My Terrain (Mine!)

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doofus-01
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by doofus-01 »

Thanks. The columns need more attention, I agree. More references never hurts.

Focusing on the "camp" for now, I've attached the images in the TGZ and my (not-optimized) working WML. I tried to use a non-fading tower base for land borders, but then I'd end up with solid towers where I didn't want them, so I gave up on that. Whether it's because there's a real problem, or because I'm just being a bonehead, I don't know, but I think the castle-to-ground transition images can obfuscate the fading tower bases, so it doesn't look bad, and the fading images can just be used everywhere.

I half-assed the steam at the lava transition, because I'm not sure how much value that particular case has. The waterfalls would probably look better animated, so maybe later, once the base is final.
screenshot:
WML:
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zookeeper
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by zookeeper »

doofus-01 wrote:I tried to use a non-fading tower base for land borders, but then I'd end up with solid towers where I didn't want them, so I gave up on that.
You mean solid towers on the inside of the camp (north-facing walls) too, where the castle-to-ground transitions won't cover up the hard-cut base? If so, then I think the most straightforward way to solve that is to just cover them up by integrating either parts of the castle-to-ground transitions or just some other kinds of rocks into the problematic tower tiles. Unless I'm missing something, that shouldn't cause a problem anywhere else.
doofus-01 wrote:Whether it's because there's a real problem, or because I'm just being a bonehead, I don't know, but I think the castle-to-ground transition images can obfuscate the fading tower bases, so it doesn't look bad, and the fading images can just be used everywhere.
If it works, then sure. Although it looks maybe a bit odd how the towers fade into nothing even inside the castle's shallow water, where the bottom is clearly visible (same for towers surrounded by actual shallow water on the outside, I suppose). I'd be inclined to suggest a more hard-edged cut in transparency to indicate the point at which the tower goes underwater and letting the underwater portion remain at a constant transparent level, instead of gradually fading. Then again, the bottom of the tower should fade away in deep water...
doofus-01 wrote:I half-assed the steam at the lava transition, because I'm not sure how much value that particular case has. The waterfalls would probably look better animated, so maybe later, once the base is final.
The steam is a neat idea, although it might not be very clear what it is when it's not animated. I'd suggest that if we want steam where water meets lava, we should do it as an entirely separate overlay animation, not baked into any specific transition images. Having a merfolk castle adjacent to lava of any kind seems like an incredibly rare occurrence, so making special tiles just for that seems rather unnecessary, especially when the camp-land walls might just as well simply be considered watertight.

The waterfalls look nice (maybe too saturated and bright?), but if you want to make animations, then it might make more sense to instead animate the regular chasm-water transition (and/or make it a bit more waterfall'y, if you want), and then just frankenstein this one from that. The former would be more common and higher priority anyway, and creating a castle-fitting version from that ought to be much easier than the other way around.
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by beetlenaut »

zookeeper wrote:the regular chasm-water transition (and/or make it a bit more waterfall'y, if you want)
Alarantalara did a nice set of waterfalls for cave transitions years ago. It looks like it was supposed to be committed, but there was a problem with the macros that was never solved. Alarantalara also animated one of the waterfalls, but didn't finish that part of the project. Some of the images are posted here, and there is a finalized gzip of all the transitions on the next page of that thread. I think it's better than what we currently have.
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zookeeper
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by zookeeper »

beetlenaut wrote:Alarantalara did a nice set of waterfalls for cave transitions years ago. It looks like it was supposed to be committed, but there was a problem with the macros that was never solved. Alarantalara also animated one of the waterfalls, but didn't finish that part of the project. Some of the images are posted here, and there is a finalized gzip of all the transitions on the next page of that thread. I think it's better than what we currently have.
:hmm: I don't know, I think the current ones are really good-looking, and only lack animation. I do think that it'd be nice if there was a bit more water gushing over the edge instead of the small trickles, but overall I don't think they necessarily need to be full-on waterfalls like Alarantalara's. On the other hand, neither do I see any reason why they shouldn't.

Anyway, what I probably mean to say is that if one wants to animate water-chasm, then the current ones might make for an equally good starting point for that.
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doofus-01
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by doofus-01 »

Sounds like water-chasm will be its own project then. Maybe later.
zookeeper wrote:If it works, then sure. Although it looks maybe a bit odd how the towers fade into nothing even inside the castle's shallow water, where the bottom is clearly visible (same for towers surrounded by actual shallow water on the outside, I suppose).
Yeah, now that you mention it... For the surrounding water, the bottom is not visible, so fade seems appropriate to me, but not when there are visible stones inside the camp. Same for the "thrones". How is this?
screen-shot:
I think the exposed fading towers look good next to lava, because of the red glow; it was a happy accident. The castle-chasm transition images were done quickly, should probably be touched up a bit later.
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Eagle_11
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by Eagle_11 »

Current complaint: Bush like plant thingy behind throne looks plastical, other than that good job.
The waterfall and steam when water touches lava did look neat, if you can work on it sometime later it would be awesome to be used on an global scale, not only for this castle tiles.
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by johndh »

Most of the throne variations look very dark compared to the rest of the castle, and the shading look much harsher. They also don't really merge with the tile they're sitting on, so overall they don't look like they're a part of the same image. They rather look like they were pasted in.

