Concept Theme "Metro" - for the hardcore transport managers

[Alltaken]

Hi Guys,

I felt inspired this afternoon, so tried playing around with a concept theme for OTTD 32bpp EZ

I call it "Metro" as it would be intended to be based on the visual communication style shown in Metropolitan maps worldwide. A possible replacement to "Toyland" perhaps.

[FooBar]

Interesting! Looks very clean, I like it!

[peter1138]

Looks quite nice, but you wouldn't be able to have the "ambient occlusion" in game. Any soft shadows on buildings must stay within the tile boundary.

[DeletedUser14]

awesome

[Emperor Jake]

I like the look of this. I once had a similar idea, but in 8bpp, and I got the idea fromthis Simutrans pak.

Personally, I would code it as a baseset (if this can be done) so that it's possible to run it in multiplayer games (now that OTTD fully supports 32bpp-EZ graphics), and in all climates. I'm not sure how snow should be depicted though...

Also, it would be a great project for people who are inexperienced at making 3d models, because the models are very simple and possible for someone with little modelling experience (like myself) to create.

[maquinista]

Hi Guys,

I felt inspired this afternoon, so tried playing around with a concept theme for OTTD 32bpp EZ

I call it "Metro" as it would be intended to be based on the visual communication style shown in Metropolitan maps worldwide. A possible replacement to "Toyland" perhaps.

attached image

You don't need to replace Toyland.

You can create a GRF file based on Action A sprites (replacement, very easy to code) and 32bpp PNG files.

[Alltaken]

Looks quite nice, but you wouldn't be able to have the "ambient occlusion" in game. Any soft shadows on buildings must stay within the tile boundary.

Yeah, I realise that would be a slight problem. Although i'm sure there are ways to still provide a convincing and clean experience without such features.

The key would be the ability to be consistent across the entire set. Something that would be easier without the need of any textures, colours or particularly fancy lighting.

Also with certain stacking orders, i wonder if there are any other possibilities to include some spillage of shadows to other tiles (not sure).

[Alltaken]

I'm trying to think how long this might take to make a whole theme of.

Out of curiosity, is there a method of rendering only the Largest zoom level of any graphics and having them resized automatically down to the correct size for other zoom levels, or is this a relatively manual task.
Also do the edges handle anti-aliasing? (i assume not on tiles)

Cheers,

[Lord Aro]

i use pngresize (http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=48507) to get z1 and z2 sprites

Of course, OTTD now has support for 32bpp-ez sprites, but they are in a different format to what we are 'used' to (See more here: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=58421)
I believe we are waiting for NML to implement support for this format before we continue with the developement of the base set (FYI )

[peter1138]

Also do the edges handle anti-aliasing? (i assume not on tiles)

Indeed not for tiles. Translucency requires a background, and tiles are the background. Fine for (probably) anything else, though.

[Michi_cc]

Out of curiosity, is there a method of rendering only the Largest zoom level of any graphics and having them resized automatically down to the correct size for other zoom levels, or is this a relatively manual task.

If you are fine with dropping every second pixel, OpenTTD will do it for you (also nearest-neighbor for zoom in).

-- Michael Lutz

[Alltaken]

Yeah I was afraid of dropping every second pixel (except maybe on the zoom-outs from standard zoom level)

It's the anti-aliased/bi-cubic resize downwards and the 1-bit equivalent transparency on the ground tiles that will be the killer.

I originally (many years ago) set up a multi-resolution rendering mask that would dynamically cut-out each tile as it was rendered in Blender (i.e. hit animate to render all tiles). However it was a massive task to set up for each zoom level and i'd dread setting that up again for a new tile-setup (although it is possible). I only created 64 and 128pixel wide masks.

Cheers,

[Michi_cc]

You might simply want to try out your favourite image editor and check the various resize algorithms. Gimp for example is fully scriptable.

-- Michael Lutz

[Alltaken]

Sample of Ingame ground sprites at 128 zoom:

[DeletedUser14]

Any updates on this? It looked very promising

[Jupix]

For what it's worth I love the idea of this.
Perhaps the most attractive quality of a minimalist theme like this is that it emphasizes gameplay and leaves the "look" to the imagination of the player.

I would totally love to see and play a complete set.

[Alltaken]

Yeah I tried to load the sprites into the actual game and play, but they were all-over-the-show.

I figure it needs some definite time to get right.

P.s. is anyone happy to code sprites if they are supplied as renders? I'd be happy to supply renders and then have these coded by someone.

[DeletedUser14]

I wish I could code NML, but I simply can't and don't have the time to learn

[Alberth]

Steal the code of OpenGFX

[DeletedUser17]

This actually looks really nice! I know that I would play it.