META - WIP

[supermop]

This may seem like a bit of a tangent for me, but a little of a year a go the idea for this project is what got me started drawing sprites in the first place. Originally the plan was for MLSS to let me learn about nfo and templating, but it has kind of grown larger than I expected, and still is nothing like 'complete' in a sense that would allow a 1.0.0 release.

In the mean time I am going to use this thread to share some of the other aspects of the project. Some parts are not yet supported by NML as far as I know, and others I might just have trouble figuring out how to code, but if at least start showing a few sprites, the ideas might make more sense to those of you who are interested.

The Project sets out to do a few things that "break rules", so that should be explained upfront. I am trying to keep graphic style consistent across my work, rather than strictly consistent with TTO/TTD or OGFX. I hope that the results will still look ok with other base sets. Additionally, I originally planned to have three or four scale variants, with most 'larger' than the common scales in TT, along with some 'super-deform' scales for vehicles. At current time I am only working with two scales, but this may change in the future.

I also would like to provide both 8bpp drawn sprites and 32bpp rendered sprites, as I am working from Rhino models to plan many items anyway. An additional idea would be for 32bpp technical line drawings, reminiscent of early 80's conceptual axonometric drawings (although in isometric obviously).

First up is a item that is and will be a totem of sorts for the project as a whole. It is meant to be implemented in both a true to prototype form, and also in some more flexible variations that are arguably more true to the original concept of the prototype. I considered naming the project after this item, but instead decided it made more sense and a better acronym to name it after the movement it represented.

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There still is much work to be done, but I think this shows the idea of a building assembled from an assortment of modular sprites, which ideally would be chosen somewhat randomly. I would like the lower 'plinth' to be omitted in some variations, and for the overall height to vary as well. The sharp parapets will ideally be road aware and try to face the street. I would also like to check for neighboring buildings of same type and have the sprites for the plinth replaced by some that look connected, perhaps with some other types of connection as well. Textures need some work, but there isn't much room to give texture to all-white boxes. I dislike the purple windows as well, so they need a lot of work. The plinth looks small despite coming out to the tile edges on its sides, so it might need to actually overhang a bit, but this could look bad (the capsules already overhang at this scale). Like the prototype, I think variations with the plinth need to have a curtain wall enclosed lobby surrounding the shaft, possibly with columns beyond that, but still set back from the edge of the overhang.

Much Like Kurokawa's original concept for the capsules, and in the spirit of the Metabolist movement, I would like to also use the capsule sprites to also create smaller houses, and perhaps draw some newer, nicer capsules to replace and supersede the original circa 1970 units. I don't know if the latter idea is feasible in NML, but if not I would settle for just having capsule towers built later having newer units, and older towers being replaced after about 30 years.

Finally, there needs to be a nicer groundtile than my MLSS gravel, but that is a lower priority for me at the moment.

Best,

[BobDendry]

These are good base sprites. It's a very quirky design and I'd certainly like to see it in game. It does need a lot of work, however, especially with regards to scale and texturing. I'm sure you're well aware that it needs texturing, so I won't discuss too much into that. The windows just don't quite seem right. Whether it's their size, or simply location, they just seem to jar with the overall design of the building.

Also, is the jaggedness of the edge of the buildings roof supposed to be there? It seems to randomly go a pixel higher than it should be in the middle. Even if this is intentional I'd recommend removing - it just doesn't look right.

Other than that, keep up the work. I'm interested to see what else you can pull out of this hat.

[supermop]

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This building doesn't really have anything to do with the Metabolist movement, but if I can get it to look right i think it will look well placed in metabolist style cities. The Prototype is a luxury condo tower on 23rd street; seen here http://www.topboxdesign.com/wp-content/ ... aRuddy.jpg

The Building has two types or glazing - a normal green/clear facing east and north, and a dark purple-brown tint facing south and west. I have been finding it very hard to match the effect of the darker glass accurately, so I am posting a few colorways here. The real building has glazing on every vertical surface above the base, but I might add a concrete shear wall at the rear for variety. I have also changed the base to make it a bit more interesting (in my opinion).

