12-02-2002 23:42									#1
	Map Graphics Thread part III Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

The other thread at Map Graphics Thread II is full. This is the continuation thread. It is currently refreshingly content-free.

Cheers

	13-02-2002 02:35									#2
	Great ! Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

After being away from the forum a couple of days, I can see you guys are already hard at work finalizing the "format" of the coasts. I'm very impressed indeed !

Good work Axi and Gary !!

Well, what can I say...

I guess we can agree on the fact that we're going for overlays. I'm glad you made the decision without me, because I wasn't really sure witch way to go. And after reading your posts I totally agree with your views on how to proceed.

quote: I propose the width to be no more than 1/4, leaving a 60x30 center_of_tile for the other graphics .

Sounds good by me, I think its important not to make the "other graphics" too small.

quote: The 47 distinct tiles, per land type, can be built from 12 independent coast overlays (as detailed in Axi's analysis above) overlaid on different terrain tiles. Any anomalies such as half trees could be patched later. So the work might not be as great as at first sight .

quote: Of course these overlays could be made different or the same with a different orientation (we could have only 6 original overlays and have them mirrored into the other six).

I think we should go for the "12 independent coast overlays" approach. They will look better, but I will try both and compare.


Well, I guess I can use most of what I have already made. But I will have to make certain adjustments.

Expect to hear from me soon....

-Stian-

	13-02-2002 20:06									#3
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Stian, your work is very good!

I would like to say I think that overlays was the right decision.
It allows for much more varied terrain than using fixed tiles.

Jorgen

	16-02-2002 13:38									#4
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Thanks colorrr!

I'm finally finished with the coastal overlays (beach), and will
post them here tomorrow. They can be used as rivers if the gamecode allows it. After the coastal overlays are given a final workover tonight, i will move on to other matters.

Heres my current "worklist", feel free to add my workload if i have missed anything :

1: A second look at the terrain tiles. Since i'm finished upgrading all the tiles i have to look into how they work together. The "wood" tiles have to be upgraded some, since they dont melt together into a single forest the way they look now. You can to easily see the squares, and that is not a good thing. Allso the transition from coastal waters to deeper waters have to be remade/smoothed out.

2: Make a Transport unit for Gary.

3: Make the rocky coast version.

4: Units !

5. Suggestions.... ??

-Stian-

	16-02-2002 15:36									#5
	One suggestion Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Take a look at Fiera's two city tiles and/or any other city tile we have and see how they fit with the terrain and coasts all put together. Also figure out together with the coder the relative coordinates for their placement, so that we can upgrade the map code in time to include the new graphics to demo 7. Cities is what is outstandingly missing right now. I feel that we probably will have to change the city graphics a few times before we get to something we really like.

Plus we might want to make a provision for graphically fitting forts/city walls into the map in later versions.

Btw, how easy is it to place the city names on the map below the cities as in civ?

	17-02-2002 01:10									#6
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Damn, I forgot rivers....

	17-02-2002 03:00									#7
	Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Cities is what is outstandingly missing right now

They are in the new version which is read from an xml file, using Fiera's overlay images. They look pretty good too.

quote: Btw, how easy is it to place the city names on the map below the cities as in civ?

The map is drawn from the top down, so high units will not get over-written. City names would, therefore, get over-written. It would take a second pass over the map to add them. In addition, it would take a third pass to re-draw any units that the city name had over-written. Around two days work, I would say.

quote: Damn, I forgot rivers....

What have you forgotten about rivers? Your coast overlays should fix that.

Cheers

	19-02-2002 03:07									#8
	Coast overlays ! Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Here we go....

I've made the first complete set coastal overlays. Once again, I will probably have to tweak them once we get to see how they look in the actual game. This is a 16 overlays model, and to make the coasts look realistic, i think it is needed..

Here's two screens, manually placed. One showing just the overlays and the other how it will look "ingame":





Comments !

So, who should I send the overlays to ?

-Stian-

	19-02-2002 04:09									#9
	Increase Your PM Length

Hi Sas!

I think they look Great! I guess you should send them to Gary. He's the guy who'll be implementing them when he can squeeze it into his copious coding schedule.

BTW I think the copyright notice needs a year in it...

	19-02-2002 06:06									#10
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The way stian is handling them, we will need in some cases to overlay coasts of the second tier to gether with coasts of the fourth tier and coasts of the third tier with coasts of the third tier. This is need ed for the opposite side. Think about a one tile thick strip of land zigzaging inside sea and you'll know what I mean.

I'm only mentioning this because Gary must find some way to code this. I hope he hasn't written code in the format we were discussing until now.

When do we expect to see rocky coasts? With wavecrests foaming around them?

	19-02-2002 11:42									#11
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I hadn't coded anything yet. The idea of multiple overlays on a single square hadn't occurred to me. I will probably build up the combinations internally so every combination (47 wasn't it?) is there and I can just index them. Each square would then get a single overlay.

I will try and pick up the images from the forum page.

Or rather, I was going to before I realized it was one big image.

