Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

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Sapient
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Sapient »

I think the water set is in need of revision. Tropical, as noted, is just a little too vivid. Shallow on the other hand looks too smoky to me, almost as if seen through a fog. I don't see any major problems with Ocean here. The river ford however, seems too similar to normal water. (Considering it has the same movement as grassland for non-swimmers, that could be a problem and a little realism may need to be sacrificed for user recognition, IMO. I'd like to hear what the Art peoples think about this, maybe I'm wrong)

The new cave looks promising and I think it may turn out a lot better than the current one which has always seemed a bit odd and lumpy to me.

It may be my monitor but there are some places I would expect to look darker, such as the tops of those walls.

Finally, I'm glad you were able to work the wood floors in. Those will be very warmly received by content creators, I'm sure. Even without transitions it is looking pretty nice, so thanks.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Sapient wrote:I think the water set is in need of revision. Tropical, as noted, is just a little too vivid. Shallow on the other hand looks too smoky to me, almost as if seen through a fog. I don't see any major problems with Ocean here. The river ford however, seems too similar to normal water.
The ford is a temporary hack until the rest of the water get's nailed down. I agree that it's too subtile, so i bumped up the opacity for the dev release just now.

As for the rest, have you been viewing the most recent water (committed 10 days ago) on real maps, or are you just judging a couple screenshots? As i've said you need to see this one in a wider context.
Sapient wrote:It may be my monitor but there are some places I would expect to look darker, such as the tops of those walls.
Yeah, the cut-away of things like walls should be pure black now. I haven't done them all yet.
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 »

Mushroom Farm!

Now we have an implausible means for cave dwellers to grow food.
Screen shot 2010-07-31 at 1.48.41 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2010-07-31 at 1.48.41 PM.jpg (78.55 KiB) Viewed 9445 times

EDIT:
I opened a thread so those locked out of commenting here have a place to speak.
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 »

Added in a moderately functional blend transition between the previously extremely ugly mountains next to chasm. Previously there was simply a razor sharp border between the two- no transitions at all.

Also shown the baby 1 hex volcano.
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Screen shot 2010-07-31 at 9.56.00 PM.jpg
Screen shot 2010-07-31 at 9.56.00 PM.jpg (85.1 KiB) Viewed 9374 times
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Here are my plans for underground terrain:

Diversify into three basic varieties:
  • Regular: more or less like what we have now only prettier
    Ashy: lighter, grayer, and with more pronounced fissures. Volcanic.
    Earthy: soil and dirt mixed. soil colored like normal dirt terrain. Occasional roots.
These three varieties would be applied (in most cases) to the following terrains:
  • Cave Floor
    Rough Cave Wall
    Chasm
    Cave Hills
    ... and also to a new terrain
    Carved Cave wall
The carved wall would work seamlessly with the normal cave wall, but look constructed.

The chasm and cave hills would look pretty much the same with color variation. The cave wall and Floor i plan to redo.

I might cannibalize the Stone Wall (Xos) for the Carved Cave wall, since as it is currently cut up it can't mesh with the cave walls.

The Cave wall and Floor i intend to redo from scratch. I can do a better job this time.


This would add ~10 new terrains. I can get them (except the carved wall) into the development release in a preliminary way by color-shifting existing terrains. I'm not entirely sure if they would have enough utility in that form to be worth the trouble.

The appropriate terrain codes are also something of a challenge. Here's what i'm thinking ATM, but figuring out how to most easily wild-card these things is a bit challenging as tired as i am ATM. Especially on this part feedback is solicited.
  • Regular
    Uu - floor
    Uh - hills
    Qxu - chasm
    Xu - rough wall
    Xuc - carved wall

    Ashy
    Uua - ashy floor
    Uha - ashy hills ?
    Qxua - ashy chasm
    Xua - rough wall
    Xuca - carved wall?

    Earthy
    Uue - earthy floor
    Uhe - ? probably skip
    Qxe, Qxue? - also useful outdoors
    Xue - earthy wall -- roots sticking out
    Xuce - earthy wall -- propped up with beams

And finally here's a very rough paint-over i used to sort out my ideas for the 3 basic variants.
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alernate cave colors.jpg
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by thespaceinvader »

A note: Earthy strikes me as hot/lava-y, particularly in the vicinity of the lava tile. This works well, to my mind, it would be a useful terrain (one which I think there's already a hotter/more glowy version of), considering the number of 'rising lava cave' scenarios we have... Toning down the brightness of the browns, some of which shade almost into orange, would I think improve the earthy appearance - I recognise that this is a p/o and you've probably thought of that already, however =)

I basically just wonder whether an additional melting/hot cave floor variant would eb useful.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

thespaceinvader wrote:I basically just wonder whether an additional melting/hot cave floor variant would eb useful.
I thought about that. If i was going to add another variant, it would be the ashy floor with lava or lava glow visible in some of the fissures.

EDIT: Not that i reject the idea, it just didn't make it on the list.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by doofus-01 »

Eleazar wrote:Yeah that's the idea.
It would be best if you can keep your layered file, so if/when the basic chasm is darkened, and/or color-shifted we can do that without effecting the snow.
This archive includes the layered XCF files, so the rock and snow can be color-shifted independently.
chasms.tgz
(336.42 KiB) Downloaded 543 times
screenshot:
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by thespaceinvader »

The snow goign down inside the cliffs looks good to me, but I think they could use a little more snow on top - otherwise there seems to be a melted patch around the chasm.

http://www.arkansas.com/images/wallpape ... tpt_lg.jpg
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/ ... 030909.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2513/419 ... 4d032d.jpg
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by doofus-01 »

Maybe, but I'm not supposed to go too far with the snow, I think (emph mine):
Eleazar wrote:A chasm lightly with some ice and snow on it, especially at the top would be useful. Don't completely cover it with snow or it won't tile well with normal chasm. I'd want to make this an automatic used when next to a frozen hex (if possible).
Hopefully it is good enough for place-holders for the upcoming 1.9.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by thespaceinvader »

Ah... right. Hmm.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

OK, i've converted the chasm so that it seamlessly blends with chasm of other colors.

This will make it easier to add not only different chasm colors, but also special cases like doofus' snowy chasm and maybe some waterfalls.
Screen shot 2010-08-05 at 5.20.34 PM.jpg
For contrast here's some "before" images:

Image

Image
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 »

Water is now animated again.

I don't have all the transitions between different water types that i want, but this is progress, and slow with all the frames needed for animated terrains.
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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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

Eleazar wrote:Water is now animated again.

I don't have all the transitions between different water types that i want, but this is progress, and slow with all the frames needed for animated terrains.
Man, I can't wait till this is done. :D
Good luck with this - tough, drawn-out projects are demotivating.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Much improved mixed flowers.
Screen shot 2010-08-10 at 9.32.03 PM.jpg
EDIT: There are purple flowers in there which somehow the thumbnail totally kills. Click on it.

For the water zookeeper gave me the idea of doing a double-sided water-to-water transition, like i used for the grass. That could work well, but will probably have to wait until after the dev release.


I have some of the new cave interiors in the works and working in WML. Some of these will get into the development release, but perhaps not in a very attractive state.
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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