Dune Wars Art Thread

[Deliverator]

The model is the same as before and I think Lord Tirian's texture is a big improvement over mine which is very ragged. The colour scheme is not similar to the film, but cinnamon coloured harvesters against cinnamon spice is no good for visibility and playability.

I think we have to flexible and be inspired by existing representations without being bound by them. On the harvester specifically - I'll take a look in game. Perhaps, a more sandy, less grey colour scheme would sit better, but I'll try it out. Thanks LT.

Edit: Just read your post, LT. The gloss map could be worth trying. If you want to play with the harvester more then that's good - I won't be able to check it out for about 24 hours or so. Another possible job for you might be reskinning some of the cityset stuff I have been playing around with for a more Dunish feel. I know you've done some good work on the Planetfall citysets. I'll probably put what I have up here this weekend.

 

[Ahriman]

I think both look good, but I'm pretty easy to please art-wise

I also think a lot of the "cinnamon" color of the harvester in the movie was from caked on melange-tinted sand, its not like it was build that way.

 

[davidlallen]

While suggesting art projects for LT, here is another one.

It is hard to do after so many hours designing/debugging/playing, but I was trying to get a newcomer's perspective about the mod as it is today. What would a first time player think upon playing? Two of the things that originally attracted me to 1.0 in May were the leaderhead art (Cool! I can be Paul!) and the use of Dune terminology all over (Cool! It has Axlotl tanks!) Now we have added some more cool, like worms, sandstorms, windtraps, etc.

There are a couple of things that I think a first time player would not like. One is the tech buttons. Even before the rewrite of the tech tree, the buttons were all scrambled up with many duplicates, and no theme. Another is the monotony of the map. All the terrain is within a few shades of the same brown. In particular dunes (which is land) and deep desert are practically identical, and I have to mouseover to understand the continent shapes.

I was impressed by the simple theme and style of the planetfall buttons which LT has recently worked on. I have tried to add a dozen or so new buttons over the past few releases to replace some of the least dunish ones, like the horse and cow, shepherd's crook, etc. I am not really any good at making buttons which are easy to identify. Usually I take a screenshot of something from the movie, or some clipart I find with google, and then shrink it to 64x64 and stuff it into the button template.

Would LT, or somebody, be interested in redoing the tech buttons?

 

[Deliverator]

In particular dunes (which is land) and deep desert are practically identical, and I have to mouseover to understand the continent shapes.

This was more done for the Arrakis mapscript. I think we should remove Dunes terrain from being placed in the Archipelago mapscript at all.

Planetfall has the advantage of drawing on the content of a game in Alpha Centauri that has a lot of buttons ready made. I think making buttons from available images is fine - it's just some source images will work better than others. Resizing algorithms also vary which can affect the quality. I have been collecting concept art for Dune, some of which can definitely be used.

 

[davidlallen]

I think we should remove Dunes terrain from being placed in the Archipelago mapscript at all.

That terrain is vanilla "desert". It was hijacked to be dunes in the arrakis mapscript.

Perhaps we should review the basic land terrain types and decide if there is enough variety in their game mechanics. But we should also keep in mind graphic variety; I think the map looks kind of monochromatic. The spots of color from the plants are nice, but the map doesn't "pop" somehow when I ctrl-z the way that FFH or Fury Road maps pop.

 

[Ajidica]

Well, deserts are sort of monochromatic. One of the few things I liked about the 1984 Dune is how you get the feeling of a huge expanse of sand with very little out there.

 

[Deliverator]

I agree that it is appropriate for the desert to have a restricted palette, but I also agree that the map could be more interesting. Personally, I would like to have some more interesting craggy rock formations around on the land - but I'm not quite sure how to achieve that yet.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Planetfall has the advantage of drawing on the content of a game in Alpha Centauri that has a lot of buttons ready made.

Yep, this. Almost all symbols were at least partially lifted from SMAC - they really established sort of an dictionary with a very consistent use of symbols, so I mainly just had to "formulate" the idea in the SMAC symbol language. Plus, the style of the tech buttons was really made by Rubin after long experimenting.

Cheers, LT.

 

[davidlallen]

Here are the original graphics from the buttons I have made. Many of them are screencaps from the movie/miniseries. I cut a small piece from the picture, pushed the contrast/brightness, and shrank it. Some of them, like the stone burner or the underground reservoir, I never used for anything. If it helps, please use them.

The zipfile is at this link (22 MB). I will leave it up for a while, let me know if you download it, and I will probably delete it afterwards.

 

[Deliverator]

After a day of figuring out how heightmaps work I've managed to find a fix for the issue with units hovering at sea level when moving onto ocean tiles. This is much better than before because I won't have to edit the height of units in the NIF to compensate. I'll just have to undo the height adjustments in the spice, worm, worm rider and harvester before I can release this. I will also experiment at some point with making the land areas a bit more uneven and rocky looking.

I've downloaded the button source images above. Building sweep and buttons are next on the agenda.

 

[davidlallen]

I've managed to find a fix for the issue with units hovering at sea level when moving onto ocean tiles. [...] I've downloaded the button source images above. Building sweep and buttons are next on the agenda.

Excellent, on both counts. I am not sure I can help on the button project, because the xml part is trivial, but let me know if I can assist. This is one of the biggest new user turnoffs I can see, so it's important.

 

[keldath]

ahh great work deliverator!

ive experimented with the high at some point - by mistake i did huge huge peaks - it was funny...

 

[koma13]

I've managed to find a fix for the issue with units hovering at sea level when moving onto ocean tiles.

Any chance we can fix heights for civilopedia units too? Some of them aren't even visible.

 

[Deliverator]

This will make that easier because there won't be so many NIF height adjustments.

 

[keldath]

Any chance we can fix heights for civilopedia units too? Some of them aren't even visible.

cant it be done via civ4unitart.xml?

in one of the lines there?

 

[Deliverator]

Unit scale can be adjusted via the XML, but not the height. The reason some units appear underground is because I adjusted them to appear on the "sea bed" since I have changed the heightmaps this is no longer necessary and can be undone.

 

[koma13]

Hmm, but what is with thopters? The problem is that I want to use these unit models in the homeworld screen. But currently that doesn't work very well because every unit has a different position. I want to have them centered. I can try doing this in python but it's a tiresome work.

 

[davidlallen]

I think the idea is that Deliverator can fix most of the dune-o-pedia "bugs" by sending new nifs where everything appears at a uniform height. Deliverator, please do confirm that every unit is visible in the pedia when you release your update.

 

[Deliverator]

We need to fix the flying units anyway - they are flying at a variety of heights. The height of flying units can be changed in one of the XML files, I found on my travels. We should get everything consistent - but I'm not sure I'll be able to fix everything in the one hit. Getting stuff looking right in the pedia is lower down the priority list.

I'm doing tech tree buttons which is taking me much longer than expected - it could take a week given other commitments.

 

[davidlallen]

The only xml handle I know about is the unit domain. But we cannot flip this back and forth to make the unit appear at a better height in the pedia.

Which units do you plan to correct the nif, and how can I correct the xml in parallel?