EDIT:

Decided to go with the blueish glass for now, as the brown looks too much like Corten, or the shaft of the Nakagin building.

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Sor far I am drawing all of these buildings in modules. I am also drawing 4 rotations of each asymetrical module. This should allow for more variety, and maybe better street aware buildings. If the map ever does allow rotation, at least my sprites will be in the clear...

Obviously some surfaces need more or better noise, and I might fenestrate the rear shear wall. Need some HVAC on the roof too, and a decent ground tile. I might make some of the dunnage on the roof CC, as well as fencing and cranes for the construction stages.

Best,

[planetmaker]

Just nice, I have to say
Wrt to the last tower, I didn't count pixels, but it *feels* a bit high; I'd do with 2/3 of its height, i.e. 2 or 3 of its modules.

[jian]

It,s great i hope soon in format grf.

[supermop]

Something very rough: not metabolist, but modular in concept in some ways I guess.

Two ideas so far, houses that are 3:1 in aspect fitting either three to a tile, or two to a tile with extra space that can be used by a garden or perhaps and alleyway at the rear..?

Three cottages on one tile

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Two cottages on two tiles, with half a tile's worth of space to play with

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[supermop]

So I made a few variations on terraces - all with the same 'body' so far, but some small variations on the facades. I've also carved a meter off the garden in the back to create a small laneway when two blocks of terraces back up to one another, as well as played around with various additions that might be built in the rear of the house.

terraces.png

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I am trying not to get too bothered by scale this early on, but inevitably we run into the issue that the more expansive and flexible we make the lots for the houses, the larger they become and thus make town growth less flexible as it is harder to place houses. This size also dwarfs building from other sets, so we could run out of height when moving on to modern highrises as well. One solution would be to add an assortment of pruned back 1x1 tile houses to help towns infill spaces at the expense of gardens, lanes, and proportion of houses. The other option would be to make a 'house' that comprises the less essential backyard stuff, and has some chance o growing on tiles that do not touch the road..

Need some pubs or 'hotels' next, which honestly could be anywhere from 0.5x1 tiles up to 2x2 tiles (even bigger if implemented as industry...)

[V453000 :)]

Interesting approach to first make white placeholder sprites, am curious about the further progress

[kamnet]

What if the 1x zoom was a paceholder-esque sprite representing one building, but the subsequent 2x and 4x zooms were more detailed and displayed more scaled buildings?

[supermop]

I received in the mail from Germany today an issue of a Japanese architectural journal from the early 90s. In the back among the industry specific advertisements was this gem; presumably promoting a hexagonal concrete module that one could build a moon colony with? Certainly seemed to fit the metabolist spirit to me!

Hexagon Blocks.jpg

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Also, that monorail junction in the lower right looks like something straight out of TTO!

[Sylf]

Yes, that's "expandable concrete module" intended for lunar surface.
That's pretty wild

[supermop]

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A few of the art deco and early modern outliers I've found around town so far

[supermop]

Really this should be in a different format and on devzone instead of here, but here is an effort to jot down what I've been thinking of in terms of proportion and modularity recently. Also this isn't anywhere close to being a project yet so no devzone for time being.

[supermop]

Roadmockup1.jpg

Street with tramway, parking, bike lane, and curbs

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OK, Have been messing around with some modelling today. The textures are just place holders for now and obviously need a lot of work. Shown is the concept for a "Melbourne-ish" street tile with tramway. Sidewalks are not shown per se as I have used their space for gutters, parking, bike lanes etc. Perhaps in town centers streets or trams could have this space drawn as sidewalk to simulate the wide sidewalks and narrow streets more typical in Melbourne's CBD

Some issues of scale will need further work. Nominally this tile is 12m square, however I've reduced the parallel parking spaces to 4m from the more prototypical 6 as I think 3 spaces per tile looks better than 2. The tram tracks have a loading gauge of 3m whereas the road lanes are roughly 4m wide. Vehicles may look better if I widen the tracks out to be centered in each road lane.

