mesilliac's terrain graphics thread

[mesilliac]

Hello and welcome to mesi's terrain graphics thread .

I do things a bit differently than most people. Enough so that there are a few things I should explain.

The vast majority of the stuff in this thread is unfinished. I post very early in my development cycle. I find comments of any kind helpful, even just to reinforce what I should work on next, but if something's obviously wrong I'm posting despite, not because of it!

I usually don't explain much unless someone asks. Sorry .

If I say something is "finished", this in no way means that whatever I posted is in its final, penultimate form and will never change ever again. What it means is "I don't mind people editing or using this" (editing e.g. using it to make a derivative terrain, fixing problems with it, or just plain making it look better). Think of it as "version 1.0". I might make a "version 1.1" sometime, but it probably won't be much different.

I have many projects going on at once. Umm, probably mild ADHD .

Here's a list of things that I'm currently "working on":
* grassland flowers
* roads as an overlay (they make nice lines, and fork): wml done, no graphics
* stone walls: need transitions to cavewall
* indoor tavern (generic wooden) walls
* flagstone floor tiles
* grassy cliffs
* generic "floor tile" template
* generic "indoor wall" template
* "thin" walls: wml done



Here is my original post that started this thread:

Dungeon walls!

Based on Jetryl's edit of neorice's wall sketch in this thread

[Sapient]

looks nice.

[Kestenvarn]

Nicely done.

[theotherhiveking]

It seems to fit castles interiors too. Btw, nicely done.

[turin]

Now - can it be actually implemented? As we've seen before, it's one thing to draw something like what you have here, it's another to cut up the image to make a usable terrain.

[Jetrel]

Now - can it be actually implemented? As we've seen before, it's one thing to draw something like what you have here, it's another to cut up the image to make a usable terrain.

Based on some PMs with the guy, he's apparently got working WML for this.

Thus, mesilliac, could you post the WML and associated images? Even if they're not done, this would open up the possibility to get help on these.

[mesilliac]

Actually - these are pretty much finalized.

Transitions to other terrains (such as cavewall) are not done, and this terrain does not yet play nicely with castles.

[mesilliac]

In other news:

(note: this wall texture is not intended for wesnoth)

[Aethaeryn]

Perhaps support for borders/walls would be good - basically a border on a hex that makes it impassable (like a wall) to go between the two but doesn't take up a whole hex, just the border between two. I'm not sure walls outside of dungeons would look too good taking up a whole hex.

[Neoskel]

It looks goof for an 'indoors' map or and urban warfaretype setting were the buildings are scaled the same as the units.

[Lim-Dul]

Perhaps support for borders/walls would be good - basically a border on a hex that makes it impassable (like a wall) to go between the two but doesn't take up a whole hex, just the border between two. I'm not sure walls outside of dungeons would look too good taking up a whole hex.

Yay - "wall functionality" might be cool. What springs to my mind is an old board game called Battle Masters - also hex-based. It had obstacles, palisades and stuff that could be placed between hexes and they had an effect on the attacks depending on which side of the "object" you were on. I see endless possibilities for Wesnoth - e.g. palisades that would give the defenders an EV bonus but could be circumvented by simply attacking from another direction. This would open up completely new tactical options - of course such a radical change might only be advisable for some special scenarios or campaigns...

[mesilliac]

Perhaps support for borders/walls would be good - basically a border on a hex that makes it impassable (like a wall) to go between the two but doesn't take up a whole hex, just the border between two. I'm not sure walls outside of dungeons would look too good taking up a whole hex.

For some reason I thought this was FPI that wouldn't be implemented, but I can't find mention of it...

In any case, having walls running along the borders of hexes forces them to be all hexagon-shaped. Which is ok for large-scale images (e.g. the current castle walls), but gets a bit annoying for unit-scale scenarios with walls spanning multiple tiles that are supposed to be straight.

All the walls I'm working on will be intended for use in unit-scale scenarios.

If movement could be blocked across hex borders, it would open up the possibility for a nice cliff terrain . Which I think: A) isn't necessary at all, B) would look very very nice.

[mesilliac]

Starry Abyss!

This terrain is 100% done.

I didn't just do it because I thought it looked cool... there really was a request for it.

The .cfg files are included as a diff against SVN. It looks like an invasive edit, but most of it is just renaming the chasm declarations to accommodate abyss as well. The edit fixes mountains next to chasm, and converts some stray tabs to spaces, as well as removing some unnecessary instances of chasm transitions (they're disabled anyway).

I also modified most of the chasm edges slightly... the only difference is that they fade to transparent at the bottom. This has absolutely no effect on regular chasm walls, as they fade to the same texture as they were before I edited them. So these are straight replacements for the current graphics.

The starry texture was included in wesnoth already, I just turned it into an overlay and thinned out the noise!

[Velensk]

Looks neat, on the otherhand I can't think of a single use for it on any map going for realism, but if it gets included, I might use it on one of my Era of Myths maps.

[Urs]

I looked at it for a sec, couldn't figure out what it was, so I looked again, and it snapped.

Nice! I have no idea what it could be used for (except for magic), but it sure looks awesome.