[ARCHIVE] Old TARS drawings

[wallyweb]

Make some masks:

[michael blunck]

[sprite slicing]

There are two different ways to do it, and in fact (original) TTD uses both:

- a 2-dimensional approach
- a 3-dimensional approach

slicing.png (4.04 KiB) Viewed 3046 times

regards
Michael

[SwissFan91]

Thanks for your replies everyone.

I think I'll have to push this down my list of priorities, unless somebody wishes to have a crack at splitting this themselves!

[SwissFan91]

I've got fed up with cable cars. There, I said it.

So - instead of giving up, I went to basics. There's no point in drawing any fancy graphics until the wires are sorted. Here is what I have, a collection of modular tiles:

flattened workshop.jpg (28 KiB) Viewed 2889 times

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this. I really think I've got them right this time - so if I find errors later down the line it could be terminal for this project.

Thanks

[wallyweb]

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this.

The cables look good. Before adding details photoshop the cables over snowy tiles and grassy tiles to make sure the contrast is good.

[Quast65]

I agree, they look very nice.
And indeed another type of basetile (to make it easy, different shades of green or greyish whites) or another color for the pylons would be better to show it off. Right now it looks like there are no pylons on the red tile and it gives the visual effect of the wires being flat on the groundat the point where the orange and red tile meet.

[SwissFan91]

I'll have a look at doing that tonight.

WRT that image - the pink lines were not meant to be any type of pylon - merely me measuring the wire height on each tile! It just so happens they look like they are propping it up..

[wallyweb]

WRT that image - the pink lines were not meant to be any type of pylon - merely me measuring the wire height on each tile! It just so happens they look like they are propping it up..

Faux pylons?

[SwissFan91]

This may help:

show case.png (9.87 KiB) Viewed 2766 times

Feedback now? Pylon graphics are very quick and can/will easily be redrawn.

[Quast65]

Looks very promising and very nice!
I'd use it in my games!

[Eddi]

the pylons are fine, but the black wires are a little hard to see on the dark grass. maybe some shading similar to catenary would work better?

the pylons look like they aren't properly aligned to the center of the tile, though.

[SwissFan91]

Here's an update:

show case.png (10.08 KiB) Viewed 2665 times

I have aligned them more centrally, and attempted to shade the wires.

It is difficult WRT shading as 1) The wires are 1 pixel wide; and 2) There aren't many similar colours to the near-black colour used. A way around #2 may be to make the wires grey?

[Pyoro]

Imo this looks pretty good as it is; though I'd add a "wire only" object since, as far as I know, usually pylons are only build where a changing gradient makes them necessary, and too many on those even TT slopes look a bit too crowed to me ...

[Supercheese]

It is difficult WRT shading as 1) The wires are 1 pixel wide; and 2) There aren't many similar colours to the near-black colour used. A way around #2 may be to make the wires grey?

Yeah, many GRFs make wires grey, and shade them from lighter greys to darker greys.

[Eddi]

it's difficult to judge, you should add another row of tiles behind, so the wires are not in the black area.

but the bright top of the pylons kinda disappears in the snowy sections.

[planetmaker]

If you make the wires 2px (like train overhead, or coal mine) you could even make them animated in the same simple manner as coal mine does it, giving them a sense of motion.

[SwissFan91]

It is difficult WRT shading as 1) The wires are 1 pixel wide; and 2) There aren't many similar colours to the near-black colour used. A way around #2 may be to make the wires grey?

Yeah, many GRFs make wires grey, and shade them from lighter greys to darker greys.

Indeed, I may look into making a mock up of this later.

it's difficult to judge, you should add another row of tiles behind, so the wires are not in the black area.but the bright top of the pylons kinda disappears in the snowy sections.

Yeah, good point. As I mentioned somewhere, the gfx of the pylons are open to change.

If you make the wires 2px (like train overhead, or coal mine) you could even make them animated in the same simple manner as coal mine does it, giving them a sense of motion.

Would this not look a but odd if the cable car vehicles are not moving?

Imo this looks pretty good as it is; though I'd add a "wire only" object since, as far as I know, usually pylons are only build where a changing gradient makes them necessary, and too many on those even TT slopes look a bit too crowed to me ...

I'll look into this. I'm wary of using too many spaces in the menu though..

[wallyweb]

From the coder's point of view:
Draw two sets of cables: dark for snow, light for grass ... The code will pick the proper match ...
If you have one standard pylon, I should be able match it to any tile shape automatically from only one menu entry per direction. That means we only need two menu views and one ID.

[Ammler]

If you make the wires 2px (like train overhead, or coal mine) you could even make them animated in the same simple manner as coal mine does it, giving them a sense of motion.

Would this not look a but odd if the cable car vehicles are not moving?

The cable cars are "dockable" anyway, else you would need to timtable the cars to have same gaps.

[SwissFan91]

The cable cars are "dockable" anyway, else you would need to timtable the cars to have same gaps.

Wha?

You realise these are newobjects, not a hack for rail sprites, right?