My Terrain (Mine!)

[Crendgrim]

Only a thought about the logical aspects:
I think that those wooden planks should look more "old", because they have been outside in rain and sun for a certain amount of time (and probably aren't there since yesterday).
I only wanted to mention that in case you really start to re-create the planks from scratch


Crend

[doofus-01]

But the color and more importantly the scale of the wooden planks contrasts very badly with the walls. I think you need to make a new surface from scratch. It is also a bit awkward that the sides of the planks don't align with any of the walls

OK, I'll try a different floor pattern. Getting the planks to line up with the walls will be tricky, though it may not matter as much if they are smaller/thinner.

[lurker]

But the color and more importantly the scale of the wooden planks contrasts very badly with the walls. I think you need to make a new surface from scratch. It is also a bit awkward that the sides of the planks don't align with any of the walls

OK, I'll try a different floor pattern. Getting the planks to line up with the walls will be tricky, though it may not matter as much if they are smaller/thinner.

Alternatively, I thought, you could try a parapet walk to distinguish the keep from the castle:

And maybe make even the doors - if you want to keep them - like the ones in the western fort: Full height. Right now the door is very small - too small for a regular village. That is just the same in most of the other castles, but while those doors are quite toned down, the white coth makes it very prominent in your design. And so the mismatch of scale becomes painfully obvious. A full height door would make it much harder to judge the scale, and could conceal the problem.

Just my two cents.

Lurker

Edit:
BTW, white cloth on the central command of a war-faring party? Could be mistaken for an urge to surrender, couldn't it?

[doofus-01]

Alternatively, I thought, you could try a parapet walk to distinguish the keep from the castle:

That would be nice in some ways, but the unit standing on it would either have a strange offset (if it were raised) or would look imprisoned (if it were not raised). I think this does need a floor.

I've only got a single tile-able hex image now, that is not shaded so wonderfully, but I think this scheme could work.

[thespaceinvader]

Floorboards in an open fort just look weird.

[StDrake]

that above, and if you're worried about offset note that most of the keeps are already raised and it looks fine

on the other hand - if we change the encampment keeps to something that doesn't look like a hurriedly assembled makeshift it will screw up the sense of a bunch of scenarios with castles appearing and disappearing as just that - travelling camps, not wooden forts..but then again - WINR

so..keep on, alternate, or drop?

[doofus-01]

Floorboards in an open fort just look weird.

How is that helpful?

that above, and if you're worried about offset note that most of the keeps are already raised and it looks fine

Those keeps have raised floors...

on the other hand - if we change the encampment keeps to something that doesn't look like a hurriedly assembled makeshift it will screw up the sense of a bunch of scenarios with castles appearing and disappearing as just that - travelling camps, not wooden forts..but then again - WINR

It would be an alternate.

I'll go ahead with this then.

[thespaceinvader]

Mm, apologies: they look strange, so a different floor would be better. Bare dirt is probably easiest to interpret.

But floorboards open to the sky would warp, rot, move around a lot... they're not a practical covering for an exposed floor.

[Dixie]

I feel the floorboard is a bit too top-down, it feels out of perspective with the encampment walls...

[StDrake]

not to mention they're vastly too long

[Atz]

I'm not sure going straight north-south is the best idea. It makes the floor clash a bit with the terrain, because you have big, straight, black lines that could well have been slapped down using the line tool in Paint, while the terrain tends to have softer edges. Also, with the vertical lines of the walls as well, it kinda makes the whole tile stand out from the terrain because everything is straight up-and-down, if that makes sense.

This is not helped by the fact that your flooring already looks too smooth and regular. It doesn't have any wear or grain or warping or anything else you'd expect to happen to wood which is just sitting out in the open, although I understand you are still working on the shading. There's also the fact that the fort wall looks like a crude palisade build of sharpened logs, while the floor is apparently high-quality polished timber boards. I think either the floor needs to be rougher, like logs cut in half or something, or the walls need to be better constructed, so that the floor and walls fit with each other.

There's also still a bit of a scale issue, since your floorboards are twice as long as the walls are tall, and wider than the logs making up the wall.

[ancestral]

I agree with tsi. The floorboards do look out of place. Also, I think the individual boards look much too large or thick, and geometric.

[doofus-01]

Mm, apologies: they look strange, so a different floor would be better. Bare dirt is probably easiest to interpret.

But floorboards open to the sky would warp, rot, move around a lot... they're not a practical covering for an exposed floor.

Ah, I see. The wood is for the keep "roof", I just hadn't propagated it beyond a single hex image, so I used the camp to test the vertical pattern because the walls are so similar. I guess it wasn't as obvious as I thought it was.

I feel the floorboard is a bit too top-down, it feels out of perspective with the encampment walls...

That's kind of what I feared and why I posted it. I think horizontal is better, it will have to work if anything will.

BTW, white cloth on the central command of a war-faring party? Could be mistaken for an urge to surrender, couldn't it?

I was trying to avoid Team Color, but in the end that idea doesn't look like it is going to work anyway, the pieces don't always layer nicely. I guess the cloth could go on a separate layer. Maybe at the end.

[StDrake]

starting to look like something, apply some damage to the planks probably and perhaps try to get them more into the tonation of the logs around

[Groznij]

The closed doors' slanted support beam is mirrored to that of the open ones'.