version of the willow is bit too similar to summer version.
The blossoms could be blurred, and brighter.

the summer version of the willow is somewhat bland if it is that much desaturated.

The autumn version might have a bit too much leaves.

@myself
Thanks, I'll see what I can do.
kuvatoemmised.png
Seems like an improvement.

And also some sprites that are not Wesnoth-related.
I have been having some fun with nethack, a game that I am sometimes nostalgic about.
Wanted to do some 24x24 tiles.
The palette there is very limited, and there is a lot of need for simplification of the sprites.
And, as only females can lay eggs, there is not much point in making male characters if female is available, and therefore, say, monk became nun (I wonder how a nun can lay eggs, though).
My Valkyrie is intended to be dwarf, pose trying to copy typical poses from Zerovirus.
Above are the original sprites used for reference, below are my 24x24 sprites (so that references get referenced and all is nice and well).
Giant ant, soldier ant/queen ant, 2 versions of fire ant, Valkyrie, monk(nun), tourist.
nethack_tiles.png
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Last edited by homunculus on October 16th, 2011, 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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lipk
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by lipk »

All look great :D It's a pity that I cannot use them right now.

Here's an editor config for the laid-back (just extract to the userdata folder).

attachment removed
newer and better version below
Last edited by lipk on October 16th, 2011, 8:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

Thanks, tried a map filled with tree houses and it looked kind of retro bright, felt almost like falling off my chair.
lipk wrote:It's a pity that I cannot use them right now.
You mean, you couldn't test the add-on yourself?
Some things seem to work like you probably didn't intend to, and I don't know enough terrain WML to understand what is going on there.

It is actually userdata/data/add-ons folder rather than userdata folder, at least on 1.9.9.
The willow, the Pisa Tower, and the red version of the pine never seemed to appear, although it looks like they might have been intended to appear.
And somehow it seems to overwrite the present elvish villages.
name=_ "Tree houses by Homonculus"
There seems to be a little spelling error (the second 'o' is actually a 'u', and I know I am evil for choosing such a hard nick) and there's no need to capitalize, as it is more like a species name than a person name (wikipedia: homunculus).
And if you do the WML, shouldn't you appear there as one of the authors yourself?

And I see the 4-lantern tree seems to be a deciduous tree (not evergreen), which means it might also need some autumn version at least (which I actually tried to avoid after I realized there might be a need for seasonal versions for the willow).
Just remembered there was some early version of the tree without lanterns, I wonder if that also looks like a deciduous tree with those colors.
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lipk
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by lipk »

Ugghhh... so many problems with such a tiny codepack!
Unfortunately, the map editor (source-compiled, Linux dephell...) is practically broken for me, and I couldn't figure out the sources of all the problems.
I think I'm getting rid of my current (useless) installation tomorrow and set up a (hopefully) better functioning environment with Ubuntu. So expect a fixed version soon.

EDIT: in terrain.cfg, I wrote Gll^Zwh instead of Gll^Zwha in Autumn Willow House's terrain_type. Fixing that should make the standard willow appear, but I have no idea for the others...
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

Fixed it
Tested with 1.9.9 and 1.9.6.
I don't know how you interpreted it in such complicated way, I intended it much more simple.

To be extracted to add-ons folder.
A word of warning, though: filling the screen with tree houses in map editor is not for the faint of heart and can cause some permanent brain damage.

Still bit worried about the 4-lantern house, should the greens be more yellow, or have brighter highlights, or less saturation, etc, or if it would need some seasonal versions.
Right now the willow is the only one that has those.
Also, as I understood what I was doing, I made it into forest terrain, I wonder if giving some elves 70% defense in village would be unbalancing.

When the uncertainties get resolved I think it would be polite of me to remove the extra downloads and keep the latest one.
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lipk
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by lipk »

I don't know how you interpreted it in such complicated way, I intended it much more simple.
Sry. I remove my buggy, bad version right now.

It would be great if you could add a kind of soft pulse animation to the lanterns. I know that lanterns aren't blinking in reality, but I'm afraid there's no other way to give back the feeling that there's actually a light source not just some colorful paper machés hanging on the tree. The one faint halo isn't sufficient, I think.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

lipk wrote:It would be great if you could add a kind of soft pulse animation to the lanterns. I know that lanterns aren't blinking in reality, but I'm afraid there's no other way to give back the feeling that there's actually a light source not just some colorful paper machés hanging on the tree. The one faint halo isn't sufficient, I think.
As I thought, the glowing effect would come from the shadows being bright.
Blinking would indeed improve some things, like make it more clear where the greenish highlight on the green leaves is from sunlight or from a greenish lantern.
And, as I have the lights in a separate layer, it would be really easy to do by just changing transparency of the layer.
Or the lanterns could even change their color a bit.
As things are right now, with not much animated terrain in the game, I think it might be bit overdone, maybe.

