My Terrain (Mine!)

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Eleazar
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Re: Terrain

Post by Eleazar »

My intention with the stone wall/cave walls is to redo them so both fit together seamlessly.

I think i demonstrated in photoshop that it can work, but i haven't yet alerted the cut shapes to my satisfaction. This would use the normal corner transitions. Of course at this point i'm not certain that it would work, and i may not get back to it for a while.

doofus-01 wrote:The problem here is that this ends up looking like there is a higher snow plane that someone should be able to walk on. But leaving it black didn't seem right.
Leaving it black is right.

EDIT: Split out general discussion about what the inside of walls should look like to here.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

It sounds like I should stay away from caves and walls then. But I'll see if I can salvage something from the wall I started, maybe a wood wall or something.
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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

I've started some bricks. I'd picture this being an interior terrain, more like the wood floor than the dirty cobbles. I will clean up the brick/flat transitions, but they a more or less what I have in mind for them. The chasm and water transtions are non-existent right now, but I hope to have a straight-edged (if possible) overhang with a shadow, so that the banks are hidden and it will work with regular dirt/water transition.
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brick-shot.png
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Eleazar
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Re: Terrain

Post by Eleazar »

doofus-01 wrote:I've started some bricks. I'd picture this being an interior terrain, more like the wood floor.
More interior floors would be welcome.

Currently these are too big for bricks. Interior scale should match regular unit scale. These bricks would then be ~4 feet long. The size is fine if these were to be some other kind of stone floor.

It does bug me that 2 rows of bricks per hex are side-by-side, while all the rest are off-set.
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brick.jpg
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Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

Eleazar wrote:It does bug me that 2 rows of bricks per hex are side-by-side, while all the rest are off-set.
Bad arithmetic on my part, I had hoped it wouldn't matter. That is now fixed.
Eleazar wrote:The size is fine if these were to be some other kind of stone floor.
I don't have strong feelings about the name, bricks might not have been the best one to choose.

This is what I want to try to do for the chasm and water overhang transition:

1. Ideally, straight edges like this (the odd plates terrain are just the right size, they are not what I am proposing). The problem is that it does overlap the water a lot, but it can't be much smaller. Same problem as the current stone wall.
brick-shot2.png
brick-shot2.png (204.06 KiB) Viewed 4214 times
2. Or something like this, that follows the hex pattern, so it can be smaller. But it will be jagged.
brick-shot2b.png
brick-shot2b.png (167.73 KiB) Viewed 4214 times
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Reepurr
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Re: Terrain

Post by Reepurr »

Problem is, won't that look sort of naff when the water's animated?* It overlaps the edge of the water in other transitions.

* I don't have a clue when it comes to TerrainWML.
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pauxlo
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Re: Terrain

Post by pauxlo »

@Repurr: As I understand, doofus wants the terrain to be (visually) above the water, so the waves would be below it, like below a bridge.

About the overlapping: I thing jagged overlapping (following the individual stones) would be better, or special stones made for the border, not the thick blue-green line now visible.

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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

pauxlo wrote:@Repurr: As I understand, doofus wants the terrain to be (visually) above the water, so the waves would be below it, like below a bridge.
That is correct.
pauxlo wrote:About the overlapping: I thing jagged overlapping (following the individual stones) would be better, or special stones made for the border, not the thick blue-green line now visible.
The blue-green line is just a place-holder.
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LordBob
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Re: Terrain

Post by LordBob »

Aside from the greenish colour which might not get my vote *, I think your tiles lack in irregualrity : even for indoor pavement, some size variation stains and accidents would be in order
Also, the gap between slabs strikes me as rather wide. Reducing it by a good half would definitely improve the tiling.


