UK Towns Set [v3.0/spiritual successor now out]

[supermop]

I am loving this style!

[Leanden]

I am loving this style!

Niiiiice.

I see your doing 32bpp too

[supermop]

I am loving this style!

Niiiiice.

I see your doing 32bpp too

I haven't done anything in 32bpp myself since early 2015, but I do like Zephyris' extra-zoom 8bpp style a lot!

[arikover]

I also really like this style! Are you drawing the streets as well, or are they part of another set?

Concerning the gameplay, I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but here is the thing:
The big office blocks don't accept food. As a city grows, they become more and more numerous, and the city centre will end up refusing food. Don't know if it's a bug or a feature.

[piratescooby]

butnben.jpg (241.75 KiB) Viewed 921 times

Loving your work ,the UK has such a varied list of buildings ,from tenements to bungalows , a couple of suggestions , but 'n' bens and fishing houses .

[Zephyris]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm totally revamping the tall buildings, I'll work something out re. food. I'm trying to focus more on buildings which dominate gameplay (ie. cities and more current/modern buildings) rather than the rare (though lovely) old UK buildings. Hopefully I'll have time to make some nice thatched/half timber/stone cottages though.

The roads, landscape and trees are all from my OpenGFX extra zoom graphics, currently still a work on progress...

[Bob_Mackenzie]

Very nice indeed!

Although redbrick is iconic British could I suggest some more colourful buildings too as this pic of older houses in Colchester shows?



Or these in Chelsea



Cheers

Bob

[Zephyris]

I've setup the sprites to be very recolourable... I don't think it'll be possible to do very multicoloured houses with a reasonable number of sprites, but I'm hoping do do at least a bit. I think it'd be really fun to have different characters for different towns, some more brick, some more stone, some more painted, etc..

[arikover]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm totally revamping the tall buildings, I'll work something out re. food. I'm trying to focus more on buildings which dominate gameplay (ie. cities and more current/modern buildings) rather than the rare (though lovely) old UK buildings. Hopefully I'll have time to make some nice thatched/half timber/stone cottages though.

The roads, landscape and trees are all from my OpenGFX extra zoom graphics, currently still a work on progress...

Thank you mate, that's amazing work you're doing here!

[piratescooby]

Similar colours ,the colourful harbour of Portree .

Portree.jpg (168.82 KiB) Viewed 921 times

[supermop]

I think the red brick terraces are a good fit for the period that most games will run through. I don't know if there is a satisfactory way to start the game with a few Georgian or earlier houses and have them survive to the modern era, while also preventing them from being newly built...

The brightly painted terraces are notable in part because of how abnormal they are though, so I am not sure if they would serve the set well (also I don't know how well one could render such colors with the 8 bit pallet)

[Zephyris]

Getting pastel colours is tricky with the palette. Bright colours are OK, but don't look so good. My main question is how much I can get away with adapting/abusing the recolour sprites (or is it possible to define new, custom, recolour sprites?)

[Leanden]

I am loving this style!

Niiiiice.

I see your doing 32bpp too

I haven't done anything in 32bpp myself since early 2015, but I do like Zephyris' extra-zoom 8bpp style a lot!

Sorry, it was Zephyris that i meant

[Zephyris]

And another teaser

It's pretty complete now:
* Detached houses
* Semi-detached houses
* Terraced houses & shops
* Tall (city centre) terraced flats & shops
* Short office blocks
.. and for cities:
* Tall office blocks
* Skyscrapers

All the sprites are climate & snow line aware, with a lot of random variations from recolouring, sprite overlays and a variety of walls/hedges/fences. There are also construction stage graphics using some scaffolding overlay sprites, which look decent without greatly expanding the number of necessary sprite.

The to do list is now:
High priority (mostly coding):
* City 'themes' (preferred recolouring to give painted, stone or brick towns)
* Gardens for the houses; flower beds and a few trees
* Better town zoning and high-rise districts (the default town zones are completely dominated by the town centre)

Lower priority (mostly graphics):
* Old buildings (half timber & thatched)
* Modern tall (city centre) terraces
* Very modern (glass) skyscrapers
* Pubs, petrol stations and churches

Long term dreams (probably not going to happen!):
* UK landmark buildings

[Zephyris]

And a couple more pics...

[SwissFan91]

Love the new stuff! Keep up the great work.

[Zephyris]

Right... I think this is ready for some beta testing!

Please download and stress test! Does it work? Does it look nice?

There are two known bugs:
* Parks have no climate-specific graphics.
* Ground tiles for thatched, detached, semi-detached and terraced houses are not snow-sensitive

One thing to look out for:
This set completely abuses the recolouring sprites for buildings/structures. These are normally used for some buildings plus types of suspension, cantilever and tubular bridges. If you see any sprites from the base graphics or from other sets looking weird then let me know!

[Leanden]

Tested it, found no issues other than those you already mentioned.

The graphics look really nice, but id almost like a parameter to turn off the extra zoom as it looks weird when the ground tiles and roads around it arent extra zoom.

[Zephyris]

The graphics look really nice, but id almost like a parameter to turn off the extra zoom as it looks weird when the ground tiles and roads around it arent extra zoom.

I kinda see what you mean, but I have tried hard to match the shading and 'feel' of the 1x zoom 8bpp graphics, both OpenGFX and original TTD... My hope is that people can happily use this set alongside their favourite industry/train/truck/etc. set without it looking too jarring.

Plus I want to tempt people to use my OpenGFX ExtraZoom graphics too.

[PaulC]

Gave the GRF a quick whirl to see how it looks... if I have one criticism it's that towns maybe look a bit generic and bland, I think the set would really benefit from having some more distinctive and varied building types, though I appreciate that that's already on your to-do list. (I'm also not a massive fan of the whole extra zoom thing, though I guess that's a personal thing.)

The actual graphics are really nice though, I have to say I prefer these over the old ones. Are you planning a similar makeover for the OpenGFX base set?