OpenGFX - Graphics Base Set

[Hamilton2007]

My wife loves to play the toyworld, but i have installed openGFX so it's not working at the moment, Good for me

[Zephyris]

I think this is generally a good idea, even if it is only a temporary step, I say definitely do it.

... doesn't mean we should skip a bunch of sprites just to make the numbers look better ...

It's not to make the numbers look better, it's to get it done. There is hours of work required to do a full one for one graphics replacement of toyland and unless there are volunteers to do it...

... the "everything toys" theme of toyland ...

How about we do the "everything toys" thing in a different way, "cartoonising" the vehicles to give them that toy feel, giving them bigger wheels and smoothing the shading a bit?

Apart from the vehicles, terrain (done, similar to the original), trees (done, similar to the original) and buildings (in progress, similar to the original) there is only really bridges and they are all simply the temperate graphics with an altered palette, if there is the pressure to change these it could be quite simple...

Everything I've put into toyland so far is using the normal palette and apart from the water being a bit lighter I don't notice any differences.

The only difference between the normal TTD and toyland TTD palettes is the colour of the water cycle, so just using the normal palette is fine as long as you expect the water to look different.

[FooBar]

Given the various comments on my suggestion, I think I'll just put my idea in practice for now. As soon as I release it, I'll ask again to see how it's received. If it isn't received well the conclusion will be simple. In that case we'll stick to the original plan and make toyland according to the original.

For me, cartoonish would be good too and would fit very well in my plan of making toyland more playable.


As for the palette: developers, pick either palette you like. While I'll be encoding in the windows palette, no visual differences should be visible. The water looks just fine, if not better, in the toyland palette.



And last but not least, to everyone reading this:
I wish you a very happy and healthy 2009!

[DJ Nekkid]

cartoonish is good imho! that darwin is really nice!

[Hamilton2007]

Cartoonish sounds good!

[Gremnon]

I have just one slight nag about the aircraft in the set.... while using them, the aircraft hanger's... boxes, or whatever they are, that the aircraft are shown on are resized to the size of the blue boxes in the sprite sheets - which is pretty big, so the hanger screen takes up a lot more space... which is inconvenient.

Is it intended? Hope not, 'cause I don't like it that way.

[Zephyris]

That is not intended, its just a side effect of the lazy way I made the sprites! There is a version of grfcodec kicking about somewhere which can automatically crop the blue off the edge of sprites and adjust the offsets. IIRC it wasn't included in the "official" grfcodec because autocropping some of the default sprites really messes them up...

[orudge]

Newspaper anyone?

A bit late with my reply, but should we perhaps take this opportunity to correct the date on the newspaper so it says 31st December 2049 (or 1st January 2050)? The default 1950 company will of course be 100 in 2050, rather than 2051, and the newspaper popped up at the end of 2049/start of 2050 in the original TTD. OpenTTD modified this because the newspaper displayed the incorrect date, but I still think it'd probably be better just to correct the date in the newspaper and have it appear when it's meant to, rather than a year later.

[Timitry]

Hello everyone

Playing with the latest OpenGFX, i just have to say again how great it is, and only few black boxes are left

However, i found two things.
One is that the transparency does not really work for the arctic goldmine, the second is that we need some new sprite for the new advanced settings window. For both see the pictures attached! [e] Oh, and the smoke from the powerplants is not transparent, too!

And if one of you artists wonders what he should do next, i'd vote for finishing the last arctic buildings

Regards,
Tim

[FooBar]

The smoke of the powerplant isn't transparent in the original either, so that's not something we can change with OpenGFX.

powersmoke.png (20.22 KiB) Viewed 5252 times

I believe something similar is true for the gold mine. That weird transparency was already there in the original. The ground sprite in the original is different though, where OpenGFX is using the bare land sprite. Maybe there's something with that we could improve. The sprite seems to be shared with the ground sprite of the power plant, so changing it will have some consequences there as well.

goldmine.png (20 KiB) Viewed 5258 times

And for the advanced settings window: I'll have that fixed in the next release!
EDIT: for this I'll use the standard OpenTTD sprites. They look good and are not from the original graphics set.

[Timitry]

... the "everything toys" theme of toyland ...

How about we do the "everything toys" thing in a different way, "cartoonising" the vehicles to give them that toy feel, giving them bigger wheels and smoothing the shading a bit?

Apart from the vehicles, terrain (done, similar to the original), trees (done, similar to the original) and buildings (in progress, similar to the original) there is only really bridges and they are all simply the temperate graphics with an altered palette, if there is the pressure to change these it could be quite simple...

About the Toyland-Issue:
I think we do not neccessarily need those trains with the big ugly nose etc. for toyland, but just using the trains from temperate would not look right, either. So i'd be in favor of the suggestion above, to modify the temperate sprites a bit so they would fit better into toyland - i think that should not be too much work then, although i really can't tell...
Anyway, that is just my opinion, and i'm not the one who will draw or modify the graphics, so it's of course up to you to decide on that


About transparency: There are a few more Industries who do not have correct transparency either... Can't tell which at the moment, but just start a game in temperate, press x and you will see immediately Would be cool if that could be fixed, although finishing the set should have priority, of course!