Without roadtypes, we do not have much control over differing road graphics, however the is slight granularity with respect to sidewalk graphics. By default we get no graphics (grass), plain sidewalks, sidewalks with trees, and finally with lampposts as we move towards the denser center zones. I plan to cheat a bit by using sprites for gutters, parking spaces, bike lanes etc for these instead of trees and posts, although I'm not yet sure in what order. As far as I know, the street trees are always uniform, so parking spaces may need to be always empty, or always full of identical cars. Although I show a bike lane and street parking on the same tile in my image I envision that tiles will strictly have one or the other.

In addition to general texture and lighting improvements, I may move to individual cobblestones in the gutters rather than a texture as they only need to be rendered once and I can likely achieve better results this way.

Best,

Edit:

frogs 1.jpg

working with rail profiles and frogs for crossings

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Here is my first attempt at modelling some cast frogs for the X junctions. I just sort of made this shape up, but it will do until I go out and look at the local examples more closely. I still need to figure out the materials and textures for the rail parts - I think I will go for a dull iron color but then cut a chamfer on the parts that contact wheels, and give that surface a polished steel look.

[V453000 :)]

I like the ideas and what you are trying to do, biker lanes and parking are definitely interesting for cities, though at the same time seeing them empty without cyclers/parked cars might actually make the game feel more empty because it suggests there should be something, but that is just my opinion/concern.

I did not check, but are you sure you can replace road trees that easily? Aren't they just separate trees put on the streets by the game? Again, I do not know, but would be worth checking if you didn't already

In general, starting from the 12m scale for a tile, I would really think twice and in a bigger picture here. As you probably well know, OpenTTD scale is more uniform than anything. In the long run I can only recommend making a tile some friendly value, I personally use 10m/1000cm units in my scenes just for the convenience. Pikka uses something like 560m (nobody knows why).

The stuff you rendered and showed so far is interesting, but I would greatly recommend rendering it in x4 zoom (256px width of a tile), you will see a lot better how is it with the scaling and everything. I say this because I think you are focusing on a bit too much detail that will become invisible in the game in x1, x2 and barely visible in x4 if at all.

I am aware textures are about to change, but suggestions:
- I would make the cobblestones larger. I personally would say not to be afraid of supersizing everything, just to make it clear what stuff is. The current size you got there will just make some random noise even in x4.
- tram tracks should come out from the concrete tram-area so they are really visible. I assume some metal/reflective material will take care of that, but just noting.
- The cobblestones are probably way too small for models to make a good difference vs. textures. In this case even if it got a bit bigger, I would just go draw a strong bump map or even some displacement if you feel like it. If you want ultimately realistic look, you could consider creating the 3D model and then creating a normal map - then you could reuse the material on anything flat and it would look great without having to create 3D models again. Though again, for this scale it is probably not important at all.

Big Note:
In contrast, my models like YETI are missing a LOT of details and I would describe them as just as skeleton so far. There could be a ton of little doodads and things which would make the renders a lot more interesting - even if the things are so small that the player has no idea what they are. With that I want to say that you cannot really do anything bad with focusing on details, but the important things have to stand out so they do not get lost in the whole

Looking very much forward to whatever output your work will bring

Good Luck!

V

[supermop]

Ok a bit of an update!

Roadmockup2.jpg

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In the category of "Pointless details no one will see in game" I've done more work on tramway junction frogs and pointwork - with a grand union junction shown here. I will need to do a few separate frogs and points for the T junctions, but I think a minimum viable proof of concept tramway grf can make do with only the 4 way junction to start. Also in this category I've arrayed individual chamfered paving stones for a sidewalk mockup.

I still have not done any work on getting better materials or textures, although I did change all rails to bronze for now as the default steel material made them appear cyan once I added a placeholder sky. The Asphalt, cobblestones, and concrete should all be much closer in color and shade to the bluestone, or vis versa.

