Land <-> Water transitions

[Eleazar]

The ripples are nice, and the layering process is, i think, sound.
But the hills going into the water make it darker, while the opposite should be happening. the shallows where the hills are barely under the water would be lighter than the surrounding deeper water where the bottom cannot be seen. Notice how the sand hills fade into the depts very differently than the basic desert sand does.

The very dark cave hills as is, might have the opposite effect. However, it's probably best to ignore that for now.

Yeah, I can see the problem in the submerged parts. I still wanted to try to fit the same submerged layer for every hill variation and therefore it has some compromises. Hmm.. maybe I should make two different submerged versions - lighter and darker one. I'll make some tests.

I just wanted to de the thing with less tiles.

I support doing it with less tiles. But unfortunately you chose a color that only makes sense with the (very dark and relatively soon to change) cave hills.

The desert-to-water and the other flat-land-to-water transitions are the next in my updating list, so it's not very fruitful to compare to those.

I chose the desert for an example because the way the sand fades into the depths looks good. The sand hills should follow it's lead (more or less) because the flat sand looks better.

The ice looks good too, but ice naturally causes a different type of transition that land does. Ice hangs out over the water, thus causing an abrupt shadow— while land grandually slopes away. Perhaps you're trying to apply shading that made sense for the ice, to a different situation with land hills.

[Jetrel]

The desert-to-water and the other flat-land-to-water transitions are the next in my updating list, so it's not very fruitful to compare to those.

I'd interject to say that that, post-1.2, I'd like to work with you gentlemen on a major overhaul of the desert terrains.

The only "heads-up" is that the color of the desert is probably going to heavily desaturate. Other than that, this shouldn't interfere in any way with you doing the desert-to-water transitions. (In a worst-case scenario, we could just do a color shift on the transition tiles after the fact.)

[pekka]

The desert-to-water and the other flat-land-to-water transitions are the next in my updating list, so it's not very fruitful to compare to those.

I chose the desert for an example because the way the sand fades into the depths looks good. The sand hills should follow it's lead (more or less) because the flat sand looks better.

Grr! Desert to water is stylistically different when compared to ice. My big project is to retouch every transition so that they fit to the same style with the ice. Secondly the desert to water sucks. It doesn't even have waterline in it and water should change the tone of the submerged parts.

This conversation seems to lead nowhere..

[Eleazar]

I chose the desert for an example because the way the sand fades into the depths looks good. The sand hills should follow it's lead (more or less) because the flat sand looks better.

Grr! Desert to water is stylistically different when compared to ice. My big project is to retouch every transition so that they fit to the same style with the ice. Secondly the desert to water sucks. It doesn't even have waterline in it and water should change the tone of the submerged parts.

This conversation seems to lead nowhere..

Calm yourself. Not even Dave gets unquestioning acceptance of his ideas. You can't expect me to uncritically embrace your new desert-to-water transitions before any demonstration or explanation of the change.

I think the conversation has been profitable: you've changed the dunes-to-water in your most recent example into something much better than the previous one. Since it resolves my complaints, i can only assume my comments had something to do with it.

Your WIP sand-to-water transition is better, but not a radical improvment. Certainly not the difference between Sucks and Good. Something that should be done, but not all all costs.

I'm not sure exacly how you are achieving the "change of tone" but i rather recommend using the tiles normal color muted only by transparency. The results will work better with varying colors of water. While we only have 2 at the moment i plan on introducing at least one variant.

[pekka]

I'm not sure exacly how you are achieving the "change of tone" but i rather recommend using the tiles normal color muted only by transparency. The results will work better with varying colors of water. While we only have 2 at the moment i plan on introducing at least one variant.

I'll be a good Finn and I'll go hit myself..

[Jetrel]

I'm not sure exacly how you are achieving the "change of tone" but i rather recommend using the tiles normal color muted only by transparency. The results will work better with varying colors of water. While we only have 2 at the moment i plan on introducing at least one variant.

I'll be a good Finn and I'll go hit myself..

C'mon guys. You're both excellent at what you do, and this .. second-guessing(?) is ... unnerving me. Trust each other; the result of you two working together is monstrous. In a good way. The old "greater than the sum of its parts, thing".


• dunes-to-water --- Great.
(We'll need to replace the dunes themselves with something radically different down the road; something that looks like, you know... dunes, rather than color-shifted hills)

• sand-to-water --- unquestionably better, but, IMO, lacking a few key ingredients keeping it from "good enough to be utterly final". I've grabbed some reference pictures, hopefully these should give a bit of inspiration. Some key things I think are the gradient in color that the sand has before it reaches the water.

http://www.dauphinislandtimes.com/sites ... 4-2508.jpg
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dbohus/photos/Be ... 0beach.jpg
http://infotrek.er.usgs.gov/doc/beach/b ... _park2.jpg
http://worldstogethertravel.com/jamaica ... -beach.jpg


Gah, I've _really_ got to get done with this 1.2 stuff so that I can attack this desert tiles project. Our sand needs to get fixed, badly. The discrepancy in color alone, between it and the pictures above, is, well, big. Texture is decent though, although it could use some extrusion.

[Eleazar]

Gah, I've _really_ got to get done with this 1.2 stuff so that I can attack this desert tiles project. Our sand needs to get fixed, badly. The discrepancy in color alone, between it and the pictures above, is, well, big. Texture is decent though, although it could use some extrusion.

I too have a number of things that will be easier to address once 1.2 is done.

Um you've notice that there's a discrepancy in color between your various pictures? Sand comes in a wide variety of colors from white to black. There may be reasons to change it, but "it's not realistic" isn't a valid one.

We already have a less saturated sand option. I don't see the point in making them very similar to each other.

