Do these requirements work for making terrain images?

[ajcross]

[quote="scottlu"][quote="goblin_merchant"]Please release the tools and set us mapmakers free![/quote]

It's not a matter of making maps, it's making the terrain pieces that you use to build a map. The minimum set of pieces, in the right shapes, with edges that match up, that also look great. It's really a lot of work. However like I said if there is an artist that can do it (and shows us), we'll help with the tools.[/quote]

Looking at the current pieces, I see these requirements:
1. Pictures need to support 320x320/320x480 64k color, 240x320 64k color, 160x160 64k color and 160x160 16 grayscale.
2. Basic terrain is a 3x3 picture repeating pattern with a pattern that melds well with the other pieces along all column and row edges.
3. Terrain Pieces are 1x1 up to 8x7 pictures that should meld well with the basic terrain. Or, these may have edges that meld well with a group of other terrain pieces.
4. Each square of a Terrain Piece has three values: Passable, Impassable, Not Used. Not Used means a transparent square showing what is beneath.

We should be able provide a graphic images of each terrain pice and a list of tile dimensions and squares used.

Some Questions:
1. Did I get the device resolutions correct?
2. What are the pixel dimensions of a square?
3. Can passable and impassable squares of Terrain pieces overlap? It appears that they can with the most recently moved piece on top.

Andy Cross

[scottlu]

ajcross wrote:

scottlu wrote:

goblin_merchant wrote:

Please release the tools and set us mapmakers free!

It's not a matter of making maps, it's making the terrain pieces that you use to build a map. The minimum set of pieces, in the right shapes, with edges that match up, that also look great. It's really a lot of work. However like I said if there is an artist that can do it (and shows us), we'll help with the tools.

Looking at the current pieces, I see these requirements:
1. Pictures need to support 320x320/320x480 64k color, 240x320 64k color, 160x160 64k color and 160x160 16 grayscale.
2. Basic terrain is a 3x3 picture repeating pattern with a pattern that melds well with the other pieces along all column and row edges.
3. Terrain Pieces are 1x1 up to 8x7 pictures that should meld well with the basic terrain. Or, these may have edges that meld well with a group of other terrain pieces.
4. Each square of a Terrain Piece has three values: Passable, Impassable, Not Used. Not Used means a transparent square showing what is beneath.

We should be able provide a graphic images of each terrain pice and a list of tile dimensions and squares used.

Some Questions:
1. Did I get the device resolutions correct?
2. What are the pixel dimensions of a square?
3. Can passable and impassable squares of Terrain pieces overlap? It appears that they can with the most recently moved piece on top.

Andy Cross

Andy, there are 2 tile sizes. 16x16 for lo-res (160), and 24x24 for medium-res (240) and hi-res (320+). They are authored 24x24 24bpp and we have tools which quantize to 24x24x8 and resize / quantize down to 16x16x8 and 16x16x4.

The pieces are called "templates" and they are composed of these tiles. Templates can overlap on a map during authoring; the map is processed by tools into simply a map of tile indexes.

A given visible tile is either passable or not.

Any other questions let me know. Are you asking because you are interested in making a new tile set?

[ajcross]

scottlu wrote:

Any other questions let me know. Are you asking because you are interested in making a new tile set?

What are the limits for # of tiles and # of templates?

I am not a graphic artist just a geek that loves this pda game. I can send you the images of these results. I am still looking for software that will sample a pixel's color and change all pixels with that color to another.

To start, I opened Mission Editor adjusted it to show all terrain pieces and did alt-Print Screen to capture the image. Then, I pasted this into Microsoft Photo Editor.

First is "snow" terrain. I used Image | Balance in Photo Editor on desert. I set Brightness 100, Contrast 60, and Gamma 0.46. I got white terrain, icy blue rivers, brown hills, and ancient or translucent purple monoliths. But the roads and shadows came out yellow. Minimap color could be soft white. If the yellows can be changed to greys, Neutral and Side 4's units may become devilishly hard to see.

Second is what I call "underground" for mining inside the planet of Icarus. I used Effects | Negative on desert. I got blue terrain, lighter blue roads, purple-grey rivers, icy-white hills, and ghostly or green-glow monoliths. Minimap color could be purple. Side 1 and Side 4 have blue units but should still stick out because of their grey outlines.

Third is "volcanic" for missions on planets like Mercury or maybe Mars. I used Image | Balance in Photo Editor on desert. I set Contrast 60, and Gamma 0.41. I got red-orange terrain, dark red roads, black rivers, aand yellow or black hills. Rivers have a touch of green which could be acid. But, monoliths came out too black. Minimap color could be orange. Side 2 and Side 3 should also still stick out because of their grey outlines and brighter colors.

Andy Cross

[ajcross]

Look at them at:
http://home.att.net/~andycross/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-.html

[Verdagon]

They look pretty sweet. In fact, you've got me interested I think I'll try my hand at it...