Merricksdad's Black Hills Tileset (First Look)

[Legacy_Draygoth28]

               Any updates or screenshots of progress?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

A month later, and no progress at all, except secret stuff. I have been keeping myself busy making more plant textures for winter release, as well as prepping for that SD vacation. By the way, that is coming up on the 11th of this month, and I will be gone, and loving it, for three weekends worth. When I get back, there will be textures textures textures, and I will find it very very hard not to finish this project this year.

 

In the meantime, Ive put a tiny amount of work into some of my miniatures models, and have tinkered around with moving the mountain tileset to other forms.


One form is half scale, where the PC is assumed to be 3 feet tall instead of 6. Each tile, or tile group, is then created for a specific purpose, much like a battle arena mixed with oldschool dungeons on the nintendo or SNES, where those tiles only associate with each other on a side. Think also about how DND minis worked, or with the various game tiles you can buy for PNP games. This would be specifically for my mini models, and would be most used with a more isometric or top down view. It would be much harder to simply create NWN style tiles for this, but I'll get a lot more use out of tile group looking tiles. Given that the current tile size is 10 meters, that would change the scale to 20 meters, or about 60 feet (which you could tinker with to equal 50 feet if you really wanted to fudge the internal math). How much stuff goes in 60 feet? A lot. Each tile would be fantastic (at a distance), and tile groups would be for VERY specific needs. It may also clear up some clutter issues I've had in the past at tile borders. As you can guess, I use my mini-models for high combat settings against lots of on-screen units. You might find it more useful for epic battles with very little story line, but using a lot of game-based skill. Another benefit to this scale is that the base textures are going to be less stretched out, and new textures don't require as much work. The original camera angles and zoom extents will allow this map scale to create a great high detail game for those who want a lot more exploration and old school fighting with larger spell sizes and ranges. It also allows you to make more use of mostly-flat tiles, but at the same time give the appearance of something less flat.


The other form is double scale, where the PC is assumed to be 12 feet tall. Each tile is then right-sized to create a more dungeon siege looking set. In the original dungeon siege, approximately 2 tiles wide filled the same space as one tile in NWN (some would say it was actually 3). This allowed for a better appearing height transition between 8 heights, and would greatly reduce the effort of making fitting tiles for complex tilesets in NWN. Double scale also allows you to display twice the content on a character, given the original camera angles, and gives you more freedom to actually make use of larger textures. Skins will also conform better to a bone shape at that scale without much tinkering in GMAX.


So why have I been thinking about all that? Because NWN has always annoyed me as being the only game to have tiles approximately that size. It inherently reduces functionality and playability and demands a lot more artistic ability and forethought to build a tileset at that scale. I find it strange that 2x or 1/2x would have been so easy, yet they failed to realize that. Other games use tiles which are larger than the viewable area from the character's camera, or tiles which are smaller so that a greater detail of variety can be made without a lot of human interaction in the toolset. I want both of those, and have for years.


Now... I've already worked with both of these before, and highly prefer the smaller character, so I've already been putting a lot of work (until recently) into the smaller characters. In doing that, I do know that NWN does need a lot of base file changes to make use of that scale. For instance, scale in game script code assumes meters, so everything has to be recalculated. As do move speed 2da's, sight ranges, bounding boxes for combat, etc. This isn't hard, and I plan to release a kit to make it easy to work with 1/2 scale tiles. And no, all current material won't fit, so this gives me the perfect opportunity to build a new kitting system for NWN so you can download kits of miniature bits for your dungeons and what not. Call it a new start for NWN for some people. Others will absolutely hate it, I know that. What you will see is a game which is set up so that your normal view on your character works out to about 2-3 inches of screen on a laptop, and best played from a near-isometric view, rather than eye level, or first person.


If you'd like a brief idea of what I'm releasing, I'm posting it elsewhere later.


Another thing I have been tinkering with is a non-square tileset layout. It is difficult, and not intuitive in the toolset, but those of you who have converted huge areas out of other games will understand the complexity you can display better without tiles. This little bit may never become a reality for other people to use, as the tileset revolves around tile groups with only three tiles, in an L shape. My brain is at least strange.


July 11th to about the 27th, and then I'll probably have no choice but to work on this tileset, in full scale first.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Just a thought, but if you are messing with scales... How about making some miniature placeables to add to the ones TheGeorge converted from NwN2 years ago. They would have uses other than just mapping for example for flying over.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I've got a bucket of placeables in the works already. Two kinds: I have common placeables which replace many of the NWN OC stuff, increasing texture quality, and then I have placeables which modify the landscape slightly which fit directly with the tileset, as seen in TorchLight2 map editor. But I think, at the moment, and since I am releasing the minis stuff for a very specific story module, I won't be doing a lot of random use placeables at the start. I certainly have big dreams though.

