My advice would be: Possibly play the game a bit with zBase as your choice of base set. Look at things which you consider in need of improvement most. And start there with what you like to re-forge and create a model for what you like. If it is an industry or house with construction stages it definitely makes sense to consider them as well to ensure that they match the final building (though you can start without thinking about them).Al T. wrote:Hey guys, Blender user here looking to try my hand at openttd graphics. Just a few questions?
-What is this zbase? Is it official, unoffical? Is it a different set of graphics to the graphics database found on the wiki?
-How hard is the coding part? If I got stuck would someone help me with it?
-Is the wiki pages on whats been done up to date? (extra zoom pages)
-How do you "claim" a graphic to create? I fancy the oil refinery, but how do I know somone else isin't allready doing it? (wiki suggests it is unclaimed?)
-Must you model all construction stages?
-Is there an official set of 32 bit graphics? (the ones on the wiki?)
-Who decides what to include/not include in this set that I see on the wiki. (yes, the 32 bit extra zoom pages)
Cheers, Al.
That said: What is official? Everyone is free to create his or her own base sets and distribute it through online content. zBase to date is the only base set which features graphics with 32 bit depth. NewGRFs can of course also feature 32bpp graphics and thus replace / provide changes there, too.
The 32bpp project the wiki talks about is basically dead. Everything you find in the wiki about the status of any 32bpp project and extra zoom probably is utterly outdated: it refers to an abandoned earlier 32bpp attempt. Thus you don't need to claim anything in particular. I see that the pages frequently lead to confusion... there's a lot of nice graphics which so far no-one has really coded into a NewGRF or a base set. Still, the coding is not a difficult job at the level which replaces existing graphics by improved ones, 8bpp or 32bpp makes no difference in difficulty, it's treated about the same.
My POV is that zBase can be improved and it is my understanding that it is the view of the artist who modelled all of it, Zephyris, as well. As to "who decides" it's a bit tricky, it might boil down to some of the people listed in its contributors list. It might suffice to convince one of them (or maybe even me) that the new sprites are better than zbase' existing ones and fit the set.