Stian, could you email the indiividual tiles to me at gthomas@takaro.co.nz

All the others would be good too (the land and mountains etc).

Thanks.

Cheers

	19-02-2002 13:25									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: The way stian is handling them, we will need in some cases to overlay coasts of the second tier to gether with coasts of the fourth tier and coasts of the third tier with coasts of the third tier. This is need ed for the opposite side. Think about a one tile thick strip of land zigzaging inside sea and you'll know what I mean.

Hopefully using multiple overlays on a single square is possible. But if it's even a slight workload on Garys shoulders, i say we skip it. It isnt that much work for me to make a set that doesnt require multiple overlays.

But if it IS possible, then great !

The tiles are in the mail Gary.....


-

quote: When do we expect to see rocky coasts? With wavecrests foaming around them?

Probably in two or three weeks or so, nothing final yet. Meaning i havent even started


-Stian-

	19-02-2002 23:22									#13
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quote: When do we expect to see rocky coasts? With wavecrests foaming around them?

When somebody writes the code. About the time Halley's comet comes back, I think.

quote: The tiles are in the mail Gary....

Thanks. I will pick them up today.

Cheers

	18-03-2002 13:01									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Sorry about suddenly being away from the forum, and the develeopment of Clash in general. I havent quit my job, i've been hospitalised for 3 weeks or so. It's not as serious as it may sound, but i havent been able to do any work.

So now i'm back....

	18-03-2002 17:45									#15
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Hi Stian:

Sorry to hear about the hospital!!! I hope you're doing ok

Really, some people will use just any old lame excuse

Great to have you back!

Cya,

Mark

	20-03-2002 02:55									#16
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

This is a great relief. I am looking forward to incorporating the coasts, just as soon as I get the tiles.

I have been giving a bit of thought to the idea of larger gifs with several tiles (like all the roads) on them. The day will come when we have, perhaps, thousands of tile gifs. There is an overhead to opening and reading each separate file, and at that point we will need composite files, so maybe now is the time to do it, since there are quite a few coast tiles.

Cheers

	27-03-2002 03:33									#17
	Support Apolyton

I've finally finished the coastal tiles, not a moment to soon I gather. Sorry about the delay though.

Obviously they will need adjustment when we get to see how they look in game. So for now I will only send them to Gary and let him take a look at them.

I've also made some adjustments on some of the other tiles.
I'm not completely satisfied with the current standard on the tiles. Especially looking at the quality on the mods created for Civ3.

So here’s a "preview" of the new forest tile:

Old one:

New one:

Comments?

quote: Really, some people will use just any old lame excuse

Hehe, I'll leave you guessing....

quote: I have been giving a bit of thought to the idea of larger gifs with several tiles (like all the roads) on them..

As you probably remember, I initially thought that was the way you already did handle the graphics. I fully support this way of organising the graphics. Partly due to the fact that I’m used to it from Civ 2 and 3. And partly because in the long run we will probably end up with lots of tiles. This way will make it easier to handle the large number of tiles later on.

just my 2 cents...


-Stian-

	27-03-2002 03:46									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Do you want to put the coastal tiles in a single grid gif. As long as they are in numeric order I can disassemble them.

It wouldn't be a bad idea if you did the same with the tiles you have been developing. I can then incorporate them.

We have a minor problem with Fiera's new cities which are not correctly centred - when I display them they are way down to the bottom left of the tile.

Cheers

	27-03-2002 03:51									#19
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Hi Stian:

I do like the new forest better than the old one! And it will be Very cool to see the coasts in the game.

One thing... We had planned long-term to have some tiles like forest built-up from individual trees or groups thereof. That way we can show things like the gradual clearing of Europe as people spread and converted forest to farmland. I think the detailed discussion is in the preceeding thread. This is not needed for now, but just to put the idea into your mind.

	27-03-2002 04:04									#20
	Support Apolyton

quote: We had planned long-term to have some tiles like forest built-up from individual trees or groups thereof

I'm glad you reminded me of that one Mark. To be honest, i knew about the plans, but i forgot later on. I see two ways to implement this. Either with individual/groups of trees as overlays, or make several tiles "showing" the transformation from forest to farmland.

Is it possible to make individual or groups of trees as overlays look good ? Meaning, will they look like a forest ?

I would guess from a programming point of view, the severeal tiles option is the easiest... am i right ?

quote: Do you want to put the coastal tiles in a single grid gif?

Its certainly no problem for me to do it now. It dependes on what you prefer.....

quote: We have a minor problem with Fiera's new cities which are not correctly centred

I'll look into it.

-Stian-

	27-03-2002 04:33									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: I would guess from a programming point of view, the severeal tiles option is the easiest... am i right ?

At the moment that is true.

quote: Its certainly no problem for me to do it now. It dependes on what you prefer.....

We might as well get it done now.

quote: I'll look into it.

Thanks.

Cheers

	28-03-2002 17:27									#22
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I don't feel qualified to comment on the major aspects of the map graphics, so here's a quick, minor, and easy-to-implement idea.