I think the straight-on variation is affected by these issues the least.
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by LordBob »

Hey people. It had been a while since I last checked that thread, so I just wanted to chime in and say I see a lot of awesomeness around here 8)
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doofus-01
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by doofus-01 »

LordBob wrote:Hey people. It had been a while since I last checked that thread, so I just wanted to chime in and say I see a lot of awesomeness around here 8)
Hi LordBob. There would be even more awesomeness if that guy who did all those portraits came back...
Eagle_11 wrote:Current complaint: Bush like plant thingy behind throne looks plastical, other than that good job.
johndh wrote:Most of the throne variations look very dark compared to the rest of the castle, and the shading look much harsher. They also don't really merge with the tile they're sitting on, so overall they don't look like they're a part of the same image. They rather look like they were pasted in.
I've adjusted them some. I've also added some reeds images that may or may not be a good idea. The rest of the images are same as posted above. My working WML is pasted below.
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doofus-01
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by doofus-01 »

This started as something like a roman aqueduct, but maybe it would be better as an alternate underground castle, if it were darker.
It's clearly not finished, but it's enough to get an idea of where it is going. I'm attaching the images, such as they are.
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by DeCoolest_Cat »

Looking good. Definitely looks like a sewer system, or the roman aqueduct you were going for. Now is it just me, or do the concave walls not have grates? Also, if its underground, it may be a bit torn down, but that could be an alt version.
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by zookeeper »

It's getting too hard to keep locally in sync with these various snippets. Could we just use the codes Cm,Km (for castle) and Cme,Kme (for camp) since these are going to core anyway, and could you then post the complete set of images+WML (that I can just paste into one spot)?
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

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doofus-01 wrote:There would be even more awesomeness if that guy who did all those portraits came back...
Well, I am coming back - one small step at a time. :) Working on some icons for Vultraz at the moment, and earlier today I've picked up the desert elves where fatherhood froze them :doh:

On the sewer/aqueduct, I like the white stone walls. They could be nice to have as a surface scenery regardless of what you end up doing with the underground idea. Or to use as a complementary decoration/alternate wall with the merfolk castles, since they're a good match for the white towers.
Also, as Coolest_Cat said, the lack of a grates (or at least a shadow) on the concave walls is disturbing and so are ground transitions, but since you mentioned they're not finished yet I'm guessing you have plans for that.

On the merfolk castles, it didn't come to my mind earlier but are those corals on the walls ? If so it might be a nice opportunity to throw in some lively colors. Not everywhere of course, but maybe here and there parts of the reef coral are still alive and colorful, or a rarer type of colored coral was used?
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by Eagle_11 »

Not exactly an aqueduct, looks more like an water reservoir, where aqueducts carry water to and from.
But go for the underground sewer version idea, it could look neat and would finally have some underground castle other than dwarven.
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doofus-01
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Re: My Terrain (Mine!)

Post by doofus-01 »

zookeeper wrote:It's getting too hard to keep locally in sync with these various snippets. Could we just use the codes Cm,Km (for castle) and Cme,Kme (for camp) since these are going to core anyway, and could you then post the complete set of images+WML (that I can just paste into one spot)?
I think these should work, as drop in. The castles are missing quite a few things, but I believe the camps are complete.
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LordBob wrote:Also, as Coolest_Cat said, the lack of a grates (or at least a shadow) on the concave walls is disturbing and so are ground transitions, but since you mentioned they're not finished yet I'm guessing you have plans for that.
I'd bollixed up the cropping & alignment of the walls, so I was having trouble getting transitions and details to work. The images attached are still missing things, but the walls themselves should fit better now, so it should be easier to fit better transitions.
LordBob wrote:On the merfolk castles, it didn't come to my mind earlier but are those corals on the walls ? If so it might be a nice opportunity to throw in some lively colors. Not everywhere of course, but maybe here and there parts of the reef coral are still alive and colorful, or a rarer type of colored coral was used?
My attempt at variations didn't go over so well earlier, but if the variation is limited to the coral walls and not the towers, maybe that is the way to go. :hmm:
Eagle_11 wrote:Not exactly an aqueduct, looks more like an water reservoir, where aqueducts carry water to and from.
I was going to try to put water in the channel on top of the wall, but decided against it.
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