[32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

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Lucardes
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by Lucardes »

This is amazing stuff!
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by DOCa Cola »

I really like the work you have done!

The only thing that really stops me from using it is the landscape. From what you wrote you have made that choice because you aim to increase focus on the gameplay elements. I doubt that you achieve that goal with the removal of color from much the landscape. When zoomed out, roads, some visual elements bridges, in part the maglev tracks, especially the monorail tracks suffer from the reduced contrast that is grey on grey. When zoomed in the attenuated noise of ground texture clashes with every other visual element you have put in that set. It gives the game a lifeless or even dystopian look while everything else seems to try to communicate the opposite. That makes every other element in the game look out of place on that terrain. The trees work well on the grey terrain in my opinion, however even here the ground noise might dominate too much visually as well. In my opinion the current choice of terrain distracts more than it helps to achieve the goal you have in mind. To me it looks like you have two different ideas and tried to put them into one set.

Still. I like the overall detail of the set and look forward to see what you have in mind next.
archy
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by archy »

This is really cool!

The grey terrain is strangely pleasant to look at, especially when zoomed in all the way.
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SyberSycho
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by SyberSycho »

Been awhile since anything new has come of this set. Is the progress dead at this point?
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by Alberth »

Afaik V is a litle bit very much swamped with work and living (aka "real life"), just be patient :)
Being a retired OpenTTD developer does not mean I know what I am doing.
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SyberSycho
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by SyberSycho »

Everytime I find myself coming back to this game I check this forum in hopes to see you again V.
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V453000 :)
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Hi, it's awesome to hear from you, but I've been very busy since you've last seen stuff from me, and I am kind of dropping out of having the habit to do OpenTTD related things, I don't even log on to IRC anymore. :(

So definitely do not expect anything new anytime soon, unless I get some random surge of nostalgia, energy and motivation.

But never say never. :)
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SyberSycho
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by SyberSycho »

V453000 :) wrote:Hi, it's awesome to hear from you, but I've been very busy since you've last seen stuff from me, and I am kind of dropping out of having the habit to do OpenTTD related things, I don't even log on to IRC anymore. :(

So definitely do not expect anything new anytime soon, unless I get some random surge of nostalgia, energy and motivation.

But never say never. :)
Glade to hear from you. Sad to hear that it's unlikely for you to finish the set. I'll still hope you'll have that burst of nostalgia, at least to finish some of the terrain eyesores like rivers/canels.
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Somehow warm weather seems to give me OpenTTD related nostalgia, and as it has been getting quite warm in Prague recently it did just that.

I have started toying around with train depots and stations for BRIX. A very basic version of a train station I have in the game, now I need to make it look decent.

As a side note, I must say I am extremely pleased with the automated workflow I've set up last time I worked on BRIX - when I re-render a station, I just need to click a few buttons and I see it in the game already in all of 32bpp, 8bpp, x1 and x4 versions. If anybody who plans to create 32bpp reads this, make sure you are aware of the RGBA Eater. https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/br ... Rgba-eater
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BRIX-train-station-00-template.png
BRIX-train-station-00-template.png (673.65 KiB) Viewed 2205 times
BRIX-train-station-01-basic-mesh.png
BRIX-train-station-01-basic-mesh.png (757.52 KiB) Viewed 2205 times
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planetmaker
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by planetmaker »

Lovely :)

And I totally was not aware of the RGBA eater... I shall find that totally handy!
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V453000 :)
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Yeah I don't think anybody else than me uses it so far... it's fully functional but a bit clunky to use - requires one specific folder structure and doesn't even check if the folder exists to create it (yet). I might end up rewriting some parts of it some day, for now it's great already.
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

In the last few days I continued my efforts by putting very basic train depots in the game.

I very quickly got completely swamped in extremely messy folder/file system in by BRIX repository. This was caused by many aspects, most importantly the fact that I work on BRIX in a very on-and-off fashion, and the long time periods between my activity usually mean that I figure out how to do things better in some way each time.

For example:
- BRIX 0.0.1 was created from 3D renders from 3DS MAX. BRIX 0.0.2 did not even open those and I don't even install 3DS MAX on my computers anymore so that part of the source is basically useless to me now, but a lot of files around it still remained around.
- To create BRIX 0.0.2, I used a lot of messy hacks that don't go well with long-term health of the file system, and the After Effects mega-project in a single file became so large that it's completely unfeasible to work with.
- Since I have RGBA Eater, I don't need to avoid 8bpp conversion anymore, and using big spritesheets instead of more smaller files has basically no benefit anymore.

