Improved Graphics for CIV

[ten_yen]

First, I want to say I love this mod. I never comment on anything, but I want to make sure that this is addressed to ensure that this is a mod that reaches its full potential. My only problem leaderhead wise was Joao. The shading is far superior, but his beard and mustache look a little odd. The mustache is a little polygonal, which looks odd when he turns his head. His beard is what gets me though: it looks like he painted his face in some places and attached a beard to the rest. It might need some readjustment.

Otherwise, great mod! Joao is just my personal favorite, so I wanted to make sure he looks the part.

 

[The Capo]

Well, its the same on my end. There's no color or shade difference between coast and ocean.

Oh, that's strange because it looks like there is in Chuggi's screens. Does anybody know why this is happening?

 

[kevinman4404]

@Chuggi, here is an image what the water looks like (even the lakes) whenever I put in a custom, same-sized .dds that I made: EDIT: Rhye reports this problem too, I think

I have a feeling all the graphics pros here are using photoshop- that may indeed be why I am getting that problem, especially, as you mentioned, because it doesn't convert(?)

I think I have photoshop somewhere, though I haven't used it in a while, I'll find the plugin and give it a try

As for the light forest, thanks for giving it a try I don't remember if I succeeded in the coding, but either importing via coding and trying to adjust it to the old scheme or going into 3dsmax and importing/deleting oldtress/attaching new ones didn't work. For some reason whenever I take the trees into 3ds max the trees lose all their transparency underneath the texture, as you can see in my screenshot above in one of the forests. You, being a graphic guru, would probably know what to do with that.

So what I'd ask is if you could try modifying the current deciduous forest so that it is skimpier-looking and orangey (as close as possible to the colon. tree), it would be greatly appreciated. This could probably even be done with modifying the tree texture alone, or making a copy of the old one, modifying it and assigning it to the new "light forest" in nifviewer. This would be one amazing feature. EDIT: you're a lot more experienced than me, but I'll try my hand at this and if I can achieve anything in this regard I'll let you know

I would also like to point out that, unlike the light forest, the deciduous forest can be transferred over to bts no problem. As you can see in the screenshot, it's pretty nice- probably brighter than the stuff you have now but that could easily be toned down. It's a little more detailed.

With the coral, are you able to put it underwater? Does coral often come above the water? If coral doesn't usually come above water, that would be the only reason I reccomend a flat, rainbow coloured texture, unless you're able to somehow stick it below the water. Either way, I look forward to it

@Capo: I don't know why it's happening but I am not getting this problem. I can easily tell them apart in-game.

Keep up the good work Chuggi!

 

[grossm2]

I'm really excited that you've taken an interest in the reef idea. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

On the issue of what exactly Civ-coral should look like in game, I see a couple of different directions it could go. After posting the idea, I did a quick Google image search to see what an aerial view of coral might look like from above the water and unfortunately, the answer is not very much (see spoiler).

Spoiler :

This is the most interesting aerial view of coral I could find.

The mottled appearance of coral from this view reminds me a little bit of how hills look in-game ...

I was relatively unimpressed with the view of coral from above the water, so I got to thinking: how important is a realism of scale in a game where livestock rival the Great Pyramid in size? Personally, I don't think it's all that important. I think Chuggi mentioned something about pink grass coral (image in spoiler) ...

Spoiler :

This is the sort of image I think Chuggi had in mind. I could definitely see a small "forest" of (hopefully swaying) pink "grass" as being a very reasonable and attractive in game depiction of a coral reef.

I'm sure that whatever Chuggi decides (or has decided) on will be amazing and turn out to be a great improvement over the vast expanses of empty sea we have now. I'm no artist, so Chuggi, I trust your aesthetic. Can't wait.

 

[The Capo]

I think a mix of purple orange and white would make it look really cool. And you could use different looking coral as well. One kinda snakey/grasslike, one thick (like cauliflower) and another sort of like ruffage or whatever (like romaine lettuce). Just combine them all into one little tile, I think it would look cool and bring some vibrance to the map. Of course give it a blue/underwater look.

 

[Chuggi]

@ avain - Yep, I added the black sheep in there.

First, I want to say I love this mod. I never comment on anything, but I want to make sure that this is addressed to ensure that this is a mod that reaches its full potential. My only problem leaderhead wise was Joao. The shading is far superior, but his beard and mustache look a little odd. The mustache is a little polygonal, which looks odd when he turns his head. His beard is what gets me though: it looks like he painted his face in some places and attached a beard to the rest. It might need some readjustment.

