Wild Woods tileset

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               It looks and sounds great, Six.  I hope to be able to play it some day.  :-)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <dithers frantically...>

I love the Wildwoods set. Has exactly the feel I want for the mid-level forest in Forrestal.
But now I'm drooling over LoW's Seasonal Forest... it's so malleable! And I need areas that morph from clear-cut to climax forest... :-(

But Wildwoods feels so right... most of the time...

But...

<...and prototypes over and over...>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 08 août 2011 - 08:59 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               Well the trick to working with Wild Woods is to build quite tightly. If your crossers and buildings etc are close together you'll have barely any trees in the way. Pretty much every terrain and crosser has at least one tree-free tile for any situation too, that you can scroll through with Shift + Right Click.

Personally I'd reccomend Friedeyes' summer only version of Seasonal Forest instead of Worms' if you want to use that, though. The size of the combined SF tileset makes building hellishly slow, not to mention loading ingame. Pathfinding can also be laggy in both, on account of the walkmeshes being pretty badly made - a natural by product of Worms having to make so many tiles in a relatively short time for the set.

Both have their advantages. SF has far more options and terrains, whilst the options in Wild Woods generally work together much better. SF has a much wider colour pallette, whilst Wild Woods is a tiny fraction of the file size. SF has loads of content ripped from NWN2, whilst Wild Woods content is all my own original work - which limits its scope considerably.

Why not just use both? Considering the comparatives file sizes, adding Wild Woods is a no brainer IMO if you wanted to use both - its not like you've got two huge downloads for players.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 08 août 2011 - 11:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Wildwoods and Seasonal Forest represent such divergent types of forests with such different styles that I don't see why you'd have to choose between them in a module - unless you only have one type of forest in the mod.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 09 août 2011 - 01:48 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               Seasonal Forest is that forest you start a game out in. A nice bright place full of life

Wild Woods is that dark dank forest the villain's hideout is in, and it also happens to be filled with all sorts of terrible monsters. Dark, dank and atmospheric as hell
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               That's interesting. I first started Wild Woods with a dark sort of atmosphere in mind (as evidenced by the initial video I posted after I made the first 2 tiles), which I had in mind more of a magical, beast-infested wood. That was for a place in my gameworld called Thornber which was meant to be a magical beast-infested wood, would you believe... Since then I've been using it for brightly lit areas too, including pretty much an entire region called the Shivering Weald, and a pretty little foresters' village named Pollard's Hollow. With careful use of the meadow terrain, fence placeables and placement of streams/roads you can get a pretty smooth transition. Heck, most of my areas I built before I'd even implemented raise/lower.

Not to toot my own trumpet or anything  It's just that after the horrible mess of a tileset that is Wildlands, when I come to building properly with Wild Woods, even I'm surprised at how easy it is to create a really wide array of areas. I reckon its got a lot to do with creating all the art myself - it's way easier to stitch terrains together when I know them to the last vert.

</verbose philosophizing>

Damn it, I want to work on Wild Woods now. So many projects, so little time.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 09 août 2011 - 09:37 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Why do you call Wildlands a horrible mess? I really like that tileset. There's no other tileset with that kind of feel for the rolling hills and the city tiles in it alone are amazing. You could have built a separate city tileset in that style and it would've been a big hit.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 09 août 2011 - 01:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               Actually that's pretty much it. A lot of what the tileset does is split into separate sections that'd have been better served by splitting into dedicated sets. Hence the more focused approach of Wild Woods later on. My lack of experience with planning a project of that size (and lack of any idea of just how big it'd grow) also meant I structured it pretty sloppily. Very few terrains can be combined successfully without a gap in between, and some of the terrain designs (like the Sea) are somewhat lacking IMO.

None of it's deal breaking - if you like the tileset, then great. Certainly the city dockside and the church terrain I'm pretty proud of, as well as the overall feel of the moors with the Winter textures especially. It's just that overall the level of 'professionalism' (for want of a better word) in Wildlands is much lower than that of Wild Woods.

Mind you, if I ever get up to chapter 3 of my module, it'll need a city which I plan to build from the Winter Wildlands set. And chances are I'll have to dig up my unfinished docks tiles, with stairs and quayside boardwalks, etc
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 09 août 2011 - 02:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I agree that one of Wildwoods' strengths is that it does not try to do everything. It just focuses on being a forest and does it well. This keeps the download small, and makes the set easy to work with. Still, I find Wildlands more beautiful. The texture work of the basic terrain is gorgeous. I get the sense that you enjoyed working on it, and kept adding different parts as a labour of love. This may not be true, but it feels that way. It looks like a particularly well loved creation.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <fidgets uncomfortably...>

_six wrote...

