[Art] Community Art for "Carthage" Milestone

[WildWeazel]

Since we're talking about the next release now, what do you say we add some graphics into the mix? Personally I'm a big fan of Plotinus' civilian units, so since he offered I vote to use a settler and worker of his. Cities strike me as something we should give more thought, since we've already discussed features that are not present in existing artwork. If Kyriakos wants to make a dedicated Carthage set, maybe it should include eg. walls for each size.

There's also a bit of technical overhead with adding a new category of assets, so we should figure out where such files should live before we have too many. I had tried during my reorganization WIP to put everything into one directory structure to be packaged with the release but didn't quite get it working.

 

[Quintillus]

Since we're talking about the next release now, what do you say we add some graphics into the mix? Personally I'm a big fan of Plotinus' civilian units, so since he offered I vote to use a settler and worker of his. Cities strike me as something we should give more thought, since we've already discussed features that are not present in existing artwork. If Kyriakos wants to make a dedicated Carthage set, maybe it should include eg. walls for each size.

There's also a bit of technical overhead with adding a new category of assets, so we should figure out where such files should live before we have too many. I had tried during my reorganization WIP to put everything into one directory structure to be packaged with the release but didn't quite get it working.

I think it's about the right time. Kyriakos pinged me about when we'd be ready for art about a month ago, and at the time I wrote,

Adding some graphics is still on the list for the "Carthage" milestone. We've just been juggling other things first [listed things that are mostly done a month later]. Graphics might start moving before long. The technical challenges will be figuring out how to detect custom community graphics, and how to package them with the game. Once those are done, in theory it should be relatively straightforward to gradually replace the original graphics.

As you mentioned, for each category there will be some work, but I don't see why the first category, whether that's a unit or city graphics, can't be among the next group of things we start working on. We'll definitely want to fix https://github.com/C7-Game/Prototype/issues/153 "Copy all resources at once in Git Actions build" first, but that's the only prerequisite that comes to mind right now.

The other items we could do are Tile Visibility, Roads, more of the architectural improvements that aren't related to art assets, and bug-reducing.

We could start with Plotinus's civilians, as you mentioned, and there's even a Carthaginian Settler and Worker at the top of this post.

As for cities, there is one follow-up question I have:

I am fine with any already available (for civ3) sets of mine being used (you just have to ask, since I'd not wish to have conflicting styles, ie older sets of mine there).

If new sets are needed, I can make a few. It'd be really great if there is some kind of crowdfunding, since times are rather hand financially here too ^_^

Which ones would you like to have used/not used? Looking through your extensive library, some seem to correlate nicely to civilizations we've added (though we can swap those out easily since it's just city lists, only Carthage and maybe Babylon are sorta fixed). But the ones that correlate most directly to the ancient civs we have aren't necessarily the newest.

Some that match to civs, or kinda close to civs:

Babylon: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/fantasy-town-series-babylonian.15133/
Persia: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/new-series-ancient-persian.15869/ (not exactly to Carthage but I like it)
Greece: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/five-culture-ancient-sets.629287/ (et. al. Also https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/new-series-ancient-greek.15844/, but I think I do like the newer one better, and the newer one is the one you mentioned in post #2)
Aztec: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/five-culture-medieval-sets.634617/ (also mentioned in post #2, we could swap America for Aztec or just add Aztec, but as a milestone civ it's sorta odd they're missing)

My guess would be based on post #2 that the Greece/Aztec picks would be the first choices, but I'm curious if you have a preference for one that might be good for Carthage as a civ. If only we'd named this milestone "Celts", the answer might be easier!

Another possibility is that I see you have a couple of barbarian camps, specifically at https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-series-germanic-barbarian-camp.438225/#post-10843455 and https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...gol-yurt-barbarian-camp.466254/#post-11605299 . Since barbarians are a large part of C7 at this point, that would also be a good candidate for early custom graphics.

Edit: Just realized that another good option could be the Roman set at https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/new-series-ancient-roman.16858/ . Definitely want to get the thumbs-up first on any of these, though!

 

[Quintillus]

I heard back from Kyriakos via PM (the source link probably will only work for Kyriakos and I):

I think that the newest sets of mine will make more sense, primarily because I DO plan to make more in the same style. So I can work on a Carthage and a Babylon set in that style ^_^

by newest I mean:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/five-culture-ancient-sets.629287/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/five-culture-medieval-sets.634617/

You can use terrain gfx, and I might make some new ones too. On that note, the "fantasy series" "city sets" really are more usable as bonus terrain gfx/terrain buildings, but imo they would require some touch-up work to fit with my recent work.

So I think we're well set-up for making a good start on adding some community art. With a couple units, a city set, and some terrain buildings, we can go beyond the "prove we can ship assets" goal for Carthage and start having a unique appearance.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hello
Some early work (today) for the Babylon city set. It will look a lot better by the end.

I am creating a Carthage one as well.

 

[WildWeazel]

Getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, but that blue made me think: civ-colored cities?

 

[Kyriakos]

Getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, but that blue made me think: civ-colored cities?

Having the option to use part of the palette for civ colors won't hurt anyone (other than the programmers who have to code it ). That said, it might also make very culture-specific landmarks difficult to use in cities.

 

[WildWeazel]

True. I'd really like to avoid needing indexed colors, but it does make team-coloring a lot simpler. We'll have to look into how modern games do it. I'm assuming they have an additional layer on the texture that can be recolored.