Assuming, like Ben, that we restrict the question to publically released tilesets, that is a very difficult question. And, of course, there are many different reasons for liking a tileset.
Difference from standard NWN geometry? JDA's
Dwarven Halls are very striking, as are Chandigar's
Aztec Exterior and Lord Rosenkrantz's Rocky Mountains. (That's before we even get near the
wonderful new tilesets from Six - since they're in development, who knows how far they'll exceed NWN's initial visuals by the time Six is finished with them?) Tilesets like these are great, because they hugely expand the environments that NWN is capable of portraying. One can be as brilliant as builder as there ever was, but creative placeable use only goes so far. After a while, one *needs* tilesets that use dramatically different geometry.
Huge amount of variety, with hundreds upon hundreds of tiles, including lots of terrains and crossers? I'd have said TÃr na nÓg, but since that's been incorporated into the 1.69 patch as "Castle Exterior, Rural" I'd now have to say
Seasonal Forest by Lord of Worms. As well as that, I have a soft spot for
CTP Babylon, but since I worked on it myself it's hardly fair for me to name it as my favourite.
'> I will say, though, that when we developed Babylon a lot of work was put into ensuring that as many crossers and terrains played nicely together as could sanely be managed. That's very handy for building. Anyway, these sorts of tilesets are extremely versatile, allowing you to use them for a huge variety of areas, including "transition" areas (e.g. city walls). That helps to keep a sense of immersion in your world, that the background environment stays constant in the immediate area.
Then again, there's a certain talent in creating a good reskin of a standard Bioware tileset. Personal favourite reskins of mine include Helvene's
White Marble Castle and Six's
TNO City and Winter City. The handy thing about tilesets like these is that they take a well-known quantity (we all know how to use the standard Bioware tilesets like the backs of our hands) and give it a fresh look. Particularly in the case of overriding reskins, this makes it easy to take a complex area that you've already built with quite a bit, and instantly transform it just with the addition of a hak or override.
Now, overall, I have to ask myself: which of these tilesets do I actually use in my module building? And (TNO and Babylon excluded), the one I build with most and will never stop using is Dwarven Halls - although I use the CTP version, since it's highly bugfixed (and it's okay for me to name that, since I wasn't part of the CTP team when those bugs were fixed). The huge scale perfectly evokes famous dwarven cities like Khazad-dûm from LotR, or Orzammar from Dragon Age (even though it preceded the latter). And the textures are fabulous. So, although it is not the best of all tilesets from a technical point of view, nor the biggest in terms of variety, I have to name this old favourite as my favourite.
Modifié par Estelindis, 03 août 2010 - 12:31 .
