Castle Tutorial? | Water-Chasm Transitions

[Blueblaze]

In light of mesilliac's new work, bumped for importance.

[Blarumyrran]

(this being a thread of terrain graphics and water...)

the current ford looks too pixellated. so tried something on that.

as of transitions for ford, i honestly dont think theyre necessary - reason being that the only terrain that ford transitions are used upon would be Deep Water, which makes ford look wider on deep water than shallow water, which just doesnt make sense! ford would be imo better off using shallow water transitions, since then there would be the average of shallow water between the deep water and the extremely shallow ford.

[Kestenvarn]

I've actually been thinking of this thread the past few days - I'd like to change cave water to black (blue is fairly dumb when underground) but still not very familiar with terrain editing. I also don't like the current water transitions:

Transitions to cave would be similar to chasm except filled with water a bit below the surface, with shallows and deeps differing by having one with the bottom showing slightly and the other much more opaque. Ripples and foam near the sides would set it apart from chasm, bit reflective. Waterfalls would need editing obviously, with shallow still trickling over the sides into the chasm and deeps pretty much a torrent.

One of the problems is since I didn't know how to piece the actual sliced image files back together, I was taking screenshots in the map editor which might have had distorted colors from my gamma settings.

[mog]

That's a great improvement, but I noticed that the new tiles are a bit difficult to notice (mainly single ford tiles on a single-hex wide river).

You might try to add a few more rocks to make it stand out better (though I'd commit it as is).

[Jetrel]

I've actually been thinking of this thread the past few days - I'd like to change cave water to black (blue is fairly dumb when underground) but still not very familiar with terrain editing. I also don't like the current water transitions:

Had you been intending to upload an image?

[Blarumyrran]

That's a great improvement, but I noticed that the new tiles are a bit difficult to notice (mainly single ford tiles on a single-hex wide river).

You might try to add a few more rocks to make it stand out better (though I'd commit it as is).

more rocks it is.

[mog]

Great. Committed.

[Kestenvarn]

Had you been intending to upload an image?

Here's a quick example. Would a terrain like this be a good addition?

[AI]

I like it!

[irrevenant]

It looks good, but is there a risk of people confusing it with chasm/void?

[Kestenvarn]

It looks good, but is there a risk of people confusing it with chasm/void?

There is some. I think this is lessened by the bottom showing through shallow water, the ripples where the water laps against the shore, and the character being submerged once they enter.

Didn't add many ripples to the rest of the water's surface; unlike the outdoors variety, I don't imagine there is enough wind underground to form them.

[mesilliac]

Some dim / wavy reflections of the cave roof might look okay in place of ripples. But then I think it looks pretty cool anyway .

Here's a template sort of thing for the corners, showing how the cut-up images interact.

The layer sizes are the sizes of the appropriate images. So to save a single image, save a copy of the layer (in GIMP, dragging a layer to the toolbox opens it as a separate image).

[Sangel]

It looks good, but is there a risk of people confusing it with chasm/void?

There is some. I think this is lessened by the bottom showing through shallow water, the ripples where the water laps against the shore, and the character being submerged once they enter.

I wouldn't be concerned about people confusing shallow (cave) water with the chasm; as you note, the visible bottom and ripples give a clear visual distinction. I'm a bit more worried about deep (cave) water, particularly deep cave water that doesn't border on anything else. Without some kind of "surface" variations, it would look essentially identical to chasm.

That said, both look very good. They definitely have the feeling of the dark, still pools of water that I've encountered when visiting caves in New Zealand.

[Blarumyrran]

while i have no idea about what cave lakes really look like (but water is not blue only due to reflecting the sky, its also slightly blue itself), imo it would be just nicer if they were a _bit_ blue:

[Kestenvarn]

Not very concerned with deeps/chasm, you could tell them apart easily enough with the transitions. If a chasm pops up in the middle of any water there would be a waterfall.

imo it would be just nicer if they were a _bit_ blue:

I disagree - more partial to dark brown or grey, maybe grey-green - but also lack a solution for the deeps->void and shallow->voidthatlookslikedeeps problem. Debris maybe? The reflections? Stalactites dripping water animation? Just don't do that when making a map? (Is water/void really necessary?)

Suppose I'll figure it out as I go.