All in all, I've created a new BRIX repository on github where is not going to be any of this type of mess - 3D and other graphics files won't even be included. I'll just put there everything necessary to build the game from existing sprites. The only extra there will be is the existing setup including RGBA Eater and other scripts that are being used to process the sprites (After Effects outputs), for example from 32bpp RGBA x4 zoom all the way nto 8bpp x1.
https://github.com/V453000/BRIX

It went hand in hand that I also created a new github repository for RGBA Eater itself, as I've been planning to do that for some time now, and it makes sense for such a tool. It's very barebones and the documentation is a bit crude, but that will get improved eventually.
https://github.com/V453000/RGBA-Eater

This all lead into major cleanup of BRIX repository and graphics pipeline. I have a /gfx folder which then forks into /32bpp and /8bpp sub-folders. Most of the time there is one more sub-folder level: /x4 or /x1. Some sprites don't have the last split as the spritesheets combine both x4 and x1 - typically ground tiles as those aren't just downscaled because the tile edges need to be precise for each zoom level specifically.

As a result of the cleanup, I now have a tandem of scripts that take care of resizing to x1, 8bpp conversion and combining some 8bpp files in specific cases.

The fact that I had a clean repository and RGBA Eater in its own made me curious if I could solve the tree shadows in 8bpp.

In 32bpp of BRIX 0.0.2, trees have shadows which has major impact on how they fit in the world. The 8bpp trees simply omit the shadows as I could either have fully opaque shadows or nothing, I chose nothing in the situation when trying to finish 0.0.2.

A related issue happens with Tubular bridges where 32bpp version uses semi-transparency but 8bpp does not - for example TTD graphics address this by a checker pattern of transparent and opaque pixels.
Tree-shadow-tech.png
Tree-shadow-tech.png (51.18 KiB) Viewed 2205 times
With the cleaner system and git in place, I thought I could try to add checker-alpha support to RGBA Eater and solve both the 8bpp tree shadows and tubular bridges with that.
tree-shadow-comparison-00.png
(889.46 KiB) Not downloaded yet
I was quite surprised when I saw that the tree shadow is not really visible - this was because the grass terrain is already dark gray and there was very little contrast. In fact even on snow or desert in some cases the shadow didn't have as much impact as I had hoped.
tree-shadow-comparison-01.png
(894.43 KiB) Not downloaded yet
So next up I added support to RGBA Eater for probability-based-alpha. This takes the input alpha-gradient, and based on the opacity of the pixel it randomly converts the pixel into opaque or transparent. This results in a nice effect, but all of a sudden in snow and desert such shadows are completely brutal.

download/file.php?id=207647

I realized that snow capped trees mostly show only on snow, and cacti only in desert - so I tried to give the shadow different colour than pure black and I came to a reasonable result.

download/file.php?id=207648

I might still tweak it but I consider this to be a big improvement of the 8bpp version, and lets see how does the checker work with tubular bridges. :)
Last edited by V453000 :) on 06 Apr 2019 19:44, edited 3 times in total.
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V453000 :)
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

2 extra attachments to previous post.
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V453000 :)
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

I tried to separate the transparent parts from the tubular bridges in Photoshop and then converted that image by RGBA Eater with the new checker alpha support.

Everything seemed great until I saw that x2 zoom is not semi-transparent as expected - BRIX only defines x4 and x1 zoom so x2 is automatically downscaled by the game. This resulted in the checker grid disappearing and only the opaque pixels would show.

I solved this by adding configurable checker grid size, and the x4 zoom in tubular bridges uses 2x2 pixel squares, which reduce to 1x1 in x2 zoom.

I also added support for the converter so that left out pixels get pink colour, which can be useful for copying the converter results into other 8bpp spritesheets.
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tubular-comparison-8bpp-BRIX002.png
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tubular-comparison-8bpp-BRIX003.png
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tubular-comparison-32bpp-x4.png
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nirasa
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by nirasa »

En: Hurray! There will be another BRIX!
Cz: Hurá! Bude další BRIX!
:D
My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/nirasa/videos Czech language. :D
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SyberSycho
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by SyberSycho »

Ended up getting a back into openttd a bit and managed to update using github so i could play with your stations and train depots. Glade to see updates still happen on occasion. Still intrigue to see how this set grows over time.
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by ajee »

Hello V,

what a fantastic job you have there. Cannot wait to implement this to my game.

Regards,
Ajee
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by werbfred »

Really good job V453000... I love that one :bow:

Are you still working on it ? Would be great to have the rivers slopes be implemented as well :roll:

Do you believe you can also generate a bridge preview to replace the ones from the select list :oops:

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SyberSycho
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by SyberSycho »

Hopefully you have been well V,

I had that OpenTTD itch. :mrgreen:
Came to see if anything new had popped up. Is this project dead?
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kamnet
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Re: [32bpp/EZ]BRIX!!!

Post by kamnet »

SyberSycho wrote: 13 Jan 2023 20:20 Is this project dead?
An update has not been posted by the developer in four years, and the developer hasn't logged in for 18 months. It's safe to assume that the project, for now, is finished.
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