Ares de Borg's Terrain Pack II: Preview Thread

[Plotinus]

Wow, if he takes on all this, it's never going to get released!

Personally I like the marshes - if there's a problem with them it's the fact that they seem to overlap the surrounding trees a bit, which looks wrong, but again is a problem with how the game handles overlays (like the rivers). This problem could be solved by simply making the marsh graphic a bit smaller, but then it might not look so good when you have several of them next to each other.

I think the jungle, as it is, is one of the best elements of this terrain set. None of these things is to scale with each other as it is, so they may as well all look as nice and detailed as they can.

 

[Keroro]

What he (Plotinus) said. I feel kinda guilty for beginning this rather harsh critique now.

What we all seem to agree about is that this terrain set, even as it is, would be the most beautifully textured set we've seen for civ3. Or civ4 for that matter.

I've always rather liked the marshes that you're using, though I would agree that they do seem to sit on top of the jungle tiles. Perhaps you could put a few trees round the edges in the marsh files themselves, then the overlap would not seem to occur. As far as the rivers go I know that it must be really hard to get the river to look good with all terrain types, and it's not so bad as it is.

I imagine that Ares is probably his own worst critic anyway, so I'm gonna shut up for a while and let him get on with it.

 

[WildWeazel]

Hmm, I haven't given any feedback for a while... a lot has changed.
Ares, since your work is so amazing, I think I can get away with being a little brutal.
I agree with Yoda about the jungle. It's the one thing I haven't liked all along. It looks too big and too busy, and the style doesn't really fit with the rest of the terrain.
I also agree with Blue Monkey on the marshes. The smooth surface and monotonous color contrasts with the surrounding terrain, making them look more like placid lakes than swamps. They could use some color variation and texture.
I think the snow looks fine as it is, but to be honest that's not how tundra should look. Realistically it should look more like Rhye's plains, but darker and perhaps with the occasional patch of snow. Find pictures of Alaska and Siberia- it's not just a vast white expanse of snow and ice:

Of course it might be impractical at this point to completely remake a terrain type, and players might be confused when their familiar artic ice is replaced with something that resembles plains (although tundra and plains cannot be adjacent on the map).
Rivers could definitely use some banks or shores.
I think you could find something interesting to do with those bonus grassland blobs.
Other than that everything is looking great. This is already the best terrain set IMO. Keep up the excellent work.

 

[Ares de Borg]

Actually, one other minor niggle I just noticed while looking at the pictures again. In the Oooddinnnn! one, the transition from the snow to the grassland doesn't look very realistic. I think that real snow tends to stop a little more abruptly than that, but the line would be very wobbly, and there would be "drifts" of snow on the snowless side to break up the transition. I can't find a good picture to illustrate this though. I wonder it it would be possible to make little snow drifts, as it were - clumps of snow, rather than just speckles of white pixels? I think this would be a bit more realistic.

Something like this?

 

[Ares de Borg]

I agree with Yoda about the jungle. It's the one thing I haven't liked all along. It looks too big and too busy, and the style doesn't really fit with the rest of the terrain.
I also agree with Blue Monkey on the marshes. The smooth surface and monotonous color contrasts with the surrounding terrain, making them look more like placid lakes than swamps. They could use some color variation and texture.
I think the snow looks fine as it is, but to be honest that's not how tundra should look. Realistically it should look more like Rhye's plains, but darker and perhaps with the occasional patch of snow.

(...)

Rivers could definitely use some banks or shores.

@all: Thanks for the comments!

@Weasel:

1. I guess I won't change the jungle anymore.
2. I guess I'll change the marshes, instead.
3. Well, I like snow... I know there isn't always snow in Siberia, but it does look better on Earth maps.

 

[Gen. Rommel]

@all: Thanks for the comments!
1. I guess I won't change the jungle anymore.
2. I guess I'll change the marshes, instead.

Excellent! The jungles look perfect as is, so it's a good thing you're keeping them around. And the fact that you're going to fiddle around with the marshes instead is even better. Keep up the great work. This is definitely going to replace every other tileset in my scenarios (although I'm already using your first tileset compilation currently anyways).

 

[Plotinus]

Something like this?

I think that is definitely an improvement on what you had before. In fact I might even make it still less speckledy if it were me, but then it might look too odd.

 

[Mirc]

Something like this?

Actually, the only current problem I have with this terrain are the strange pixels. Why are there blue pixels in the tundra? Why so many tundra islands when going from tundra to coast?

 

[Gen. Rommel]

Don't listen to them Ares! The tundra looks fine. They merely wish to bring you over to the dark side (jiz playin').

 

[vingrjoe]

Ares de Borg, you terrain gfx are looking good. Sure, there are tweaks here and there that could be made, but be careful not to let too many cooks 'stir the pot'.

 

[Partizanac]

I see pink pixels in the snow

 

[Ares de Borg]

I see pink pixels in the snow

Yeah, it's a WIP, you know...

 

[T.A JONES]

holy crap that tundra is the best yet. you should have made the Civ4 graphics engine. I can't believe this wasn't improved sooner by someone else. You make it seem possible for the whole look to be upraded to some kind of eye candy standards of 2007 but in the 2d category

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I think Civ lends itself better to a 2d engine.

 

[aaglo]

This is a rather nit-picking notion generally about tundra-graphics used in games.

Most of the time of the year, TUNDRA is not WHITE. It's the same colour as plains/swamps/grassland/whatever soil there happens to be. Now I understand that graphic-wise it's just simplest to make it white to tell easily the difference between different land types.

Tundra is just ground, that is frozen throughout the year a couple feet under the surface.

But still, that tundra by Ares looks stunning

 

[god_money]

Any progress as of late?

 

[Ares de Borg]

Any progress as of late?

Yep, but work is going slowly. But steadily.

 

[Plotinus]

Same question, repeated!

 

[Ares de Borg]

I've lost my Photoshop files and are now finishing the graphics by redoing the last version of my pcx files. Was somewhat annoying but now it works quite well. I haven't had too much time in the last months but gathered some very nice texturework that will be used to re-polish some of the terrain, especially grassland and tundra. Most of the work is done, as mentioned earlier. But I will not release it before I'm convinced to have delivered the best work possible. Expect new screenshots tomorrow.

 

[Stormrage]

Expecting!