i get back into my university (industrial design degree) so i don't come here for a few months.
and i come back to find that TTD has gone open source (well a similar one
he he he)I am in the Blender comunity, i use the GIMP, i use Open Office, and nearly every other open source thing you can imagine (except its all on windows LOL)
now the thing is GRAPHICS.
since i am a designer, and professional artist etc... i am definatly wanting to get into doing some graphics in my spare time.
the only thing that was stopping me with the old TTD grpahics was the lack of any real "freedom"
we had tiny squares with limited colours available to work with and basicly this turned me off.
now what i am proposing is a laying down of the foundation graphics sizes etc... for future use in the Open source version. thsi way both coders and artists can be heading towards the same goals.
Firstly these are my suggestions and my reasons for the suggestions
-----------Graphics/object file format------------------------
this should be either a TAR or ZIP file but with a renamed thing like .TTG(transport tycoon graphics) or somthing. within the file should be a numebr of files
firstly is the vehicle/object information this would probably be a txt file or something along the same lines (which can be human editable).
the second type of file would be a file telling the computer what the grpahics were for, another txt file or similar i guess, saying which frame is used for what event
the third type of file is the Graphics themselves, they would be labled 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 or a1-a2-a3-b1-b2 whatever is decided. but basicly they are the different angles of the sprite, as well as the possibility for a different grpahics set for different companys, e.g. all files with A then a number are company 1. B with a number company 2 etc... then there should be a Graphic for an exploded version or somthing (basicly any number of grpahics for any number of reasons could be added and the configuration file would say what they did)
--------------graphics sizes and technical details---------
i would propose that every Graphic be "made" and designed in 1024x1024 size or multiples of that. if the game were designed robustly enough all grpahics sized less than that would be scaled up in resolution to the playing resolution, and all graphics larger would be scaled down (assuming they were in the 2x2 4x4 8x8 etc... format) so you could play a game with 32x32 tiles as well as highly detailed 1024x1024 tiles without needed to replace the old ones, this would mean new grpahics could be added without interuption
if the early game only runs on lowere resolution tiles then the graphics designer can always scale down in size from their 1024 ones, but it does save work rather than re-doing everything if you do it smaller to start with.
i also propose using a format with alpha, most likely TGA files or somthing that is lossless.
basicly i would hope that a zip file renamed to .TTG would include (somthing like this)
Code: Select all
object info.txt
graphics info.txt
a1.TGA (side)
a2.TGA (45 degrees)
a3.TGA.....
b1.TGA (company 2 colours)
b2.TGA (45 degrees...)
Crash1.TGA (crash of the object)
Crash2.TGA (crash of object 45 degrees)
special 1
then i would hope the graphics configuration file would be somthing like this
Code: Select all
*angle*
//object angle when rendered
#-1-#= 000
#-2-#= 045
#-3-#= 046 (example meaning that any degrees could be added but could be ignored)
*Blue*
//blue company colour scheme
= #-a-#.TGA
*crash*
//crashed vechicle
= #-crash-#.TGA
*action one*
//when train is at stop graphics used for open doors
= #-special-#.TGA
basicly you could add as many graphics to the file as you would want. e.g. one for every degree the camera rotates. however the game engine at the time might only understand rotations of 45 degrees, so it would ignore the ones it didn't understand.
also things like "action one" would be looked for at places like a train station where its an understood thing in the gmae engine (to look for action one for example)
in this particular file example any file name with a 1 in it would be angle 000, any file with an "a" in it would be the Blue company (assuming the game had a blue company)
any file name with a "crash" in it would be a crashed one, you might have a single set of crash images, or might do one for every single colour/company it wouldn't matter the computer will work it out.
basicly the file format would need to be unbreakable and use a markup language like XML or somthing similar. it needs to be able to run on any older version of the game (e.g. you could have more or less info in it than was needed and it wouldn't complain it would deal with it)
and it needs to be unzipable, or untarable by anyone without any proprietry software. e.g. someone running the GIMP, and Gzip could sort out everything they needed.
the bigger the GFX i say the better, as future computers are only gonna get faster so 5000x8000 computer screens are not unimaginable, think of how much my 1920x1440 screen is larger than the 640x480 screen that TTD runs on.
i just think we need to sort it out before changing things in the code (since i know it will be changed)
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