ARCHIVED: WIPs - Interfaces & Static PCXs

[Kyriakos]

Not another spider woman set, but i was wondering if any of my towns can be used in this

 

[Balthasar]

I'm so glad you asked, Kyriakos.

Many of your new cities remind me of the Ancient cities of Barsoom (Mars) which is a big part of our scenario. For instance, take a look at these images of Barsoom cities: >here< , >here<, and >here<.

Except for some very tall spires, and a few mushroom-shaped buildings, many of the cities seen in these images look just like the ancient cities you make. That is not a mistake: it is written that the ancient Barsoomians were among the first extra-terrestrial visitors to earth, and that many of the Lost Cities, such as Mu, are connected to these visits.

Perhaps you could make some fantasy cities along these lines for us? We could use two versions: the first being as I've described, and another of the same sorts of cities in Ruins - these would be the "lost cities" of our underground world.....

I am prepared to answer any questions you might have about this, and welcome your valuable help....

 

[Kyriakos]

I might be able to make that, if i ever finish the industrial greek set...

But i will need better pics than these im afraid.

 

[Balthasar]

But i will need better pics than these im afraid.

There are no better pics than these; it's fantasy. The idea is to make a fairly standard ancient city with walls as you've already done. Inside the walls the towers of the city are visible as a collection of spires and other buildings with both familiar and unfamiliar shapes.

In the Barsoom Glossary they are described thusly:

The building styles appear to be domes (often burnished), towers which are ornamented with elaborate carvings from the fifth story to their crowns, minarets, large low buildings and personal residences built on hydraulic systems that will elevate the dwelling at night for the protection of the occupants. In the residential areas there is much rooftop living, often under silk canopies. Construction finishes occasionally embrace vivid colors such as the Scarlet Tower.
Many Barsoomian cities are surrounded by defensive walls--the walls of Kaol, for example, are 75 feet in height and smooth as glass. Walled cities often have businesses or dwellings embedded in the immense fortifications.

For our purposes, focus on the shapes: walls, domes, towers, minarets; as I said, mushroom-shaped buildings would not be out of place in such a city.

Smaller towns and villages are less well described, but you could safely assume that they are like those on the planet Tattooine in Star Wars (as seen >here< and >here<, for example).

 

[Kyriakos]

Well i'll see what i can do.

Would you use any of the other sets? I might still make an industrial french one.

 

[Balthasar]

Well i'll see what i can do.

Thank you. I'll be interested to see what you come up with.

Would you use any of the other sets? I might still make an industrial french one.

As you know, we're using elements of both of your old english sets in our english cities:

View attachment 240848

As you can see, it came out very reddish. I was trying for dark roofs....

 

[Kyriakos]

I cannot see it, but i know which you mean and they are horribly outdated.

But you choose anyway

 

[Kyriakos]

You might be interested in this resource pack i just posted, since it is of the industrial era:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9504636#post9504636

 

[Balthasar]

I do like those, Kyriakos, especially the gaslight. I'll see what I can fit in. Thank-you.

 

[Blue Monkey]

To kick off the process of making cities here are some ideas for discussion. This is the public continuation of private discussions to help me develop models & assemble them into a set of cities.

I'd like initially to make a "generic city" set that can be used for all the Barsoomian civs. If that works out then, given time, more specific sets can be added. Maybe by geographic types - ie sets for mountainous regions, jungles, desert, etc. Matching architecture to environment as a basic guide.

Taking Frazetta's style as a basic guide, but adding other building types as well.

To construct the cities I'd like to make individual buildings then arrange the models once there's an acceptable collection. So below are some concepts of basic types. As usual I've got a wealth of images with many variations as well as other options.

images

Spoiler :

Notes On Individual Buildings

Basic concept - an architecture suitable to a wind-swept arid and dying planet.

• Teardrop - a frequent shape of the taller towers. Elongated to avoid looking too arabesque.
• Thrust - plainer. Perhaps with a rooftop pavilion.
• Mushroom - either enclosed or as a "parasol" pavilion.
• Spider - ground-level loggia. Maybe a public building with an open gathering place.
• Pyramid - not in strict Egyptian or Mayan style.
• Arena - got to have a place for those deadly Jetan contests.
• Homes - resemble the eggs of the Red Martians, giving a sense of security. Also to weather sandstorms. Inspired by the stone house on the left, but more like that on the right. could evolve into the oblate teardrops in the Frazetta cities. Perhaps with a rooftop terrace or verandah to enjoy the balmy evenings.