Otherwise, great mod! Joao is just my personal favorite, so I wanted to make sure he looks the part.

Just checked him out in game, and you're completely right. I accidently cleared the alpha channel when I was updating the texture, which is why the beard and moustache don't blend it. But it's fixed now, and I'll upload a new version tonight.

Oh, that's strange because it looks like there is in Chuggi's screens. Does anybody know why this is happening?

That's for the next version.




@ kevinman4404 - I'm guessing with the water it may have something to do with the alpha channel - it could be that you're converter isn't set up to keep the alpha channel? The settings I usually use for .dds are:

• DXT3 (Explicit Alpha) but if your texture uses no alpha, then you can use DXT1 (No Alpha) and the filesize will be smaller.

• Generate 2 MIP maps. (or 3, or none - depending on how sharp you want the texture to look in game).

You should leave the other options as their default, I think. With the trees it could be the same thing, or if the texture is unmodified it's definietly in the material settings in NifSkope. It should be easily fixed by adding an Alpha Property.

I still have some ideas on how to get the trees from colonization to show up - so far I have only tried using Nifskope and Scene Viewer, but I think that if I do a clean import/export from 3ds max I might be able to get it to work. I know you said this didn't work but it's worth a shot, I guess.

With the coral, it does occasionally show up above water but most of it is underwater. I'm pretty sure I can get it to go underwater just by lowering the position in Nifskope, and then I think the 3D look will be really effective.

I'm really excited that you've taken an interest in the reef idea. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

On the issue of what exactly Civ-coral should look like in game, I see a couple of different directions it could go. After posting the idea, I did a quick Google image search to see what an aerial view of coral might look like from above the water and unfortunately, the answer is not very much (see spoiler).

Spoiler :

This is the most interesting aerial view of coral I could find.

The mottled appearance of coral from this view reminds me a little bit of how hills look in-game ...

I was relatively unimpressed with the view of coral from above the water, so I got to thinking: how important is a realism of scale in a game where livestock rival the Great Pyramid in size? Personally, I don't think it's all that important. I think Chuggi mentioned something about pink grass coral (image in spoiler) ...

Spoiler :

This is the sort of image I think Chuggi had in mind. I could definitely see a small "forest" of (hopefully swaying) pink "grass" as being a very reasonable and attractive in game depiction of a coral reef.

I'm sure that whatever Chuggi decides (or has decided) on will be amazing and turn out to be a great improvement over the vast expanses of empty sea we have now. I'm no artist, so Chuggi, I trust your aesthetic. Can't wait.

I was thinking more along the lines of the second picture, but the first pic is useful as well because I can make the plane underneath the coral have the "mottled" appearance.

It might be possible to get it to sway as well, if I use the forest nif as a base. Also, do you think the coral should go on ocean tiles as well as coastal tiles? I read that coral grew better in shallow waters, but the vast ocean is a little empty - it needs something.

 

[grossm2]

I'm about to go to bed so I'll try to do a little research tomorrow, but I think you're right about the shallow waters. I was thinking coast and, if possible, ocean tiles adjacent to coast but I don't really know if that can be coded via XML. Either way, I don't really mind the idea of seeing it out in the middle of the ocean as long as the growth rate is low enough that the entire thing isn't covered by the end of the game. I don't want to overload you with requests but another idea I had for an ocean feature was deep sea trenches ...
But like I said, I'll do a little research tomorrow and let you know what I find.

 

[Chuggi]

Sea trenches are possible. I've had some progress with the colonization trees - after a lot of tweaking I got them to display with the correct textures and everything, but now when they are generated on hill tiles they won't appear on top of the hill. Kind of hard to explain, but imagine a few leaves sticking out of the side of a hill.

An easier idea might be to do what you said, and modify the textures on the deciduous trees so that they look like the trees from col, and mix the new ones up with the evergreens.

 

[The Capo]

If coral tiles are going to give extra food (I think somebody mentioned this) you should probably make them lose some money, and I would say if they are going to provide yields at all I would keep them on costal tiles only. I mean you really can't have coral showing in open ocean, its far too deep for that to make sense. Plus most coral reefs are close to the coastline anyway.

That would be my suggestion at least.

 

[Chuggi]

I wasn't going to make the features do anything other than look pretty.

 

[The Capo]

Good, that's what I was hoping you'd do. I only mentioned the yields because someone mentioned in a prior post that there were more "fish/food" in these coral areas. I think the less changes to the gameplay the better.

