New map graphics (such as city sets) for the Civ3 Future project

[Kyriakos]

Here is some early wip on a Babylon set (updated pic in post #4)



Meant for the community project (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/carthage-preview-2-now-available.677929/)

I will also be creating a Carthage set.

You can help with concept art and suggestions

 

[Quintillus]

Looking good so far. Do you create them natively at Civ3 resolutions, or at a larger resolution and then scale them down? Civ3 resolution will work, of course, for Civ3 as well, but one of the benefits of having a new engine is we could put higher-resolution graphics in the game as well. Puppeteer believes this may be as straightforward as adding them, and then you simply get more detail when you zoom in.

 

[Kyriakos]

Looking good so far. Do you create them natively at Civ3 resolutions, or at a larger resolution and then scale them down? Civ3 resolution will work, of course, for Civ3 as well, but one of the benefits of having a new engine is we could put higher-resolution graphics in the game as well. Puppeteer believes this may be as straightforward as adding them, and then you simply get more detail when you zoom in.

These are rendered in civ3 resolution. While it is a good idea to include zoom-in, you should consider that unless many new gfx are made (thinking primarily of units) in larger resolution, it will look rather strange when zoomed-in.
While I could create these with more details (eg 200% the current size), the issue is about how viable it is to expect enough new gfx to fill everything when zoomed in.
My suspicion is that if the plan is to use all-new gfx for everything (so that they can be zoomed in and look great), this will certainly require some sort of crowdfunding to pay the artists since it is a lot of work.

Otherwise, an idea is to just zoom-in current resolution. I think this is a 200% of my French medieval metropolis:

And this is the Byzantine metropolis, in an actual Civ3 mod zoomed-in to 200%:

(land terrain is by Vuldacon)

While creating 200% size new map gfx is doable, I am not sure if it is so for units (since there are so many more of those...)

 

[Kyriakos]

What do you think?



Not sure if Blue (da-ba-de da-ba-dae) is such a good idea in a city set.

 

[Kyriakos]

Some changes. Not near completion:

 

[Kyriakos]

That bad, huh?

 

[Kyriakos]

I finally bought a new monitor (21,5'' 1920x1080), so at some point I will create the set.

 

[Ozymandias]

I finally bought a new monitor (21,5'' 1920x1080), so at some point I will create the set.

 

[Kyriakos]

I can't say I like how this looks. Everything is so tiny that it creates problems



For some reason it makes me think of posh watches (maybe due to overload)

 

[Vuldacon]

For some reason it makes me think of posh watches (maybe due to overload)

Striving to show colors and details at Civ Scale can become "overload" ... too much can become artificial in appearance.

 

[Kyriakos]

Striving to show colors and details at Civ Scale can become "overload" ... too much can become artificial in appearance.

I am adjusting to using a large full HD monitor. It will happen ^_^

 

[Kyriakos]

It will still require serious work, but it is starting to look better:

Ultimately I will have to test it with civ terrain to make the (very needed) color adjustments as well.

 

[Vuldacon]

I think solid bright colors are too much for early game city sets... perhaps better for Modern Era such as sky scrapers

 

[Kyriakos]

This took WAY too long.
At least it's relatively near completion, I think:

@Quintillus , @Vuldacon

 

[Theov]

They look good. But very big, dont they?

 

[Vuldacon]

I am not sure how big they are but they certainly look Great

 

[Kyriakos]

They look good. But very big, dont they?

Some stuff will become smaller, particularly most of the houses. I will see about the centerpieces (I don't want them to look like a blur ^^ )

 

[nick0515]

Looks fantastic!

 

[Quintillus]

In related news, although activity on the C7 project has been very slow the past few months, today I merged in the change to handle arbitrary-sized city graphics, and with it made Kyriakos's Persian set the current default graphics (if not otherwise specified by the mod being played).

I agree that the 12/31 version looks quite nice. I liked the idea of the Ishtar Gate style blue, but in practice I think it looks more balanced with the blue as an accent. Not that I've ever been to ancient Babylon to see a whole city first-hand!

 

[Kyriakos]

^Great news ^^