Ocean tiles indexing

[Blue Monkey]

For my taste A. Use a few wave highlights (the key difference in B ) to blend the transition from sea to coast.

 

[Balthasar]

Almost made a bunch of suggestions - but it's your project and you're doing great, so I shouldn't kibbitz. I'd only suggest that the coast be a bit blue-greyer. You can solve your waves problem by using the blur tool at the coastline.

 

[Blue Monkey]

... Mind you, I'm just kibbitzing; feel free to ignore my suggestions - it's only because you've really got me interested! ...

What he said. It's amusing. Balthasar & I have done a fair amount of work together - yet our taste in terrain graphics seems quite different. Despite that I agree that everything he suggested is worth trying. It's the same sort of things I would try.

If you're not already using them Weasel Op's terrain templates should help with the cso file.

 

[RickFGS]

All good sugestions, thanks, i´ll experiment with both options, wave lighting and saturation of green, to see what various outputs i come up with.

Time to blend!

 

[Quintillus]

The coast does look better in post 20. My brain is no longer wondering whether to trust what I'm seeing. As for option A or B... I think it's a fairly close contest, so go with whatever you think would look best together.

 

[Yoda Power]

I like B most. Some coasts in the real world get a lot of waves (that's how people can surf!).

But it's your choice, both are great!

 

[Jorsalfare]

I've been watching this thread, and I'm looking forward to download the finished product! It's the best Civ3 water-terrain I've seen so far, and I will certainly use them.

As for the coast,version B is best IMHO. As Yoda says - there are lots of waves in coastal waters too. Like when lazy ocean swells hit the shallows and breaks, or normal waves meets skerries.

 

[RickFGS]

I guess both options are valid, thanks for the various input everyone, this is something that will prob take some time to finish (or not ), will keep posting as i work on the files.

 

[RickFGS]

wCSO.pcx before blending, i like it, i might go with this, will try the greener calm coastal next..

 

[RickFGS]

Anyone knows the best blending process for more natural transition..?

 

[Pounder]

Anyone knows the best blending process for more natural transition..?

I really like this.

As far as blending goes, like Balthasar says GIMP has some tools like Blur and Smudge that may work, but it may mess up some of your waves.

You could also try to do something with layering copies of your work, maybe take a transparant spraycan to the joining sections of each colour and then layer them, the colours will fill the empty parts and the colours would get interlaced.

Something I'm not sure you considered is that you will probably have to mod the coastal tiles of the: XTGC, XGGC, XPGC, XDPC, and XDGC. This would be to avoid getting the square connection between these transition (X) files and the WCSO file.

Here is an example using MSPaint

I don't have your file, so I just took a piece of a preview you posted.

1) Starting graphic
2) Spray copy of starting graphic you want to blend with transparant colour
3) Rotate copy of starting graphic 180 degrees and move the sprayed piece over top of the rotated piece.
4) Finished piece.

Spoiler :

It's not a work of art (I had to expand the jpeg you posted and the detail is lost), but it only took me a minute to do. I just wanted to get the concept I was thinking across.

 

[RickFGS]

Ty Pounder , MS Paint does look better then i thought it could...i´ll try it first before going into layer copies, i also found Tom´s tutorial for "Terrain Creator Template", so i guess i have to test the best options and waste some time on this, or not...and go with Paint

For the xFiles i was thinking on using Gimp´s Colour selection to filter out the old coast colour and insert the new coastal over the inverted terrain selection, of course i still have to test if it works...but for now, i´ll concentrate on wCSO.pcx, then move along to XTGC, XGGC, XPGC, XDPC, and XDGC.

Thanks again, you are the man!

 

[RickFGS]

Small Update, i think wCSO.pcx is partially done, only needs the "Pounder Artwork" to be completed on the edges, but i even wonder if it ins´t as good as is it now, time to move on to xDPG... and so on files.

 

[RickFGS]

X...DGC, DGP, DPC, GGC, PGC and TGC.pcx files done...now the only thing left is to blend coast, sea and ocean in a more natural way or...just leave as it is and consider work done on a new water pack?! I kinda like it as it is already

Spoiler :

 

[Quinzy]

I'd like it to be blended, if you're up to it.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Not ready to comment without seeing the terrain in a typical game-play shot - the previews are too small scale to make out relevant details.

 

[Balthasar]

I'd like it to be blended, if you're up to it.

I'll second that: much more blending! You're almost there.

 

[RickFGS]

Ty guys, i´m all over it, blend is the hardest part. The Pounder way of doing it seems to be the best result, but i´m not yet quite there in understanding a way to do it, if i save the pcx file to jpg and then back to pcx, it mixes up my colours...argh....

 

[Samez]

If you are working with gimp save you WIP files as .xcf (the gimp native format) as it will support all features gimps has (transparency, indexed colours and so on) only convert the final file to pcx.
For previews jpg has a lot of losses so using something like .gif or .png might give better results.

BTW Nice work!

 

[RickFGS]

Nice tips Samez, thanks for help!