The smaller cities could be mostly houses with a single central tower. Then more towers added for the intermediate sizes. The largest size would have the greatest variety of styles, and the arena.

I'm not really tied to any particular buildings or architectural style at this point. But obviously there needs to be some conceptual outline to construct buildings & preview the wips. Once there are a handful of models to work with, then city layouts and walls can come into the discussion.

 

[Balthasar]

Don't forget that Barsoomian Residences are described as having hydraulic lifts, to protect them from attack. That link includes other construction tips as well. While you're at it, you can design the Scarlet and Gold Towers of Helium and Lesser Helium, which can be added as Resources (50 pixels high).

 

[Blue Monkey]

I'm going to concentrate on the cities for now. Improvements/resources can come later. "too many irons in the fire..."

Thanks for the link, some useful details. Some of the towers could be interpreted as lifted residences. I was thinking of the "houses" more as residents for the non-elite. But if you want them with hydraulic lifts & in the raised position the "spider is one possibility. Or we could go with a Deanish style (balconies & oblate sphere), something like what the Indian structure would look like if it were only towers & dome (no walls), or something even wilder like an egg lifted by eccentric tetrahedrons.

What about the other suggestions - any preferences? Or something you'd like to see that I didn't include?

The early wips previews will just be renders with simple monochromatic textures. But if you have some preference for color schemes let me know. Also, what sort of ground do you want used as a base? I can make a base plane pretty quickly from a terrain pcx, for example.

 

[Balthasar]

I think you were on the right track back in post 250. I like that Frazetta city on the right; especially the huge thick defensive walls. It comes closest to my idea of the feudal/modern/ancient nature of Barsoom. Tempting as it is to channel Dean, his style might be more at home in, say, Pellucidar...

As to textures and colors, I think Frazetta's got that right too. A to the base, don't worry about that; I imagine that these cities are built up on Tells like ancient terran cities were.

It might help to know that our civs fit into the following culture groups:

1 LOG, ESS, BC, GU, Britain (British)
2. Selenites, Vril-ya (Lunar)
3. Amoz, Atlantans (Ancient)
4. Cthulhu, Firstborn, Mahar (Underground)
5. All other Barsoom (Martian)

The Mahars could be moved into Ancient cities (especially on Barsoom), on the predicate that those ancient cities might have been Barsoomian in the first place.

Food for thought.....

 

[Blue Monkey]

You mention things that are important to the project as a whole but are more extensive than what I'm willing to tackle at this point. OTOH, it does help to put them in context. This is my first attempt at making a city set. I'm only volunteering to make a Barsoomian city set at this point. I want to make a single era set (middle era?), see how it looks in-game, then work out how to extrapolate the prior and later eras.

Specifically I need to know -

• Most importantly: which of the building types I suggested work for you?
  Spoiler :

  Even though I've included other artist's images each basic type comes from my observation of the Frazetta cities - including many of his other B&W Barsoom images. Knowing that, I can create a variety of cities incorporating many different buildings that share Frazetta's aesthetic style without slavishly duplicating those two images. For example there can be more than one teardrop tower - using taller or more elaborate ones for the larger cities. Another example is what I'm calling the spider tower. It's extrapolated from his use of flying buttress type arches.
• Thanks for answering the question re color schemes. I'd still like to work with some base terrain for a color scheme
  Spoiler :

  . It's important both for the spaces between buildings & to help match the textures to the terrain so they blend well. Especially since they are ancient cities that will have used local materials & been weathered by local conditions. Putting them on tells is no problem. But it means that there will be some slopes showing between buildings on the outskirts. And those slopes should match the surrounding terrain. I think I'd need to see terrain pcx files for whatever tiles are going to be where cities can be built or pre-placed.

I'd rather get those two things defined so I don't go down a dead-end path & lose a lot of man-hours to something that's just not right from the get go. I have someone in mind who may be willing to help with the individual models. But I'd need to be very clear about what I want built.

 

[tom2050]

They are very cool looking cities.

There is the tower of helium model on google you might be able to use for something as well.

 

[Balthasar]

1st question: Mushroom, teardrop, dome, thrust, home.