 

Are you talking about these ones?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Those are just about all there is at the moment. Any new ones might encourage more people to download this package.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I very much enjoy those, but my scale change was going only 50% smaller than what NWN already has in OC. When all put together, my modules only use an overland map system like that in baldurs gate. Nothing as fancy as actual mountains and 3d town minis. Although, you might make me change that in a year or so. Not this time around. Trying to stay on target. Half a year is already gone.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Fresh back from vacation.

 

Parsing trip pictures -- 100% complete

Planning new texture placement -- 100% complete

Planning new height transition -- 100% complete

Separating regions into individual tilesets -- 100% complete

 

 

 

Pictures coming up starting hopefully next Wednesday for the tileset.

 

So what I am doing is separating the tileset into a few regional subsets with eventual mixers. Here's the new plan so far:

 

High Plains

this is your basic grass, very similar to OC rural. It will be a tall grass or prairie setting, with a very short height transition. It will also have a river system with a very small river width, but it can cut hills of various heights with tile groups to simulate bends through softer rock layers. I'm going to stick with a near-grayscale tanish color for ground, similar to that found on the road in OC rural, but with less color. Trees will consist of scrub oak and box elder, almost entirely, with the occasional buffalo berry or something sage in color to break up the monotony. In addition to the base grass color/height/mass, the area will be filled with various wildflowers and specific grasses. High plains will feature two pond types: clean and alkali. Both will be walk-in depth. Cut height transitions, as well as alkali pools, will show badlands clay rocks as their base.

 

Badlands

This will connect easily with High Plains, but I also intend to connect it to Limestone Cliffs. Again, the color will be near-grayscale tanish, but will have more variation in deeper cuts. Transitions will be 1:3 grade with a half-height crosser with interesting claw-like ramps. No base grass will exist for this tileset, but the tiles will have specific grasses and flowers on-tile, with the option to add tileset-specific additional plants, such as prickly pear, or world-specific stuff-things. Trees will consist of ash, cottonwood, and scrub oak. Badlands will feature no water type, but will contain a river crosser without height transitions, so that you can portray the bottom drainage level of your region. This sub-set will feature only a few shallow cave entrances. Many placeable boulders, rubble piles, and spires, will be available.

 

Limestone Cliffs

This will connect to both the High Plains and the Badlands sets. Height transitions will come in a few varieties via corner-type, and can change color via crossers. This set will contain many cave entrance variants, including sinkholes for top-down access. The base color will be a yellow tone dirt, but can change to red, gray, or blackened with age/acid. This will contain a sickly base grass which is short, as well as on-tile rim grass and patches of specific vegetation. Placeables will include various sage and scrub plants which can grow directly from the height transition cracks. Trees will consist of poplar, birch, and ponderosa pine, with the occasional spruce. Limestone cliffs will feature a deep water area, as well as rapid rivers. Shallows will be portrayed by passing the river through the water area, rather than making large walkable water tiles. This sub-set will have many waterfalls. I'd like to feature a stacked limestone wall crosser, as well as many placeables for those torn-down limestone bits, such as rock piles, gigantic boulders, and natural stacks of top-heavy stone.

 

Granitelands

This will connect down to the Limestone Cliffs tileset via a violent transition through schist and gneiss. Granite masses will come in a few different flavors, including: weathered smooth, weathered spire, cut and mined, and metamorphic outcrops. Height transitions will be approximately 1:3 with a half-height transition already on tile variants, but not accessible via a crosser. Non-walkable transitions will be minimum 1:1 with metamorphic outcrops, or steeper with spires and mined regions. All of those mentioned will be worked into the set via groups, and may not be mixable except in certain groups. Walkable ground which is not in the weathered smooth region will consist of mica rich gray powder with splotches of crushed schist and granite. Tileset-specific placeables will allow you to more granitize the tile floor, or change it fully to crushed granite, especially for use near mined areas. Granitelands will have water transitions of two types: very soft, and instantly deep. You can then portray both walk-in water regions, as well as frightening plunges. This subset will have patches of on-tile grass of many varities, and flat regions will have a basic grass with flowers and weeds. On-tile vegetation will offer a selection of pine, spruce, or birch, all accessible via crossers. Less steep tiles will also feature scrub oak and sage-colored shrubs. River crossers will be thin, shallow, and rapid at almost all points. Waterfalls will be represented only with placeable sprinklings or ribbons. This sub-set will feature many types of mine entrances, as well as mineral rich wall-like features.

 

Granitelands will not be as tall overall as previous views of this tileset have been. It simply doesn't need to be for most uses. I may still make some groups with some really high reachable areas which do not fit within the 4-5 tileset corner types.


Each region MAY feature a few basic skyboxes, but I'd like to make it so the OC skyboxes, as well as many of the community skyboxes, will function well with the tileset. The way this will work best is with a proper edge-tile to hide skybox ground coloration where present.