And another thing:
This is regarding OpenGFX+, since those sprites do not exist with the standard graphics.
My idea would be to enhance the standard-rail-stations with some extras, like the grf "Generic Buffer Stops" does.
I'd suggest those parts:
- Standard passenger stations (we already have those, and they look really good!)
- Standard cargo station (in the style of the passenger station, just modified for cargo, ideally using the same ground-tiles, so we only need one sort of buffers)
- Buffers, in all 4 directions and again in the style of the stations, so they will perfectly line up with them!

I attached an image of how it could more or less look like, of course the graphics and the station window would need to be modified, the latter one to:

Code: Select all

- Standardstations -
Passenger Station
Cargo Station
Platform Buffers (North)
Platform Buffers (South)

Of course one can use the ISR if he needs industrial stations, but i think it would still be awesome to have a passenger- and a cargo-station with buffers which fit perfectly to openGFX and to each other!

What do you think about this suggestion? Of course this has absolutely no priority, and i can't draw myself (and am busy learning c++), but if someone would volunteer to draw the graphics now or some time in the future, i think it would be very cool!

Regards,
Tim

[Zephyris]

Extra features like that is something which I am definately interested in doing, but are by no means a priority as you rightly said. Once openGFX is finished I would hope that may requested features "draw themselves" as more people are interested in creating graphics to match this new visual style.

[FooBar]

I'd suggest those parts:
- Standard passenger stations (we already have those, and they look really good!)
- Standard cargo station (in the style of the passenger station, just modified for cargo, ideally using the same ground-tiles, so we only need one sort of buffers)
- Buffers, in all 4 directions and again in the style of the stations, so they will perfectly line up with them!

I'm walking around with the idea to add exactly that for quite some time now. Unfortunately I can't really seem to find the time or interest to get back to the drawing board. I've already drawn something that could go through as a cargo station, see screenshot below. When I drew that one up, I intended it to be some sort of cheap-style passenger station, but if one leaves the station name signs and benches out, it could be perfect for cargo.

[belugas]

About transparency: There are a few more Industries who do not have correct transparency either... Can't tell which at the moment, but just start a game in temperate, press x and you will see immediately Would be cool if that could be fixed, although finishing the set should have priority, of course!

It's not possible to fix. The reason is that those industries do not have building sprite as such. The ground sprites are in fact the building sprites.
So when applying the transparency "recoloring", you actually are showing the ground, plus shadowing the "walls", if i may say so.
Therefor, the ground, been a sprite of an industry, remains a ground sprite, therefor, the industry is still visible.

I hope i've been clear... not sure

[Timitry]

@ FooBar / Zephyris:
I'm glad you like my idea / already had it yourself
About the station FooBar posted: Seing it for the first time, i'd have rather thought that it is a passenger station... I think it could fit for cargo in "boxes", but unfortunately not at all for coal or similars... Question is, however, if it's possible to draw a cargo station which fits all kinds of cargo at all. I think the stations below from the ISR and Industrial Stations - Set are a quite good approach (although they do not fit perfectly in OpenGFX) - of course, a coal station would look different, but it would not be too weird for a coal train to load / unload there.
Sorry, i do not want to turn down your work, i think the station posted looks great! - I just think it does not fit so well for cargo (Just my personal opinion, though)

@ Rubidium:
I understood that it is not possible, which should be enough

However, maybe this could be another feature of OpenGFX+ if that's possible?

[FooBar]

Seing it for the first time, i'd have rather thought that it is a passenger station...

Ah, then I better keep it as a passenger station, as it was intended to be one in the first place.

If I'm not mistaken, ISR is GPL'ed as well, so we might be able to borrow some parts of the ISR set and adapt that to match the OpenGFX style to create a generic OpenGFX cargo station.

I'll keep the design of my previous post for the OpenGFX style passenger station set that I'll be creating in the future. This will include the possibility to use the current OpenGFX stations for all track types as well as some ten other designs that I've already sketched on a piece of paper. I plan on adding waiting passengers as well. But before that'll ever happen I need to learn how to code stations first

[Conditional Zenith]

This has been annoying me slightly for a while, but now that freeform map edges have hit trunk, it is annoying me even more. The area outside the map used to be black in the original graphics, so it was always clear where the edge of the map was. OpenGFX has blue "outside map" graphics now, which are very hard to tell apart from water. I'm not familiar with any discussion related to this, a search showed up nothing. If someone knows of some, I would be happy to read.

So I would suggest that outside the map be made black like the original graphics (and surely plain black cannot be copyrighted, if it can be then mark it dark grey or something).

[Zephyris]

A black square is not copyrightable, as there is no artistic content to it! It would be very easy to change the appropriate sprite back to black again....

[FooBar]

I guess we need a service release then. You can expect one in about ten hours via the content service and later this week in the release topic as well.

[Roujin]

You can still put the watery edges into OpenGFX+ (if that ever gets reality), preferably controlled via a parameter