Personally I'd reccomend Friedeyes' summer only version of Seasonal Forest instead of Worms' if you want to use that, though. The size of the combined SF tileset makes building hellishly slow, not to mention loading ingame. Pathfinding can also be laggy in both, on account of the walkmeshes being pretty badly made - a natural by product of Worms having to make so many tiles in a relatively short time for the set.

Unfortunately, what I'm trying to do is to set up 36 alternates for each of 8 areas that are "active" for the PC. 8 states (blasted heath to climax forest) x 4 seasons.

To the PC, when he crosses the transition from the central area, he is always going to the same area (West Hearthwood, for instance), but the area seems dynamic, responding to both the state of the forests health and the season.  I am also considering a round-robin of 4 mods for the seasonal variation, though I think that would be very kludgy. 

The point, though, is that having seasonal variations with the trees & features in the same places makes immersion deeper, IMHO. Always being able to count on "turning left at the old stump and 50 paces past the willow...", whether clad in flowers or snow.

So I'll take malleability over beauty...
Except I get an exception if I try to adjust tile properties in SF and that makes me nervous... :-P
And the laggy pathfinding (not an issue for me yet, as I'm still setting up the geometry. Haven't started populating anything yet) is also a big downer :-(
Probably a deal breaker...

Both have their advantages. SF has far more options and terrains, whilst the options in Wild Woods generally work together much better. SF has a much wider colour pallette, whilst Wild Woods is a tiny fraction of the file size. SF has loads of content ripped from NWN2, whilst Wild Woods content is all my own original work - which limits its scope considerably.

I only need the broader scope in that my concept is such a tiny target :-P

I honestly and absolutely love the look of the Wildwoods. I think it works well lit and dark. And, yes, I like the smaller file size.

But I *really, really* want seasonal variations that are consitent between both seasons and states... like having that one grand old tree that hangs on even through the farmers logging until finally, in the blasted heath, you find its charred & hacked carcus lying on the ground...
...and I really like the hermit's treehouse as PC HQ...

Another option I've been thinking about involves primarily meadow tiles and creating seasonal variations with placeables. This would also allow for the vegetation to be manipulated by PCs... but then I have a great many active resources...

And making them static kind of brings me back to a tileset  approach.

OTOH, Placeables let me "grow" the trees...

Why not just use both? Considering the comparatives file sizes, adding Wild Woods is a no brainer IMO if you wanted to use both - its not like you've got two huge downloads for players.

Consistency of syle between the main play areas, primarily. 

I do intend to use Wildwoods for certain sub-areas (The Hart of the Wold, Druid's grove), regardless of the monster I use for the other 289 areas. The look and feel is just perfect.

<...still straddling the fence>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               Well, I'm not about to try and dissuade you from using SF.

Thought I might add that I actually have a set of winter textures for Wild Woods lying around. If you're doing this in multiplayer, you could add this as a hak only during the seasons you want it to be winter, and leave it out (but still ask for it as a download) at other times.

That's actually a lot less work than making every area several times and trying to maintain consistency between them IMO. In fact, senemenelas has a system somewhere on the vault for doing the same thing with SF areas - so you only have to create one of each area.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thats a cool idea, six (swapping textures so that you only have to build an area once). But I don't think it works in a single player NWN module because I am unaware of the ability to turn HAKs on or off via scripting. You'd basically ahve to change the module properties across resets yes? OR maybe NWNX will let you do this without reloading the module... dunno. Curious to find out though.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 11 août 2011 - 12:28 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MazzoniM]

               @Henesua - The summer and winter tilesets have textures with identical names, so the top-most hak would override the lower hak. Changing the 'season' of areas made with these haks is as easy as re-arranging the hak order.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I am talking about doing this while the module is running. As far as I know, you can not rearrange the hak order while a mod is running.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <fiddling abouot with tile settings...*Every* tile setting...>

_six wrote...

Well, I'm not about to try and dissuade you from using SF..

Understood :-) But if the pathing issues and the lag (once I have all the *other* junk happening) comes up, I will re-evaluate.  Actually, I'm still exploring the Vault and constantly evaluating =)

Thought I might add that I actually have a set of winter textures for Wild Woods lying around. If you're doing this in multiplayer, you could add this as a hak only during the seasons you want it to be winter, and leave it out (but still ask for it as a download) at other times..

That's a very cool idea! =)

That's actually a lot less work than making every area several times and trying to maintain consistency between them IMO. In fact, senemenelas has a system somewhere on the vault for doing the same thing with SF areas - so you only have to create one of each area.

Means going back to my round-robin idea of seasonal modules, storing henchman/gamestate in the db...

That way I can keep my tags identical, er, reduce my tags by x4 or so. Reduces module size as well...

Do you have those winter textures anywhere handy? =)

<... while time burns around him>