And there are some other things I am being doubtful about as written in previous post.
Maybe trying to do that tree as generic, and trying to make it blend with the forest was a bad idea.
Maybe it should look more like lebanon cedar or something, or have some large maple like leaves and be clearly deciduous.
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lipk
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by lipk »

As things are right now, with not much animated terrain in the game, I think it might be bit overdone, maybe.
I don't think it's a that big problem, since this isn't going to be a mass-terrain. And villages usually have a bit of animation anyway, due to the flag.
Maybe trying to do that tree as generic, and trying to make it blend with the forest was a bad idea.
Maybe it should look more like lebanon cedar or something, or have some large maple like leaves and be clearly deciduous.
I'm afraid it's impossible to make it nicely blend into the forest simply because the mainline trees are much smaller. So I doubt that it worths putting much effort on that. And I think nor the current one will look too out-of-context for me once my eyes got used to it.
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dirtywhitellama
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by dirtywhitellama »

The version you posted yesterday fixed the problems I saw from the 4-house tree that you posted on the 11th. Was going to post about it, but you already fixed it :)

I'm not sure how necessary seasonal variations are?
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

lipk wrote:I'm afraid it's impossible to make it nicely blend into the forest simply because the mainline trees are much smaller. So I doubt that it worths putting much effort on that. And I think nor the current one will look too out-of-context for me once my eyes got used to it.
Assuming I got similar color scheme then if it didn't blend into the forest that simply means I didn't completely fail with shading, I guess?
dirtywhitellama wrote:The version you posted yesterday fixed the problems I saw from the 4-house tree that you posted on the 11th. Was going to post about it, but you already fixed it :)
I can imagine you pulling hairs for five days and thinking: Should I post my opinion or should I not?
dirtywhitellama wrote:I'm not sure how necessary seasonal variations are?
As far as I understand C&C psychology, the same might apply here.
Any crits about a seasonal version?
You might not know, but I am not extremely consistent about my Wesnoth activity, so by the time you decide to post your C&C I might have already forgotten Wesnoth for half a year again.

Here are some versions of the 4-lantern tree, it should now be more like a large-leafed deciduous tree.
The leaning cedar is probably the most similar one it should not be in conflict with.
And if people are wondering why I am showing the great tree, it is because the tree houses must be different enough not to compete in scale.

Edit: some even larger leaves version included:
shot.png
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I am thinking of going for the less large version, the one in the north-east should be closest.
I am not looking at it on LCD monitor, though, I am wondering if there could be some disturbing bright pixels there that would need to be smoothed a bit.
Last edited by homunculus on October 22nd, 2011, 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by dirtywhitellama »

homunculus wrote:I can imagine you pulling hairs for five days and thinking: Should I post my opinion or should I not?
Nah, I just had finished reading the thread start to finish is all.

of the last picture you posted, out of the 4-house trees, I cant really figure what the difference between the middle and the righthand one is, but I like the middle one most for some reason. Sorry I can't be more specific :)
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

This is how the greens ended up (and the recolored pisa, so that I wouldn't need to go salad green on the leaves), and the autumn version:
shot.png
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Edit: Googled for some tree blossoms, and got used to the extremes.
spring.png
spring.png (139.49 KiB) Viewed 4707 times
I wonder if the images are reasonably "friends" with each other now, or shall I perhaps need yo make the willow blossoms smaller.
The willow blossoms seem to look cool enough on their own, though.
Maybe I have developed an allergy and I am splitting hairs too much, and I am wondering if other people also see inconsistency there.

Or maybe it is that the willow perspective seems more like a side view.
In that case, I did attempt to make the lower willow trunk to go under the tree house, but I couldn't figure out how to draw it more clearly.
I guess the problem is with shading it right, maybe someone else knows how to do it.
some personal thoughts about the species:
Last edited by homunculus on October 22nd, 2011, 11:21 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by dirtywhitellama »

Not sure I get what you are saying about the tobato ;) but I like the flowery ones. The piza looks a little off though, the green looks like light green circles with dark dots, it sort of works if you are going for a conifer look but not quite. my two theories are either it is not "fuzzy" enough, or possibly the problem is the lack of overall shape of the foliage clumps (ie more distant / away from the sun parts of the foliage are still the same color as the near/sun side parts)

I dont have a problem with the other houses in those last two pictures though. they look nice!
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

dirtywhitellama wrote:Not sure I get what you are saying about the tobato ;)
I'll edit the spoiler in the previous post. Not that the interpretation is very important. I am somewhat intrigued about which part might have been unclear, though.
dirtywhitellama wrote:but I like the flowery ones.
Myself I have grown to dislike them a bit because of the white fog that seems to appear on top of it. Did some more versions but they all look not like I intended for one reason or another.
shot.png
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dirtywhitellama wrote:The piza looks a little off though, the green looks like light green circles with dark dots, it sort of works if you are going for a conifer look but not quite. my two theories are either it is not "fuzzy" enough, or possibly the problem is the lack of overall shape of the foliage clumps (ie more distant / away from the sun parts of the foliage are still the same color as the near/sun side parts)
Thanks, it has been puzzling me for a while if those greens look too much like the same brush.
In the meantime I have also noticed that greens of the individual branches should not form an arch (although most of the greens are usually on the surface of the cone), but a triangle.
And the individual branch tips might have bit different shape, more elongated maybe, and bit different colors and shading (no good idea how to do it efficiently, at the moment).
Meaning that I might need to redraw the Pisa greens.
I guess I should be aiming for something like this, although that's bit young tree.
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