Revised Cave Walls

[Eleazar]

I prefer the old tiles.

The new ones:
* Look like the cave walls are shorter (I think because the walls and floor are the same colour)
* Look more "hand-drawn" (I think because there's less variation in the cave wall colours)
* Look too straight (I'm a fan of the 'hewn from solid rock' waviness of the old ones)

1) The cave walls ARE shorter. Not because of the color, but because they cover the floor less.
2) The old version was actually purely monochrome, the newer cave walls contains greys and browns. The fact that it reminds some people of the color of graphite is irrelivant to anything.
3) Hewn from rock by drunk dwarves? As was mentioned earlier "greater waviness" could be reintroduced without taking up all the floor using varied transitions.

--irrevenant, you are, of course, entitled to whatever opinion on the merits of the cave walls, but it seems you are inexperienced in understanding visual things. None of the explanations you've developed have anything to do with the faults you see in these walls. If you are going to critique terrain-making in great detail, it would be better if you firest tried your hand at it and had a basic understand of how it works in Wesnoth.

4) I think it would be great to have multiple cave tile sets, a man(or dwarf)-made set (smoother, with torches?) and a natural looking one.
5) I would also be great to have some interior tiles, but as close as this seems, it can't go there. flat walls would require a different style of transitions, and maybe some tweaks to some .cfg files. If somebody can make it work with ugly graphics, i'd be happy to make them "pretty." But i don't currently fully understand how to do it.
6) Irregular torches would either require alternate transitions or else WML magic. It may be worth it, but i'm not prepared to do either at this time.

[freim]

I've just updated all the dwarven-castle-wall tiles to use the new cave wall. Commiting now

[irrevenant]

1) The cave walls ARE shorter. Not because of the color, but because they cover the floor less.
[snip]
--irrevenant, you are, of course, entitled to whatever opinion on the merits of the cave walls, but it seems you are inexperienced in understanding visual things. None of the explanations you've developed have anything to do with the faults you see in these walls. If you are going to critique terrain-making in great detail, it would be better if you firest tried your hand at it and had a basic understand of how it works in Wesnoth.

I've had my say, and clearly noone agrees with me, so I'll let it rest. But I strongly disagree that artistic experience with Wesnoth is required before you can comment on the game's appearance. I may not have artistic training, but I have eyes, and I have many years experience using them. I know when something looks wrong to me - and that's the same basis that most of the people playing Wesnoth will judge the art on.

That said, I appreciate that it takes a lot more skill, time and effort to actually create the art than it does to judge it.

To clarify point 1 above, I realise that the walls cover the floors less in the new version. That makes them thinner, not shorter. Regardless of how thick the walls are, they tower above the units (to reach the ceiling). To me, the old version of the cave wall conveyed that sense of height and the new one doesn't.

[scott]

If somebody can make it work with ugly graphics, i'd be happy to make them "pretty." But i don't currently fully understand how to do it.

Accepted!

I took your transitions, drew a parallelogram outline, filled it with gimp wood texture, then chopped the parallelogram up along the same lines used by your transition graphics. Then I overlaid them on top of the original transition images in the same position.

[Darth Fool]

I've had my say, and clearly noone agrees with me, so I'll let it rest. But I strongly disagree that artistic experience with Wesnoth is required before you can comment on the game's appearance. I may not have artistic training, but I have eyes, and I have many years experience using them. I know when something looks wrong to me - and that's the same basis that most of the people playing Wesnoth will judge the art on.

I suspect that the problem is not in your ability to judge what you think looks better or worse, but in your ability to use language to convey why it looks better or worse. To effectively communicate the artistic elements that need tweaking requires a certain amount of experience.

[Eleazar]

I took your transitions, drew a parallelogram outline, filled it with gimp wood texture, then chopped the parallelogram up along the same lines used by your transition graphics. Then I overlaid them on top of the original transition images in the same position.

But can you have the engine lay them out that way? How to get Wesnoth to know when a corner is to be smoothed out, and when to keep it.

OK, i'm sending my laptop to be repaired, (for real now) No more work from me for about a week.

[scott]

Yes, the screenshot is from in-game. I'm not sure how the corners will work... It may not be able to do complex wall structures, but I think it will be able to do simple walls.

[Jetrel]

Eleazar - thanks for making those new tiles. I think that they already are nicer that the old ones in some ways, but if you combine them with some occasional, variable transitions (which are not so straight), they will be exceptional.


Random Transitions can be used via the WML right here:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 27&start=0


And since we only need a set of transitions from CaveWall -> other, it shouldn't be really difficult to make.

[Eleazar]

Will do.
(once i get my computer back from the shop)

[Jetrel]

Will do.
(once i get my computer back from the shop)

•*yay!*• (Hugs Eleazar.)