I'd also caution that while a dark strip of wet sand would look good theoretically, we have very few pixels available for that strip. Transitions in many cases are already too wide so that transitions comming from both sides nearly engulf a single hex.

[Jetrel]

Um you've notice that there's a discrepancy in color between your various pictures? Sand comes in a wide variety of colors from white to black. There may be reasons to change it, but "it's not realistic" isn't a valid one.

I disagree, in that - it is very true that sand occupies a wide gamut of colors. However, the bright yellow of our current desert-sand tile is not within that gamut of "real sand colors", as far as my judgement can see.

We already have a less saturated sand option. I don't see the point in making them very similar to each other.

I'm hoping to "merge and then split" those two tiles. To combine the color of the current sand tile with a stronger version of the texture of the desert tile. Then, I would make the distinction between those tiles be that one is barren sand, and the other has some "scrub" on it - some signifcant bits of desert plant material, but nothing that would give cover, or make it easier to walk on.

This would allow both tiles to be used together on the same maps, which currently looks awful.

I'd also caution that while a dark strip of wet sand would look good theoretically, we have very few pixels available for that strip. Transitions in many cases are already too wide so that transitions comming from both sides nearly engulf a single hex.

For wet sand that can still obviously be stood-upon, and be recognized as sand, it shouldn't be a problem if it covers most of the hex. In fact that would probably be a good thing to have the transition quite wide.


Anyways, though - the best way to present such arguments is by a proof-of-concept on my part. I'll get to drawing these after 1.2.

[Noyga]

I disagree, in that - it is very true that sand occupies a wide gamut of colors. However, the bright yellow of our current desert-sand tile is not within that gamut of "real sand colors", as far as my judgement can see.

Well, search for Sahara sand images and compare with our current desert ...

[Eleazar]

I disagree, in that - it is very true that sand occupies a wide gamut of colors. However, the bright yellow of our current desert-sand tile is not within that gamut of "real sand colors", as far as my judgement can see....

We already have a less saturated sand option. I don't see the point in making them very similar to each other.

....This would allow both tiles to be used together on the same maps, which currently looks awful.

Anyways, though - the best way to present such arguments is by a proof-of-concept on my part. I'll get to drawing these after 1.2.

yellow sand.
I'm not necessarily against tweaking the yellow sands color: demonstrate something that looks better.
I believe zookeeper in RotL has already attractively combined both sands in the same map.


Anyway, it looks like various parties have ideas about how to change Wesnoth terrains and transitions. Once 1.2 is out the door rather than everyone running off to do their own thing, and producing lots of incompatable tiles, i believe the interested parties should get together and strategicaly plan out some future moves. It will be significanly harder to keep everything working together once the number of different terrains is doubled. Solutions will need to work with near-future terrains, not just the current ones.

We also need to make sure that we don't clutter things up with junk terrains. In half an hour i could color-shift 7 different versions of grass, but i doubt the advantage of choice is worth the trouble of maintenance.

EDIT: don't forget about the terrain-status page of the wiki. It's been neglected recently.

[SkeletonCrew]

EDIT: don't forget about the terrain-status page of the wiki. It's been neglected recently.

I didn't even know it existed I added some comment to the page.

[pekka]

Anyway, it looks like various parties have ideas about how to change Wesnoth terrains and transitions. Once 1.2 is out the door rather than everyone running off to do their own thing, and producing lots of incompatable tiles, i believe the interested parties should get together and strategicaly plan out some future moves. It will be significanly harder to keep everything working together once the number of different terrains is doubled. Solutions will need to work with near-future terrains, not just the current ones.

Gosh! You probably refer to the WIP water transitions of mine when speaking about incompability? When you compare ice-to-water, snow-to-water and sunken castle/keep to the current desert- and other flat land transitions, honestly, which one doesn't fit to the group?

I've stated (in the IRC, though) many months ago that I'm not very pleased in the current water transitions and the general consensus was like: "yeah, give a try". I'm not very used to use Wiki and I'm afraid that I should have made proper entries to it - sorry for the inconvenience. I just pop in the net every now and then and upload graphics that I see appropriate for the game. I don't have Internet access myself and I really won't have one - read: I don't want to mechanise my social life and mess up my studies.

This stupid conversation is over, at least for my part. I hope I'm not or haven't been too offensive. No hard feelings.

[Eleazar]

Gosh! You probably refer to the WIP water transitions of mine when speaking about incompability? When you compare ice-to-water, snow-to-water and sunken castle/keep to the current desert- and other flat land transitions, honestly, which one doesn't fit to the group?


This stupid conversation is over, at least for my part. I hope I'm not or haven't been too offensive. No hard feelings.

There's no need to read into my posts to find insinuations. It's my nature to speak straightforwardly, and i've learned that hints and innuendo seldom work at all on an international forum. If i have a problem with someone's art, i'll state it as plainly as i can.

In the meantime converstation could be much less stupid if you don't try to find a personal attack in all my posts. I respect the improved tiles you've added to wesnoth, but that doesn't mean i'll like all your ideas. I haven't liked all the ideas of anyone i've worked with, and nobody has liked all my ideas.

[pekka]

Okay, here are the 2 layered desert hill tiles updated. There are also couple of normal hill transition tiles inside the package. Previous versions of those were overlapping the hex.

[Jetrel]

I just pop in the net every now and then and upload graphics that I see appropriate for the game. I don't have Internet access myself and I really won't have one - read: I don't want to mechanize my social life and mess up my studies.

Which is probably a very good choice on your part. A pity I really can't do the same.

On a related note, I really need to cut down on my forum-reading-frequency, and I'm probably only going to pop in "every other day" from now on, rather than "every day, often a few times per day". Expect my productivity to spike as a result. I hope no one gets irritated by having to wait for responses, but this is currently eating far too much of my time.