As shown in the image, I would still like the sidewalks to be part of building sprites rather than streets so that the pavement material and street furniture can vary according to building type or be somewhat random. At this scale, this presents a couple of problems especially at intersections. As currently only the curb and gutter exist on the road tile, there is no provision for wide rounded corners or curb cuts for crosswalks. Ideally these would be drawn on the tile one in from the intersection, but it is not possible as far as I am aware for the game to draw a road sprite based on its neighbors. Alternatively we could extend the sidewalk about one 'meter' into the road tile in some or all town zones. This would let side streets have at least a narrow sidewalk along sides of existing buildings without cutting into the house's space or causing it to suddenly change appearance when a new road is built. However, I lose much of the variability that is the aim of this project in this case, as pavement types can no longer depend on the building, nor can we simulate wider roads as gracefully. The only other option I can think of is to move everything including the curb to the house tiles, and have them detect if they are on a corner.

Lastly, I am unsure about the tram tracks - The turns in the corners look too tight, but the tracks feel too close to the center of the road for me. If I scale up the tracks or move them outward, the turn radii will look even more absurd when long trams drive through them. However, if I scale them down to something like 16m/tile (which would actually let Melbourne's longest single car trams be one tile long) the tracks will look dwarfed by rail tracks and the expanse of road. I feel like they already are too small to convey the sense of being standard gauge, but changing the gauge means lots of new modelling for parts of the junction.


All things considered I am just going to keep on going with the status quo for now and try to get the basics for a road/tramway test grf together as templated graphics that can be replaced down the line. Now I just need a project name and associated strategy.

Best,

[supermop]

Messing about with a bit of help!

Punning is the lowest form of wit

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[supermop]

Taking a break from stations to do some houses for a day. Still working on getting the aluminum to show up dark enough on these, but the should be able to be used to decorate bars and pubs, as well as on station platforms as waiting BEER cargo.. I've exaggerated the ridges so they have a chance of showing up at scale. Let me know if anyone wants these as a 3d file or as a masked dimetric sprite!

50L sort-of DIN kegs with extra big ridges

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[supermop]

More Pub greeble:

Here is the distraction that got me modeling the pub in the first place. It started out as a bad pun, but I got to thinking it would make an ok pub name. The naming convention and type of sign are really more English, but as I can't foresee any use in modelling a British pub for the moment, I've done the building in the style of Melbourne pubs built in the 1870s. The sign bracket fits more with an 1890s style, but I found it more amenable to me than designing some traditional curly wrought iron. I know the Moa should be about twice as tall as the camel, but making them the same size makes for a balanced graphic. Due to the animals used, I tried to go for a combination of AU and NZ color schemes:

Moa and Camel Sign.PNG (190.71 KiB) Viewed 4440 times

Even further in the direction of things invisible at OpenTTD scales; a blackboard by the side door to announce weekly parma nights:

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And finally for signage, an advertising mural painted on the party wall, that will often be covered up by any neighboring buildings. The design is awful, but it will just be a colorful smudge at scale anyway. I may make a few of these to apply at random to sides of buildings...

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What the pub needs in terms of signage, at least from an Australian angle, are some illuminated beer signs, in the style of a Cooper's or VB roundel, or the generic Carlton or 4X rectangles. I'm torn as to whether to use those as it could easily count as fair use, or to continue to make my own TT world analogues... I also do not yet want to clutter the building too much...

[supermop]

Pub is done for now - time to get back to stations. All of the little bits like windows, doors, furniture etc are blocks so they can readily be reused in the creation of further pubs and houses. Here are four views of the pub at 4x zoom, surrounded by roads and a empty lot of 'dirt'. These images show one of the primary aims I have in these houses and roads, albeit in a crude state: using house 'setbacks' to created wider or richer sidewalks along main frontages, and minimal sidewalks along the sides. Looking at these, I need to mess around with the road markings a bit more...