Each region will also have a high "surround" tile type, which you use as the edge, and also to avoid that edge-darkening built-in feature of the engine which I hate so much. This lets you replace the built in edge-tile system, as well as change its location on the map. It also lets you encapsulate the area more fully without using standard tile types. For instance, the Granitelands will feature two surround types: steep drop, and impassible cliff wall. This lets you represent both being up on top of a high granite mass, or being in a valley surrounded by weathered granite. The only way I can imagine to encapsulate the other sets is with walls, so they will also feature impassible cliff types, but will also feature normal edge-tiles of plains grass, which I am not fond of. In all the variations of this surround type, you will get much greater variation than with standard built-in edge-tile systems, as well as have some small amount of walkable space on some of those tiles which does not fade to darkness.


Already mentioned above, the transitions between regions will come later. I don't want to waste time playing world-builder in such a way that all this stuff has to instantly fit together. I know areas can only be so big, so there is no point in making the whole area represent 200 miles of land. As with the Infinity engine, the spaces between will be imagined... for now.


As I said before vacation, I would like to put this out in full scale first, so you can all use it without having to shift to my mini character system. After that, it will be easy to build my mini battle system from parts of this tileset. Very easy. But man, I cannot wait to build some of the places I have been for the last week for my minis system.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I forgot to mention I also want to do something similar to how Torchlight 2 makes lots of visible-but-not-reachable areas. If you don't know what I mean, this is especially visible in the dungeon/crypt and tower tilesets from TL2. Here's a picture of one of the undead crypts from TL2 which shows an area which looks like it is reachable, but not. These are very common in those two types of areas.

 

http://www.geforce.c...creenshot-3.jpg

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Any plans for indigenous creatures (e.g. prairie dogs, coyotes etc.) for these sometime in the future?

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I'm putting all work on creature models aside until I get the tileset version 1 released. Then I want to focus on that drow-themed adventure more for my minis.

 

In a previous tileset I did years ago, there was a tile with a burrow, but it was more like a wood chuck hole than anything else. I've been looking at some graphics from a few facebook games which use a 3d model as a floor and mostly sprites for effects. One of those effects actually creates a raised section on the ground only a few feet from the surface and then makes an indentation, which is then textured with what looks like a good burrow entrance. I've been thinking along those lines for my worm models, as well as for some impact graphics I have been working on for the minis. When they are played quickly with an earthen spash of debris, they look pretty good for pop-up creatures, and the mound can be left behind and partially filled in with another model after the creature death. After a time, both could fade away. Something to think about.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Hey, before I have to spend hours working on this again, does anybody know the location of the grass model for the internal grass placement feature? If I can get that out, I can grab the danglymesh numbers off it and not have to poke around to find the matching numbers for other grasses I plan to insert into the tilesets.

 

Also, just finished the first half of the High Plains tileset, sans special vegetation. It almost made me want to return directly to south dakota. But I have work to do.

 

Since the set is so small, I'm going to try and place the badlands set right inside the high plains set. Otherwise, the base set count for the high plains is only 62 tiles before special group features.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Here's the first look at the contours for High Plains. There is a visible cutting stream but the stream is filled with grass walkmesh at the moment. I've also got a lot of fraction issues I need to clean up near edges, otherwise all these white lines will stay visible.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

High plains...or the Sand Hills.  It's always a treat to see something I know well IRL come to life in NWN.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Stuck on spending some time trying to get my nwmax ExportAll() function to actually export. Damn thing anyway. I had modified it so I could have it ignore all sanity check difficulties, then it no longer exported. It does everything but actually export. So I reinstalled nwmax, kinda lost all my modifications temporarily, and now it still won't actually export anything. Individual export still works, and the ExportAll called from the nwmax panel button works, but I cannot call ExportAll from anywhere else and have it export. Confusing. Oh well.

 

I've upgraded the texture to something which looks more like grass at a distance to get rid of the grass-less look past the fade away line. I've also given the walkmesh the proper water regions. The grasses go down into the water slightly, and I haven't a-node-ed the water yet, so it doesn't yet splash properly. I also need to update the alkali pool water texture. Still looking for that built-in grass flex value so I can clone it out to my other grasses. Also working on a good river bed texture to use and not getting one to match the lighting properly. Only a matter of time.

 

Thinking to make the badlands a chasm type in the high plains. The buffalo gap grasslands were actually on top of the badlands area, not the other way around. Only a rare few areas out there were higher than the surrounding plains level, so I might make a shorter and sharper badlands UP too. When combined they will make the higher badlands formations. I'd like to do a white river color down below, and a ogalalla formation on top. I probably wont go so far as to include the lower yellow and red level in this set at this time, but if I do, it will be a deeper chasm variety for use inside chasm areas, and won't be available at base level. I will probably duplicate the upper steam crosser for use down in the badlands chasm, and retexture it for use with the white dirt. The river is extremely simple now, but at some point in the future I'd like to retool it to be more varied and/or have more tileset variants. Right now it is almost like an irrigation ditch, which isn't what I was going for.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Stream and erosion cuts have been constructed and initial badlands layer texture has been added. Deeper badlands cuts will be lighter and have less flat surfaces.