Custom Terrain bldgs, irrigation, roads and rails. Need tips!

[ZergMazter]

I'm working on modifying various members' texture assets into a compilation of my own. The original owner of the assets are Ronning=Farms, Balthasar & Supa=Railroads/Roads, Hunter= Industrial building I took from his "Hunters Roads" and stacked tall in place of mines. Ignore the traffic lights and goody hut "Camps". They are there for context. Railroad Trees I'm slowly removing. There are a about 100 of them to remove so its slow and time consuming.

The point of this texture pack is to accentuate other assets such as irrigation, farms, terrain buildings, resources, and individual tiles by giving them a cleaner look after the map or map sections begin to get cluttered with roads. I was never a fan of the vanilla squiggles and this modification aims to create space to make other assets more visible, and then enhancing them so they "pop" more at you. The change begins to occur whenever a tile that has a road/railroad is surrounded by roads/railroads. Instead of the roads/railroads intersecting the tile they will just surround it. A map full of roads/railroads will look a lot cleaner and more defined than vanilla.

Now this is the part where I ask for assistance. I'm not sure how to ask google in a way that answers my question but how can I tackle an asset that has unwanted textures all over? Example: originally the railroads had about 100 trees drawn on them and I manually removed about half of them 1 at a time, then reconstructing missing textures that the trees were intersecting. I've spent about 2 days doing them 1 at a time and was wondering if there is an easier way. I also need to work on the roads since I feel they are too cluttered but I dont think they will be as bad as trees.

Any tips would be appreciated. I'm probably looking at about a month of work if I continue this way.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Hi, Zerg. This is an ambitious project and your results look good so far. The rigid symmetry looks a lot like Civ 2. I can't think of any program that would be much help here, as the specifics of matching these graphics means that hand-crafted brute force seems the only viable way to do it. Are you working in layers to line the two up? This is one of the last great projects that no one has really nailed for the game. We have numerous terrific terrain sets and overlays, but combining them with the road system is something that hasn't been fully tackled. Good luck, and hopefully someone has some ideas to help.

 

[ZergMazter]

Hi, Zerg. This is an ambitious project and your results look good so far. The rigid symmetry looks a lot like Civ 2. I can't think of any program that would be much help here, as the specifics of matching these graphics means that hand-crafted brute force seems the only viable way to do it. Are you working in layers to line the two up? This is one of the last great projects that no one has really nailed for the game. We have numerous terrific terrain sets and overlays, but combining them with the road system is something that hasn't been fully tackled. Good luck, and hopefully someone has some ideas to help.

I've layered Ronning's irrigation file and adjusted it's position to match the roads, but only because Ronning's farms have a 3D look to them and helped to preserve it by centering them. I havent tried other irrigation art but I assume they will work fine since most dont look to be 3d. I assume if the vanilla worked then maybe most others will.

I tried to create a system so that I could do more with the roads/railroads so I wrote a number on each tile pertaining to the mid section where squares form. When I loaded it up to my surprise there seemed to be no pattern and the numbers were scrambled in no specific order. Because of this I've left it minimalistic. I'd appreciate if anyone would reveal the pattern to me if there is any.

 

[ZergMazter]

Here is another example of the railroads/roads cleaning the tiles, and also an example of texture selection by the game. There seem to be clusters of patterns but in an disorganized manner. If I modify the rails to work for one cluster it gets mixed up and messed up. Look at the farms for context.

 

[ZergMazter]

New mines. This is a simulation of people settling tiles and increasing production by working them. Not done yet. I'm going to modify resource size and position (maybe) so they lay exactly on the empty spot to the bottom of the "mined" tile. Any opinions? Is this doing it too much or does it pop and is more visible than the tiny vanilla mines? I did my best using textures that might look fitting for any era (kinda hard), and also tried my best to break repetitiveness of textures by having multiple houses to the mines.

 

[ZergMazter]

New resource position so that everything fits in 1 tile and everything is visible. The "mines" are visible, the resources, the tiles, and roads.

 

[ZergMazter]

I'm not satisfied with the railroads when you fill up the whole map. I wanna break up the pattern so that it's not all squares everywhere in non-corners/sides, but I'm unable to identify the pattern in which the game chooses which railroad tile its going to place next to whatever railroad tile. It doesnt work well unless I manage to break them up into clusters.

 

[ZergMazter]

This is what I mean:
I opened the railroads file and erased the railroad tile at bottom right of the file and the one on top of it. I wrote 1 and 2 in a descending order so Top=1 and Bottom= 2. I get this weird ass pattern that I boxed up in magenta. It looks like the pattern is in diagonal form of the same tile (represented as numbers), with spaces in between layers that alternate between 1 and 2 spaces, and 1 solid line of 1s, followed by a mixed 1&2 line, and lastly solid line of 2s. Seriously WTH:

 

[ZergMazter]

I redid the railroad pcx tile numbering but this time in order from left to right. I then tested each layer against tile #1 and turned off any tile that wasnt near the cluster of 1s. We can now begin to see some patterns emerging. Still scrambled but it might be something more workable for texture editing. I highlighted 2 of the patterns of #1 but there are plenty. I think this is it. With this I can create varied railroad textures once I refine the pattern. It's probably going to be a crap load of trial and error from this point.