 

[Chuggi]

I retextured the deciduous trees a little to make them look a bit like the light forest, and added them as some variety for the conifer trees :

 

[GeoModder]

Good, that's what I was hoping you'd do. I only mentioned the yields because someone mentioned in a prior post that there were more "fish/food" in these coral areas. I think the less changes to the gameplay the better.

If you're refering to my comments, read again. Increasing the yields is something done in xml, to see frolicking dolphins and shrimp on a coral plot is pure aesthetics.

 

[The Capo]

Okay, I must have misunderstood you then.

 

[Chuggi]

I have to go to work now, but I have the next version ready to upload for when I get back. Changelog:

2.0

- Fixes CTD with grid button.
- Fixes problem with the tundrablend.dds (thanks R8XFT)
- Fixes the alpha channel on Joao. (thanks ten_yen)
- Improves grass and plains using seZ's textures from Fury Road.
- Improves a lot of the detail textures, I have used some from Colonization and made some new ones for the grass and desert textures.
- Ocean and coastal tiles are now easier to differentiate.
- Adds a new variety of trees to the temperate areas.

 

[grossm2]

Okay, I did a little research, and by research I mean I looked it up on Wikipedia. This is what they had to say:

Although corals are found both in temperate and tropical waters, shallow-water reefs are formed only in a zone extending at most from 30°N to 30°S of the equator. Tropical corals do not grow at depths of over 50 m (165 ft). Temperature has less of an effect on the distribution of tropical coral, but it is generally accepted that they do not exist in waters below 18 °Celsius, and that the optimum temperature is 26-27° Celsius for most coral reefs. The reefs in the Persian gulf however have coral adapted to changing temperatures of 13°Celsius in winter and 38°Celsius in summer, thus having significantly colder and hotter ambient environments respectively than most coral reefs. Also, deep water coral is more exceptional still as it can exist at greater depths and colder temperatures. Although deep water corals also form reefs, very little is known about them.

Since tropical coral is what people are most familiar with, restricting your Civ-coral to coast or tiles adjacent to coast sounds like it's probably the best idea, but ultimately I'd say it's your call.

In case you're interested, from what I was able to (quickly) learn about deep water coral, it is typically of the stony coral variety, which apparently looks like this:

Spoiler :

And for your consideration, a NASA image depicting the worldwide locations of coral reefs.

Spoiler :

Of particular interest, I think, is the relative absence of coral reef from the east coast of South America and west coast of Africa. According to Wikipedia, this is due to "upwelling and strong coastal currents." I thought some of this might be useful to have on record here in case of some possible future mapscript collaboration between you and Cephalo (I monitor the PerfectWorld thread daily for updates ... it's one of my favorite scripts).

Looking forward to v2.0

 

[kevinman4404]

Nice work with the trees, I look forward to your release At glance, it's looking better and better

Good luck with the import/export, let me know how it goes

I just found photoshop, I'll give it a try and check the settings

Kevin

 

[walbeek]

...but the vast ocean is a little empty - it needs something.

The vast ocean IS empty. Ever been on a ocean-liner or in an airplane over the ocean? There really is nothing.

In older maps they used seamonsters to fill up the space. That might be a nice gimmick, but not more than just a joke. (don't think I would like it if you actually did so).

The corals would be a nice touch but only in shallow water in tropical regions, like you said before. But I think "the vast ocean" should remain void of "gimmicks".

 

[The Capo]

The vast ocean IS empty. Ever been on a ocean-liner or in an airplane over the ocean? There really is nothing.

In older maps they used seamonsters to fill up the space. That might be a nice gimmick, but not more than just a joke. (don't think I would like it if you actually did so).

The corals would be a nice touch but only in shallow water in tropical regions, like you said before. But I think "the vast ocean" should remain void of "gimmicks".

I agree, leave the oceans empty.

Also, as for the sea monsters, I think there is actually a mod out there that has sea monsters/creatures that attack your ships much like the animals on land, so there is something available for this option anyway.

 

[Chuggi]

@ grossm2 - Thanks for the info, I'm still uncertain of what to do with the coral, but it will probably end up in coastal tropical waters. For the ocean, I'll probably have some small features, maybe some icebergs or rocks, or sandbanks.

Also, PerfectWorld is now one of my favourite scripts - I played a game of civ today on a large map generated with PerfectWorld, and it really feels different to regular civ maps. The peaks play a more important role, blocking units and such, and I like the more natural cold areas, much better than an imaginary cut off point normal civ mapscripts have.


@ Kevin - Still no luck with the Colonization trees exporting properly, but the new trees in v2.0 are a good substitute for now.