Make your own walls!

Contribute art for mainline Wesnoth.

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DDR
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by DDR »

I think, there are three 'zoom levels' of terrain that Wesnoth uses. The first, and most common, is the 'mile up' level, from mountains and the like are drawn. Then, the 'real scale' level, at which these walls are drawn, and the bridges. Between these two levels, the village graphics, stone tiling, and the great elven tree.

What a grab bag of graphics! There is certainty something for every situation here. I think, this is what makes wesnoth fun, in a way. No other game would have graphics, side by side, so out of scale with one another. In Wesnoth, you can make great, rolling expansive terrain, then have it transition seamlessly to a 'real scale' cave, to a medium-level forest glade. :lol2: This does not make sense, but... hey, it works.

I expect this came about as a result of no one nitpicking about scale when the terrains were made, as long as it looked goodDid that make sense? I am rather tired... :)
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by cretin »

it looks nice, one point though is when the tile is below a unit or next to it the unit seems to walk on top of it, instead of behind it. probably already noticed it though.
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by thespaceinvader »

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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by mog »

Honestly, I think the scale of these walls is off. While we don't have a consistent scale in wesnoth, we don't have any other terrain that's quite that big. I'd suggest reducing the size of the horizontal beams a bit (maybe so that there are 7 instead of 5 on top of each other). Maybe reduce the width of the pillars a bit, too, but that's less important.

Additionally, I'd suggest adding a bit of a shadow to the bottom edges to make the transition to the floor less abrupt.
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by mesilliac »

Okay, I updated the first post with the new .cfg that automatically uses random variations for -n, -n-e and -nw-n facings, if they are available and named correctly.

I also added a note about changing the wall background, and explanation of how to use the random variations. Tried not to overexplain. It's not as complicated as it sounds.

@SynErr: nice walls :). They look very log-cabin like, was this what you were aiming for?

I was holding off commenting because I couldn't figure out what bugged me about them at first. But I think it's that:

I imagined an indoor wall texture would have vertical wooden boards throughout most of it, possibly with a different layout on the bottom third of the wall. Large horizontal log-like boards work for cabins in the woods, mineshafts, and maybe a small village, but don't work in a town / city. That said, I never did come up with a layout that I liked when I was trying to figure out how to go about it.

They also seem a tad orange :). I think they'd look better a little more brown and less saturated. In general terrains should probably try to stay relatively dull, so that the sprites stand out.

With the scale of the walls and the shading, they do look like the planks are entire half-logs. The scale for walls should be approximately the same as for units.

On that subject:

Wesnoth's mix of zoom scales is quite complex... there are basically 3 (unit, village, other), but "other" isn't very consistent. Walls should probably be "unit" scale. Most terrain's just made at whatever scale feels most natural with as many other terrains / things as possible :).

Wesnoth scenarios actually use a huge mix of scales, it's pretty impressive that the graphics fit in most of them. Also that the gameplay still makes sense!
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by Iris »

Mesilliac, you may want to append the Photoshop PSD file I provided to the original post and explain that this is not GIMP-specific at all. I personally dislike when tutorials/templates are application-specific. :)
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by mesilliac »

Shadow Master wrote:Mesilliac, you may want to append the Photoshop PSD file I provided to the original post and explain that this is not GIMP-specific at all. I personally dislike when tutorials/templates are application-specific. :)
Yeah. You're quite right. Done :).
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by Kestenvarn »

Will this aid with making transitions as well, not just walls?

Also, don't really understand what's going on in that PSD file. These sliced images seem pretty random until you put them together. Guess I'll keep trying to make sense of them.
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by Iris »

Kestenvarn wrote:Will this aid with making transitions as well, not just walls?

Also, don't really understand what's going on in that PSD file. These sliced images seem pretty random until you put them together. Guess I'll keep trying to make sense of them.
Read the layer names.
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Kestenvarn
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by Kestenvarn »

Shadow Master wrote:
Kestenvarn wrote:Will this aid with making transitions as well, not just walls?

Also, don't really understand what's going on in that PSD file. These sliced images seem pretty random until you put them together. Guess I'll keep trying to make sense of them.
Read the layer names.
Is this a curt attempt to be amusing? Of course I read the names. It's the context I'm missing. :|
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by mesilliac »

Kestenvarn wrote:Will this aid with making transitions as well, not just walls?

Also, don't really understand what's going on in that PSD file. These sliced images seem pretty random until you put them together. Guess I'll keep trying to make sense of them.
Unfortunately transitions can't be done with this template. The main reason is that they need images of different sizes. A template for that won't be hard to do, but I haven't actually made any wall transitions yet to test it out.


The directional names for the layers are in relation to some hex which is not a wall tile. With the template layers, you can see that the walls are generally oriented around one of the hexes in the background. This is the tile that the layer names are referencing against.

So for example, "n-ne" means that the tiles to the north, and north-east (assuming north is "up") of the reference tile are wall tiles. It also generally implies that "nw" and "se" (the tiles directly adjacent to "n" and "ne" are not wall tiles.

The game basically just looks at every tile on the map, and puts the appropriate images down on that tile depending on which of the surrounding tiles are wall tiles. The way they are drawn, they should fit together nicely and look like walls :).

It's quite complicated to make the images do this. Hence the template.

The guide lines on the template were actually to help with making the walls meet up. If you move a layer 54 pixels to the left or right, or 72 pixels up or down, it will line up with another hex on the background. So you can move them round to see how they interact fairly easily if you understand the relation to the tiles on the background layer.


There's plenty more to explain. So if you want to know more, ask ;).
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Kestenvarn
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by Kestenvarn »

Thanks.
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by irrevenant »

mog wrote:Honestly, I think the scale of these walls is off. While we don't have a consistent scale in wesnoth, we don't have any other terrain that's quite that big.
Looking at this, IMO the problem is that indoor and outdoor scales are distinctly different in Wesnoth. Indoors, 3 hexes is a corridor, outside it's the length of a mountain range.

I suspect that outdoor terrain will always look funny next to indoor terrain - it's unavoidable. IMO, this terrain is just fine but is only really useful for indoor-specific scenarios.
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by mesilliac »

Just a quick note so I can add the new templates for SVN. The only difference is that the top 36 pixels have been cropped, so the center tile is actually centered.

They're pretty useless until the next dev release ;).

And in fact for compatibility with 1.4 the old templates and .cfg should still be used, anyway.
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Mabuse
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Re: Make your own walls!

Post by Mabuse »

Syntax_Error wrote:alright, added variations (mesilliac improved the cfg), fixed a missing tile and replaced the "roof". yea the solid part doesnt look all woody, but the more harmless the transitions with stone wall will be.

its pretty much ready by me. anyone wanna commit? :)
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and all who worked on this too, of course.


btw indoor/outdoor scaling problems can be solved/reduced by smart MAPdesign i guess, but it so nice to have these things.
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