My Terrain (Mine!)

[Eagle_11]

Zookeeper's pool and columns would work fine as a keep for a castle.

Yes, go for it.

[doofus-01]

In any case, I think the coral castle is perfectly fine (or do some of the convex towers still need rotating?) and should become the main merfolk castle, it only needs a keep. The arch castle might work as a keep, but it's very basic so far so it's hard to say how its final form would fit. The style is very different than the castle's, and the castle-keep connections might be tricky to do. If you're looking for alternative ideas, then I think these arches-on-top-of-towers you had earlier look wonderful:

OK, that is the direction we'll go with merfolk castle. The deeper pool-keep might even be incorporable, I'll have to try. But taller towers, hopefully with arches, and more colourful corals...

In the meantime, I'm still stuck in the sewers. I think I have a solution to avoiding the image explosion required if we simply take the transitions of regular castle (with castle-keep) and multiply them with dwarf castle (which has no "keep" complication, but has all the underground transitions). The goal is to have a keep without requiring special NEW:WALL2 transitions.

Maybe some day, if the images are set in stone, and optimization is required, this can be changed. But for now, think of it this way: What if sprite animations could not be separated from missile or halo animations, and it was all just a single string of frames? It could be done, but the initial implementation would be painful and improvements equally painful, so there would likely be no improvements. I'm just trying to keep the "keep" transitions from polluting the castle-chasm and castle-cave stuff.

I don't fully understand the "base" and "rotation" interactions. If anyone does, help would be appreciated. In the screen-shot, the corners of the "keep rim" graphics are kind of screwed up. but that can be fixed easily, once I understand the WML rules.

[doofus-01]

There has been some progress on the underground castle (no work on merfolk, I'll get to that later). You can check it out on the BfW 1.13 server with the add-on Archaic Resources.

[doofus-01]

I got some merfolk keeps started. They are tall, but I hope the coarse mesh gate allows enough view so that even if a sprite is obscured, there is still enough indication that it is there.
I'm trying to figure out what to do with the top waterway. Fountains at the -tr/-tl sections, and waterfalls at the others seems like the best plan (we don't want to have Penrose/Escher loops), though I did try a couple other things (like the plants in convex-br).

A lot of the details are currently missing, I just wanted to see if the basic idea is OK before I work the details.

screen shot:

[beetlenaut]

Those are really cool looking. I'm not sure how the merfolk climb the stairs in those towers, but maybe we can ignore that.

[Eagle_11]

I like what you have done with the keep aqueduct's water flow, you have played on human's natural perception of water would be flowing top to down and used in a way that doesnt stick out.
The outer castle walls dont look that bad either at the moment, i would say go with the ideas you are showing.

[zookeeper]

Looks pretty great!

I got some merfolk keeps started. They are tall, but I hope the coarse mesh gate allows enough view so that even if a sprite is obscured, there is still enough indication that it is there.

I think it's okay, there's still about half of even a Goblin Spearman visible. And we can add a subtle amount of keep_height_adjust if necessary even if the floor isn't actually elevated.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with the top waterway. Fountains at the -tr/-tl sections, and waterfalls at the others seems like the best plan (we don't want to have Penrose/Escher loops), though I did try a couple other things (like the plants in convex-br).

I don't think a Penrose effect is necessarily a problem as long as it doesn't really jump out at you; it could even be seen as a subtle but intentional visual gag. But I suppose it could be a bit risky, so maybe better to avoid it if possible.

If you think that it really needs a plausible flow so that there's always both fountains and waterfalls, then yeah, putting the fountains at -tr/-tl sections would ensure that. Another possibility might be fountains at concave -l/-r and convex -tl/-tr/-bl/-br corners, with waterfalls (or those little basins, which I think look nicer than the hollow towers) everywhere else. I think in that case each fountain always has at least one adjacent waterfall, and vice versa.

Although, I'm not sure if that sort of "realism" is really necessary. Maybe the water mainly circulates in channels inside the towers/walls, so at the top there could only be fountains and open channels even if we don't see where all the water goes. If if you want to do it that way then great, but I don't think it's exactly critical for anyone's immersion.

[Wussel]

I would consider it to be interesting if the inner part of the keep would be filled up to the rim with water. Basically a magically enhanced water level.

[ForestDragon]

i am not sure about the water castle going this way, i kinda liked the spike-column with netting castles a lot more, to be entirely honest with you.they fit waaay better, but that's just my point of view

[Aldarisvet]

I like aqueduct castle, published picture with it on facebook, as other things from this thread before.

However, I agree with ForestDragon, that spike-column with netting castles were best.

[zookeeper]

This is another castle. We're going to have both this and the spiked-columns-and-netting one.

[doofus-01]

This is another castle. We're going to have both this and the spiked-columns-and-netting one.

Yeah. But I'm still not completely convinced that the merfolk are so deserving of so much terrain of their own, so I try to come up with camp-keep images that are more general purpose. A ship-wreck might fit the bill, just change the flag according to the nature of the side using it. A quick example of the undead and merfolk versions.

camp-keeps:

I made some progress on the merfolk keeps:

castle-keeps:

There are some muddy parts that need touch-up (like the balcony/basin on the -br image), but I'd rather get everything more-or-less done, then fix details. That includes the animations of the water-ways and fountains; I think 3-frame animation would be enough.

[zookeeper]

But I'm still not completely convinced that the merfolk are so deserving of so much terrain of their own, so I try to come up with camp-keep images that are more general purpose.

Well there's nothing in it that makes the camp specific to merfolk, looks to me like it'll fit any sentient aquatic race just fine.

Anyway, the pools have taken a long time because the wall tiles are so far down. I've shifted them up 10px to fix that, but that of course makes the fades and ground transitions require fixing too. I can't communicate details in writing, so I'll just list the high-level changes I believe the camp really needs (aside from the ~10px shift):

1. The castle-inner transitions baked into all tiles. On the inside only, of course.
2. Separate tiles against adjacent water and land. Former with a fade (or whatever kind of underwater part you want), latter with the castle-to-ground transitions baked into them, both of course only affecting the outside part.

Attached are the WIP hack tiles I've made. They only have the shift and the castle-inner transitions baked into them, nothing more.

There are some muddy parts that need touch-up (like the balcony/basin on the -br image), but I'd rather get everything more-or-less done, then fix details. That includes the animations of the water-ways and fountains; I think 3-frame animation would be enough.

Looks pretty nice. Even 3-frame animations can probably work well enough if the motion is small and smooth.

[doofus-01]

Anyway, the pools have taken a long time because the wall tiles are so far down. I've shifted them up 10px to fix that, but that of course makes the fades and ground transitions require fixing too. I can't communicate details in writing, so I'll just list the high-level changes I believe the camp really needs (aside from the ~10px shift):

I must have lost track of what the plan is. What's going on with the pools?

[zookeeper]

I must have lost track of what the plan is. What's going on with the pools?

I've just tried to continue my effort from the last page and produce a pool-based keep. It's not going that great though. My current plan was to do the pools, and then instead of the columns I had in the screenshot in that post, surround them with plain spires without any netting. I was also trying to have some reeds growing at the edges of the pools, but I couldn't make that look good.

But I think that ideally, unless there's something preventing it, all the alterations (the ~10px shift and baking the transitions into the walls) I mentioned in the previous post should happen regardless of which style of keep gets used, not merely to facilitate the pools idea (which I probably made it sound like). Unless I'm mistaken, the walls are currently unusually low in the hex compared to other castles. Also, having two versions of a wall (one against ground, one against water) is far simpler and more straightforward than combining one generic wall with two different sets of transitions, and doesn't require any compromise in how it actually looks.