River overlays

Discussion and contribution to game graphics and user interface.
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Posted relevant content can be used under GPL or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/) for the project. Thanks!
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Trilarion
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River overlays

Post by Trilarion »

I can report that river overlays are shown in the programm now. They look... simple = equivalent to my drawing skills. :D Any improvement is welcome but has low priority. So it's more for times when you haven't anything else to do.

First I wrote a programm that draws an overlay image. It helps in drawing the right bits of river at the right locations of a big image holding all the river bits. There are 20 possible river parts on a single tile, 8 possible river mouths and 8 possible river heads.
Template, helps in drawing
Template, helps in drawing
template.png (7.46 KiB) Viewed 13329 times
Then I drew them in photoshop (\graphics\Trilarion\rivers\SimpleRivers.psd) using the overlay (create a path, modify path points (bezier curve), stroke path with brush).
My drawings of rivers
My drawings of rivers
RiverOverlays.png (36.19 KiB) Viewed 13329 times
Then I implemented drawing in the programme and it looks like this.
Working example
Working example
Clipboard01.jpg (70.32 KiB) Viewed 13329 times
From here on we can improve.
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Trilarion
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Post by Trilarion »

As in the original rivers cannot fork or join. However this is not an essential limitation. If we want that and give it enough priority we will have that.

I would like to have names for the rivers. For now the underlying datastructure doesn't allow this (it's similar to the original). River deltas would be nice too.

But then rivers really do not add to the gameplay that much (only for the battle part and the railroad construction cost and maybe for transportation).
Veneteaou
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Re: River overlays

Post by Veneteaou »

Rivers are a pretty big deal in terms of what they can do for transports, as well as placing a capital.

Your images turned out really good. If I get a good unified terrain style going, I will take a stab at rivers at the same time I get the shoreline tiles worked out.

Edit: I'm looking at it, and those might be quite a bit of work in terms of making them continuous with each other. I'm thinking I might blow your first picture demonstrating the continuities up so that each square is 512x512, and using it as a template to pound them all out in a giant tilesheet. It will take some tweaking to get right I'm sure, but I think it will still be faster than doing each one individually.

Also, I can quarter the work involved by rotating these tiles. I could even cut that in half again by mirroring and rotating the first tile. It wouldn't be as pretty as it could be, but it would get us the 20 river tiles with four original tiles. I could do the same with one mouth and one head tile each.
As in the original rivers cannot fork or join. However this is not an essential limitation. If we want that and give it enough priority we will have that.
In my opinion that would be a lot of work, because splitting rivers will no look reasonable unless we have different widths on them.
River deltas would be nice too.
This would be easy to implement. I draw the 8 river mouths, and 8 deltas that take up a single tile. If the river meets the ocean on a green plains tile, we can lay the delta; otherwise, we just lay river mouth so we don't have a giant delta eating up an apple orchard or something.
Veneteaou
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Re: River overlays

Post by Veneteaou »

Did somebody say river tileset?

Due to limitations with MyPaint being unable to save or open multiple layers in images, I had to draw that entire thing in one session. It's 11:45PM here, I started at 9 this morning. My hand, wrist, arm, and shoulder hurt, my wife is mad at me, and my eyes are burning. I'm still concerned that they might not connect cleanly, so Tril if you see anything funny just take a picture or let me know which ones have trouble.

I'm going to bed.

Ven
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Trilarion
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Re: River overlays

Post by Trilarion »

Ven, really, please take care of yourself. Maybe you can do it piece by piece.

Thanks and I will check the rivers as soon as I have time.
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Re: River overlays

Post by Creator »

nice going ven looks awesome. Can't wait to see it in game
Veneteaou
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Re: River overlays

Post by Veneteaou »

Ven, really, please take care of yourself. Maybe you can do it piece by piece.
Yeah about two minutes after I finished last night, I realized I could have built a master tile that would have let me do it piece by piece. Ah well, next time I guess.
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Trilarion
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Re: River overlays

Post by Trilarion »

I added your rivers Ven. There are still some small continuation problems, but I can fix them. Only glitch when a river is within a forest. I checked this in the original and somehow it looks better there.
Clipboard01.jpg
Clipboard01.jpg (67.45 KiB) Viewed 13287 times
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Re: River overlays

Post by Creator »

looks awesome
Haxaco
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Re: River overlays

Post by Haxaco »

Wow, that's just... wow 8-)
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