If you plan on using fog of war, why not make it actual fog color? I always thought black fog was a little...dark. Ahem. But actual fog would be kind of nifty.

	29-03-2002 03:32									#23
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I suggest that you play the demo. The fog of war is an actual fog colour, but partially transparent. The unexplored terrain is black.

Cheers

	30-03-2002 04:15									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Hello, tossing in here my willingness to do some graphics...

Just give me some ideas on something you need that I can get my feet wet with. Or is there a master list somewhere?

I do most graphics with Paint Shop and/or TrueSpace (3d modeller/renderer/animator) and enjoy researching things.

Thanks

	30-03-2002 08:38									#25
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Hi Gar:

Last I knew, Specials like Gold, Tin, Salt, and Cloth aren't spoken for. The format is gif 89a (or is it 87a?) the transparent gif one. You can grab tiles out of the jar file of the demo using winzip to get a feel for sizing. If you skim this file you can find where I tell sas about it in detail.

That is my take on a good thing to do. If anyone has a better idea, just squawk!

	30-03-2002 12:48									#26
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I've put together some ideas, to not excessively abuse the free geocities website, I've gone ahead and put it all into a web page.

One thing I didn't catch flying through threads here, was how many resources would be visually displayed on a tile?

Here's da link to my new site:
Gar's Graphics

Debatable essentials from this:
These special resource graphics are 17 x 12. I've added a yellow line under each image as a unifying theme.

These are the resources I am currently aware of for graphics and basic concept for graphic of each:
Gold (gold bar)
Tin (tin ore)
Salt (stack of shiny white cubes)
Cloth (bolt with rough weave partially unrolled)
Horses (um... horses)
Metalwares (a cook pan or an anvil)
Fish (yep... a fish)
Game (a pheasant or a really mean bunny)
Iron (iron ore)

Maybe I should bring out my old Avalon Hill, Advanced Civilization board game for inspriation (btw, my all time favorite game amongst all computer or board.)

	30-03-2002 18:09									#27
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Hi Gar:

quote: Originally posted by Gar One thing I didn't catch flying through threads here, was how many resources would be visually displayed on a tile?

Only one type per tile.

quote: Debatable essentials from this: These special resource graphics are 17 x 12. I've added a yellow line under each image as a unifying theme.

I think they need to be bigger. You were probably keeping 'em small with the notion that we might need more than one per tile... My take is they images should fill roughly the middle half of the tile. We will need to work out what happens in the conflict between a city image and a Special one. My take is the special loses, but maybe we can show it offset in the detail frame.

For the gray ones you may need to outline 'em in yellow or something. I think they'd really get lost on a lot of tiles. And the fewer gray ones, the better IMO. At least that's my take.

One idea is to show the metals in finished form, making the letter symbolizing them. Tin would be two gray ingots, making a T, etc. Gives the best of both worlds (maybe!).

quote: These are the resources I am currently aware of for graphics and basic concept for graphic of each: Gold (gold bar) Tin (tin ore) Salt (stack of shiny white cubes) Cloth (bolt with rough weave partially unrolled) Horses (um... horses) Metalwares (a cook pan or an anvil) Fish (yep... a fish) Game (a pheasant or a really mean bunny) Iron (iron ore) Maybe I should bring out my old Avalon Hill, Advanced Civilization board game for inspriation (btw, my all time favorite game amongst all computer or board.)

I wouldn't use advanced civ, there's too many specialty ancient ones like ochre that we'd never use (at least it was that way in the civ board game, can't remember if I ever played advanced civ). If you can dig up a list of the civ3 ones, I expect our list would be fairly close. It will be an evolving thing anyway. I think there are threads in the civ3 creation forum talking about improved resources icons, you should be able to find a list there. I think the vicious rabbit deserves its own image .

Thanks for the demo!

[edit] fix a quote formatting problem

	31-03-2002 11:39									#28
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

OK, Mark, thanks for the feedback. Rather than spread myself too thinly I've decided to focus on one resource (Tin) until I get the sizing and style/approach nailed down. Since I can't get the images to hotlink, I will continue to do examples and updates on my website. I realize it dillutes the information captured in the threads, but seems like best way for now. I've added the website link to my signature, currently there is a new example of Tin there.

	31-03-2002 15:18									#29
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Hi Gar:

I think the new tin is getting a lot closer! Like I said, I'm not sure we'll even show resource icons when there is a city icon on the tile. Lets see if anyone else has an opinion on that. I do like the idea of offseting it a bit so it doesn't get completely obliterated by a military icon in the square.

Thanks for composing the list of potential specials! BTW, now that you have the one image, it might be worth it to put it in a zip and post it here. That way when Gary has time, he can put in the code and xml changes to handle resources. That way you'll be able to see them on the map as you develop 'em.

Good start! I'm looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

-Mark

	31-03-2002 21:57									#30
	Remove this text

Hi Gar; I like the tin offsetted near the city. I think it would need more contrast (shading).