Merricksdad's Black Hills Tileset (First Look)

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Still in prototype, but here you can see the full top level badlands set in action. Once I smooth the tile edges and work on the walkable area textures a bit more, it should be good to go.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Should be good for now. Will work on this all much more next week, though I have some serious house work to do and some furniture removal to attend to.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

What this scene needs is a good Sarlac

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Do you mean that giant Ant Lion thingy from Return of the Jedi? That is a Sarlacc (ends with 2 c's). Otherwise can't find a Sarlac (ending with 1 c) with both with a google search and a wikipedia search.

 

Also not sure about the saw-tooth effect where the terrains join.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Never been that good of a speller, especially of nerd-werds. Even things from my favorite book stories I don't get the names correct.

 

I don't think the teeth things would be that hard since you can make the mesh over four or more tiles. Not that I am going to try this any time soon.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Mad Poet]

               

Do you mean that giant Ant Lion thingy from Return of the Jedi? That is a Sarlacc (ends with 2 c's). Otherwise can't find a Sarlac (ending with 1 c) with both with a google search and a wikipedia search.

 

Also not sure about the saw-tooth effect where the terrains join.

 

TR

 

Leave it to a cat to point out the misspelling of a made up word.  '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

I figured it might be some obscure geology term that I couldn't find which is why I asked.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

30 more plant types with accurate leaves will be packed with the tileset now

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Sorry, no work on mountainous objects recently. Playing with my son and finishing a few walking sticks before he goes back to school. Still should have time tomorrow and the weekend.

 

Mostly I have been brainstorming, trying to leap a hurdle.

 

I put some time into thinking about what the merged High Plains and Badlands set will require. I had originally planned to put the badlands UNDER the normal 0-plane, but that has caused some issues. I planned to have the four specific colored layers, but the height requirements to get all 4 seem to be the cause of the problem; breaking that -3000 something barrier.

 

So I thought about making the badlands go up from base 0-plane. To do that, I have to have 4 raising types in addition to my normal short raising type, and I don't know if I like that, especially since they are not the same height. I wanted to have the badlands cut down into the high plains, as they do normally, and still be able to portray shallow badlands cuts with the high plains area, and to show the deep badlands region with little to no high plains area.

 

I then thought about changing the high plains z increment to a higher number, equal to half that of the badlands z height. I could then make the badlands a normal +1 height area, and then offer 5 color variants to be painted on the sides of slopes as crossers, or on the center of tiles as terrain types. I had good dreams about this idea, but it comes with the waking nightmare that I have to both create a half-height terrain or crosser for normal raise/lower, as well as create half-painted crosser/tile for all varieties of the badlands. And then if I do that, do I omit the ones I never intended to mix together, such as yellow mounds and top white layer, or do I make them anyway in case you guys want to portray a non-US-plains layering system. BLARGH!

 

I may end up just splitting it back into two distinct tilesets, but keep the high plains tile bases in the badlands, as well as offer the badlands white top layer as an option in the high plains tileset. Either way, the job gets done. I think.

 

As much as I enjoy working on models and tilesets, sometimes the lack of potential in the way NWN sees tilesets in the toolset is enough to make me rage a bit. Trying to keep that to a minimum.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

AH! The madness!

 

Ok, so after a large quantity of coffee this morning, and some thinking, I intend to go forward with a High Plains tileset with two sunken levels of badlands. I may release two more levels of badlands later in an alternate set which is badlands on up, rather than high plains on down. This should keep the the repetition down.

 

What I am adding now is a half-height conversion for the area between the first and second depth of badlands, which should make it more useful for battle and exploration.

 

Spent some time working on alkali pools this morning and not sure I like the results so far. Might just clone off the fresh water one and change the texture and vegetation and scrap the last two hours of poking around. Wouldn't hurt my feelings much.

 

That means High Plains is almost done, minus the on-tile trees.

 

I've also been brainstorming what I really really want the granite lands set to look like. While the billowy granite pillows and spires are cool looking, they aren't much good as playable regions. I'm thinking to make them unreachable areas in almost all tiles, and then clone a few off to use as playable tile groups. Here's the rest of the layout expectations at this point:

 

• Smooth Granite (at 40% height change)


• Placeable additional trees of four types (pine, oak, spruce, and aspen)


• Spired Granite crosser (no walkable grade, just simply unclimbable pillars of various heights and size)


• Placeable trees for vertical locations, especially spires


• Spruce crosser (which builds edge to center forests if connected)


• Pine crosser


• Aspen crosser


• Burned tree crosser


• Dead tree crosser


• Half Height (walkable with or without paths)


• Worn path crosser (with makeshift bridges for water and chasms)


• Crushed granite crosser (for near mines, or human modified areas)


• Mine rubble ground type, especially for use making scree slopes


• Base Ground (w/grass)


• Stream Crosser (deeply cuts vertical rises)


• Lake (will work with elevated regions and spires)


• Schist/gneiss retexture for half-height regions as a corner type


• Chasm (default w/o bottom, crossers decide what is in the chasm, such as trees or granite spires)


• Temporary pond (full and empty)


• Limestone


• Red Sandstone


• Jagged Schist


• Wildflower random sprinkle crosser


• Natural schist wall (juts out near center at an angle, staying as close to center as possible)


• Natural limestone wall


• Natural red sandstone wall


• Stacked limestone wall (rises straight up out of the center of the tile)


• Stacked pegmatite wall (made of those mined chunks)

If I get time today, I will post black and whites of the ones I have done already. The texture is so far very screwy.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

+ 10 more flower species including some invasive weeds

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Killmonger]

               

'>

Wow !

 

Just more applause for you MD ....

 

 

" ."

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Spent some time on the WMU campus today with my wife. I spotted about 10 more varieties of plants I have never noticed before...and I was a student there ..... well maybe 20 years ago, ack.


Maybe I was just too busy walking 30 minutes to class, or checking out the ladies.

 

The geosciences department has also upped their outside decor with very interesting boulders from various regions. Very nice. WMU also landscaped their new construction areas with a LOT of local limestone, and quite a few native flowers. If I head down there again soon, I should be able to get some really nice shots.

 

It isn't the Western I remember.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               

LOL it always funny the looks you get when you taking pictures of the plants and other stuff.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Strangely, I wasn't the only dad aged guy checking out trees at the university. Of all the groups that split up from the main tour, it was hillarious that while I was checking out one tree, another dad of an incoming student was checking out another. I says to him, "Huh, I'm not the only one looking at the trees while this guy talks about how amazing social life here can be." He says, "Nope, I was too."