My Terrain (Mine!)

[Simons Mith]

They're very clean monoliths, I notice. The brownness does helps, but nettles and/or moss, or even plants growing out of them would be something else to consider. I don't necessarily mean for these particualar specimens, but I do feel it's getting to be time we had at least one rock with a bit of green on it.

[Eleazar]

They're very clean monoliths, I notice. The brownness does helps, but nettles and/or moss, or even plants growing out of them would be something else to consider. I don't necessarily mean for these particualar specimens, but I do feel it's getting to be time we had at least one rock with a bit of green on it.

If somebody does such rocks well enough, i'll commit them.

[doofus-01]

I didn't have the brown monoliths, so these are not brown enough, but I think I've addressed the other concerns.

[kitty]

New monoliths would be really great!


The new set you show here has a pretty broad range of styles/techniques - is that on purpose?

From top to bottom and from left to right (plus note that I have nothing to say concerning terrain, just spontaneous impressions):
1. feels really plastic-y to me, uniform colour, smooth transitions, light lights. 2. is rather blurry and due to that soft 3. is the most stone-like but perhaps too sharp for wesnoth terrain 4. looks pretty good to me, especially the smaller pebbles make it blend in nicely 5. stylistically close to no three 6. also a sharper variant and the angle feels steeper than on the others.

[doofus-01]

Some of the stylistic difference may be because not all of those are mine. Numbers 3 and 5 are monolith1 and rock-cairn by Bluarrymanunm (I think, not sure). I'm trying to replace the rock1 through rock4, which right now are just grey blobs. I thought the rocks would be better weathered, so I didn't follow the sharpness of the monolith. But blurry plastic wasn't the goal.

Well, I don't know what the release schedule is, maybe there is no rush if it is just png swapping. But if it matters, here are browner versions.

[Eleazar]

I committed them because they are infinitely better than the old ones. I think we'll have another release as soon as a couple bugs get resolved. Committing loose scenery images is a lot simpler than a new terrain, so i don't care if i have to do it again.

I think i generally agree with kitty. Just two of them are different enough to concern me. Going by file names, "rock1" does seem a little too soft, as if the chunks melted together a little. And "rock2" still seem too high in contrast, and still has some pixel art feel to it.

[doofus-01]

OK, I'll revisit rock1 & 2.

Here is the snow cone city.
EDIT: and rocks again.

[doofus-01]

This is a stone encampment for when a human crafted castle-type thing doesn't look appropriate, like for trolls. I don't plan on making a second level, it is just like the tent & wooden fence encampment. I fiddled with the levels at the last minute and now it is too sprite-like, but other than that I think it is OK. I think the "keep" will just be one big slab.

Not sure about the colours though. I sort of want to make them more grey to match the mountains, but recent advice on rocks was to go brown, which would match the chasms and banks better.

[Reepurr]

It looks good to me. This would be really perfect for lots of things, I bet. However, the spiky monoliths look strange to me somehow.

Non-your-terrain question (well, sort of): Would you like me to alter your orcish castles to have this palette, while I'm fiddling with them?

[doofus-01]

Non-your-terrain question (well, sort of): Would you like me to alter your orcish castles to have this palette, while I'm fiddling with them?

I'd hold off on that, to see where this is going first.

[Eleazar]

This is a stone encampment for when a human crafted castle-type thing doesn't look appropriate, like for trolls. I don't plan on making a second level, it is just like the tent & wooden fence encampment. I fiddled with the levels at the last minute and now it is too sprite-like, but other than that I think it is OK. I think the "keep" will just be one big slab.

Not sure about the colours though. I sort of want to make them more grey to match the mountains, but recent advice on rocks was to go brown, which would match the chasms and banks better.

Then brown bank between the "castle" and water is supposed to be dirt -- that's my average dirt color. However for castles it would generally make more sense to make it look like stone -- though not for encampments. There's no reason we can't have a few different colors of that transition -- as long as they are the same shape at the bottom for water animations.
A rocky castle-to-water could be the same color as non-brown chasm or the basic cobbled road.

What you've got here is pretty close to that, though your shadows are notably browner than the highlights. If you want these to match the mountains better i'd use some brighter, whiter highlights.
Though my guess is that this castle would see the most use underground.

Also i think the spikiness of all these rocks seems unnatural. I'd replace the small spiky stones with a wall-like pile of assorted rough rocks.

New info for making castles
* Also be aware of multi-castle tiling. Unless there's a reason to do something else (which i would like to hear about), new castles should more or less mesh with regular human castle and especially the encampment.
Keeps don't have to mesh.

* Castle shadows: castle shadows tend to cause problems. I'd like to see them more in the 20-30% opacity range (like your desert castle) rather than 45% (like the human castle). Softer edges like the Elvish castle are preferred, and try to avoid cutting off shadows sharply at the chop points, since this causes glitches in mutli-part castles.

[doofus-01]

Though my guess is that this castle would see the most use underground.

Good point. Never mind what I said about mountains, I'll try to make these match the underground. To my eyes, this matches (though I am colour-blind). The slab is more or less what I had in mind for the "keep", sort of a podium. I'm attaching the pngs in case anyone wants to shift the colours.

troll-shot2.png (416.8 KiB) Viewed 3162 times

troll.tgz

(27.19 KiB) Downloaded 221 times

* Also be aware of multi-castle tiling. Unless there's a reason to do something else (which i would like to hear about), new castles should more or less mesh with regular human castle and especially the encampment.
Keeps don't have to mesh.

Do you mean I should avoid sharp cuts, for example on the right side of the -bl images, so that the -bl and -br images of two different castle types can join without an abrupt glitchy junction? Or that there need to be mixed images, for example a -r piece of an orcish castle with a horizontal elf wall attached on the right, sort of like is done with the keep-castle-ccw stuff. I really don't like the sound of the latter, that's a lot of (dull) work and images for something that I can't see as being really very important.

* Castle shadows: castle shadows tend to cause problems. I'd like to see them more in the 20-30% opacity range (like your desert castle) rather than 45% (like the human castle). Softer edges like the Elvish castle are preferred, and try to avoid cutting off shadows sharply at the chop points, since this causes glitches in mutli-part castles.

One problem I see with not using hard-edged cuts is that the shadows add when they overlap. At least one of the older castles has this problem (elf maybe?). What are the chances the shadows could be in a separate layer and image. Then there could just be one generic shadow for everything. Or maybe two - one with "tower" shadows, one without.

[Reepurr]

I'm guessing you didn't intend the walls of the castle to be green. But then, you're colourblind.

Also, the recruiting slab is really, really bright red...

[zookeeper]

The slab is more or less what I had in mind for the "keep", sort of a podium.

If you're taking suggestions, then a Stonehenge-styled circle of slabs might be a good idea.

[thespaceinvader]

Mm, a ring of dolmens would be fun. This would make a good default Troll castle, actually.