* in that respect, I'd suggest picking hues from actual stone slabs, specifically a kind of stone that would be easily available with the tools of wesnothian time)
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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

LordBob wrote:some size variation stains and accidents would be in order
Anything I do will get repeated and form a pattern, like the dwarf flagstones in the attached image, which I think is worse than the very regular thing with the bricks stone blocks. Of course, variant base tiles are possible, like the dwarf flagstones normally have. I didn't do those yet, but I plan to. I just want to get the transitions done first, and I would only use the primary base tile for that.
LordBob wrote:Also, the gap between slabs strikes me as rather wide. Reducing it by a good half would definitely improve the tiling.
If this were pixel art, I'd have no problem doing that, but this is a little fuzzier. Hopefully this is enough of a reduction.

And the color is more red now.
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Eleazar
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Re: Terrain

Post by Eleazar »

doofus-01 wrote:
LordBob wrote:some size variation stains and accidents would be in order
Anything I do will get repeated and form a pattern, like the dwarf flagstones in the attached image, which I think is worse than the very regular thing with the bricks stone blocks. Of course, variant base tiles are possible, like the dwarf flagstones normally have. I didn't do those yet, but I plan to. I just want to get the transitions done first, and I would only use the primary base tile for that.
LordBob is still right.

What a terrain looks like when you take away all the variant images is irrelevant, since it is never seen that way. To look convincing you need to break the mechanical perfection of the pattern on all tiles, not just the additional variant tiles. You might want to use a "pure" image as the basis of all the base tiles, but it should not be used as a final product.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

Eleazar wrote:What a terrain looks like when you take away all the variant images is irrelevant,
I don't see how that is irrelevant. I haven't done the variants, and there is no reason to do them if the base must be redone. I didn't say I wouldn't do them.

And you posted but did not say if the base was OK...

This isn't working. It's probably the jerky and halting nature of web forum communication. No hard feelings. But I must do something else.
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LordBob
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Re: Terrain

Post by LordBob »

The colour is a ton better.

Speaking of the joint alone, the result is better, but not perfect yet.
If you can, find a similar floor that's located next to a stair, climb a few steps and look back : you'll notice that in the distance, the joint is gradually merging with the surrounding tiles. In the case of your texture, the space between stones of the dwarf flagstones is actually a good example. Aim for an even thinner joint (and by this I mean not just changing the overall scale, but actually reducing the thickness of the joint compared to the size of individual tiles).

Now on the matter of irregularities, this is both a matter of realism and taste : to me, even with the pattern problem, the dwarf flagstones look better than your brick thingies . Here goes my two cents of an argument : in our current era of industry, obtaining perfectly identical tiles is no big deal. However, in wesnothian times, there's no such thing as industry. It's craftsmanship all the way, with all the little irregularities it implies. Which is why, even with a pattern, small recurring itrregularities might feel better than smooth perfection.

Now about the "jerky and halting nature of web forums", I cannot speak for Eleazar but if he didn't say something is right and tried to explain why and how it isn't, then you can most likely assume assume that it indeed isn't. :whistle:
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doofus-01
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Re: Terrain

Post by doofus-01 »

LordBob wrote:Now about the "jerky and halting nature of web forums", I cannot speak for Eleazar but if he didn't say something is right and tried to explain why and how it isn't, then you can most likely assume assume that it indeed isn't. :whistle:
Well, that wasn't my take on it. Enough on that though.
LordBob wrote:Speaking of the joint alone, the result is better, but not perfect yet...Aim for an even thinner joint
Joint is the corners? Or make the whole lines smaller/lighter?
This is close to what I was thinking of when I started::
But a lot of images look like this, with little gap::
LordBob wrote:Which is why, even with a pattern, small recurring itrregularities might feel better than smooth perfection
I'm not seeing it, but I accept that better artists than me feel that way. I think the whole issue would go away with variants, but I don't have them.
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Re: Terrain

Post by Sangel »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the current task to get the size, line density, etc correct? Then the tile can be used as a base to generate lots of irregular tiles that will look good without creating patterns. It seems to me that there's no real disagreement here, just people focusing on different phases of the creation process. That may have gotten a little scrambled due to the whole internet communication issue.
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