>Here< is an interesting passage regarding (lesser) Helium city life, which might give you some ideas.

2nd question: rusty brown will match everything. You've seen the map. Here's a Barsoomian plains tile to work with:

View attachment Barsoom Plains Tile.pcx

It's been cropped from the lxpgc pcx, so the color and index should be exactly right.


EDIT: Tom, that tower is all wrong, as are the towers portrayed >here<. Burroughs describes the Yellow and Scarlet Towers as being a mile high, one in Greater Helium and the other in Lesser Helium, 75 miles away. Burroughs himself confuses them, placing the Scarlet Tower in Greater Helium in John Carter of Mars and in Lesser Helium in Chessmen of Mars.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Thanks, Balthasar. Both for the advice & the link to primary source descriptions. I'm going to try my hand at the mushroom first, since I have already done some preliminary tinkering to see if I could even tackle this project. Don't expect to see anything for a few days. But hopefully you'll soon see a wip here of a Barsoomian tower. The house will be second since it's relatively simple - a morphed sphere and a staircase.

A couple of last questions as I dive into modeling -

• Homes - I'm thinking a progression, to match city growth. First a simple version. Then two with the lift: one version at ground level & one raised. I'm not sure what you envision the lift looking like. A central pillar? Vertical "legs"? Some more exotic shape?
  
• From what you said about the terrain it sounds like there are no major changes from the pcx files in the early version of the scenario you sent me, right? In that case I can work with the whole terrain set - maybe incorporating elements of the hill set for the tell itself.
  
• I'm not sure what you mean by the "dome" since I didn't use that label. Do you mean the one in the Frazetta city on the right (post 250) that is like a fat oblate sphere with the gold tip? I think of those as a variation of the teardrop, since it's just a distortion of the same model minus the tower. Which would make it relatively simple to add into the mix.

The smallest size city can be simple homes and a couple of mushroom towers with height variations. Next size: model the thrust tower and elaborate variants of the mushroom and add them to the mix. Third add in teardrops & some arches along with lifts for the homes. Finally more ornate versions of everything plus the arena for the Helium sized cities. Once we've got some decent looking cities then we can design some appropriate walls for the fortified versions.

 

[Balthasar]

I concur with all of your plans; sounds good to me.

Neat trick with the bullet points. I think I'll try it:

• Homes - a central pillar, definitely.
  
  
• Correct - same terrain
  
  
• Yes, a half sphere. Doesn't have to be pointed on top, tho....
  

The homes are described in A Princess of Mars thusly:

"As he moved with the throng in the parklike canyon of the thoroughfare the life of an awakening Martian city was in evidence around him. Houses, raised high upon their slender metal columns for the night were dropping gently toward the ground. Among the flowers upon the scarlet sward which lies about the buildings children were already playing, and comely women laughing and chatting with their neighbours as they culled gorgeous blossoms for the vases within doors.

The pleasant "kaor" of the Barsoomian greeting fell continually upon the ears of the stranger as friends and neighbours took up the duties of a new day.

The district in which he had landed was residential - a district of merchants of the more prosperous sort. Everywhere were evidences of luxury and wealth. Slaves appeared upon every housetop with gorgeous silks and costly furs, laying them in the sun for airing. Jewel-encrusted women lolled even thus early upon the carven balconies before their sleeping apartments. Later in the day they would repair to the roofs when the slaves had arranged couches and pitched silken canopies to shade them from the sun."

My crude rendition:

 

[Blue Monkey]

The central pillar will be relatively simple to model. That's an interesting image. The style looks more Googie than Frazetta to me though. If I base the later homes on the simple oblate egg ones they'll blend well with the mushroom & teardrop towers. & I can be suggestive of the same engineering practices with the central pillar.

Thanks for the description. I had forgotten about the gardens. I can probably find room for some "reddery" in the open spaces of the cities. I vaguely remember someone making some autumnal forests that I can CnP from.

Once I accomplish the October downloads announcement I'll start work on Barsoom. Gonna need more

 

[Balthasar]

The style is more like "stoner Gimp on Saturday night". You'd never see the detail at Civ scale anyway. The idea was to indicate the central pillar (which should have been much slimmer) and the balconies. Your stuff will smoke me (no pun). I'd ignore the flora & fauna too, if I were you. Go with the Frazetta style and you can't go wrong.