Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

The regular water tiles are too hyper saturated now that i've been harmonizing the colors. I'll be testing some new hues, probably by temporarily disabling water animations.

Here's what i'm starting with.
Attachments
water darker.jpg
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Zerovirus
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Zerovirus »

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown

Maybe give the water just a bit more saturation? I see the pic and immediately I think "real is brown".
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by thespaceinvader »

Zerovirus wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealIsBrown

Maybe give the water just a bit more saturation? I see the pic and immediately I think "real is brown".
QFT. We were very over-saturated earlier, and I realise that life is a lot less saturated than we think, but it can start to look a little dull and uninteresting, particularly with the bright, saturated units, I fear.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

You may be right, but referencing TVtropes certainly doesn't bolster your argument.

I'm not really interested in your (or my) gut reaction to a single screenshot-- even though i tried to make it fairly representational.

It's in trunk. This sort of evaluation needs to be made after viewing the the change on a wide variety of maps-- and ideally played a few scenarios. Once you've done that i'd welcome your opinion. And ignore cave maps for now, since they will likely change.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Ok, i took the big leap and color-adjusted all the cave terrains for the reasons explained here.

A lot of the effected terrains still need some hand adjustment and improvement. For instance i don't want the depths of the chasm to be so brown. But i'm pretty happy with this direction. The chasm looks a lot less out of place outside now, and the cave maps generally look nicer.

Still to do:
* adjust color of the depth of chasm/abyss
* fix cave path
* change interior of wall to pure black
Attachments
Picture 1.jpg
Picture 1.jpg (93.06 KiB) Viewed 7281 times
Picture 3.jpg
Picture 3.jpg (123.43 KiB) Viewed 7281 times
Picture 9.jpg
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Jetrel
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

Tentatively I agree with zerovirus/TSI's reaction, but as you say, it merits a bunch of exposure.

One thing to keep in mind is that saturation in the water might be a function of luminosity, rather than being constant. I don't know - one of these days I'll update my trunk build and have a long thought on the look.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Made the interior of the cave-wall pure black so we get a consistent look under any ToD. Also meshes with shroud better.

This is sort of a hack job, so there are some glitches, but it will work until i redo the cave wall.

Note the inside of the cave is dark and the outside is sunny thanks to alink's work.
Attachments
Picture 1.jpg
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

I'm starting work on the new cave floor
cave.png
cave.png (15.05 KiB) Viewed 6866 times
I'd like to have three varieties that work well together, like we now have for dirt and grass
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Iris
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Iris »

Hm. The new colors remind me of the ancient pre-0.9 cave terrain tiles. I'm not saying it's a bad thing anyway.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

shadowmaster wrote:Hm. The new colors remind me of the ancient pre-0.9 cave terrain tiles. I'm not saying it's a bad thing anyway.
You reveal your ancient-ness by remembering this:
darkeness.jpg
darkeness.jpg (96.14 KiB) Viewed 6839 times
screenshot of the lost general taken three days shy of exactly 6 years ago.

However the brown-ness is more or less the exact opposite of the night/underground ToD color shifting, so in an underground map it will have about the same color and value as the previous cave screenshot.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Various tweaks to terrain.

* The standard cobbled road now is more variegated -- i'm declaring this the average color for rock
* chasm get darker in the bottom
* further adjustment of water colors, values and transitions.
* refinement of the bank transition (not really visible with grass).

I'm going on vacation in a few hours. I'll be back in a week
Attachments
Screen shot 2010-07-21 at 7.43.45 PM.jpg
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

I'm back.

I've adjusted the water colors further:
water.jpg
Also that old overgrown path has finally been brought into line with everything else. I kinda rushed this to make the next dev release. It still needs alternates and more transitions.

If you wanted things to be bright and grey, replace it with Rrc.
overgrown path.jpg

Also i tweaked how lava bridge, chasm, grass and various walls display on the minimap. It's much cleaner now. The lesson here is editor terrain selection tiles often make very lousy minimap tiles.
minimap.jpg
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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thespaceinvader
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by thespaceinvader »

Tropical is maybe just a touch too vivid? And just to add, the overgrown path looks really good =)
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

thespaceinvader wrote:Tropical is maybe just a touch too vivid?
Maybe.
It's not the right choice for that map, but it doesn't seem so out of place (if at all) on a tropical island type map.

I do want feedback on this-- just not based solely on my screenshots. I'm not quite sure why but getting the water color right is a lot trickier than any of the other color harmonizations i've done.
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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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Due to the imminent development release, i'm gonna try to push through several more terrains that i've been meaning to do. These won't be my best work, but they won't be any worse that what's in 1.8. Improvement and polishing can happen afterwards-- i want to give campaign makers access to the new stuff even if it' not at it's prettiest yet.

1) Volcano
I have no idea how to implement this, but i'm hoping reasonable cool graphics will entice someone to do the WML.
volcano.jpg
volcano.jpg (22.79 KiB) Viewed 6239 times

2) Wood Floor
Finally put this together enough to commit. No transitions yet, but i believe it will be useful.
wood floor.jpg
3) Next up: the mushroom farm...


I also resized forest, windmill, rubble, and field image sizes to deleting a bunch of empty space.
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.
-> What i might be working on
Attempting Lucidity
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