TARS Towns development

[SwissFan91]

]Well, I've drawn something, so I shall start the Town Set.

It's a church, mostly based on this, from Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Comments welcome.

License: CC-BY

[EDIT] Shadow increased on spire roof, thanks to PM.

[EDIT2] Touched up, thanks to SAC.

[EDIT3] Made into a 1x1 square.

[EDIT4] Need a coder - PM for details

[SwissFan91]

OK, here's another WIP, from mainly this. Thought I might get a bit more interest here..

[EDIT] Improved.
[EDIT2] Frontage done.
[EDIT3] Small edit. Made into a 2x1 square.

[Eddi]

Thought I might get a bit more interest here..

Don't expect that 20 people comment on every single sprite.

[SwissFan91]

Thought I might get a bit more interest here..

Don't expect that 20 people comment on every single sprite.

I won't.

[FooBar]

Church is nice. The green roof is a bit too green though I think. From the picture it looks to be a corroded copper roof, which is a much more subtle green. The pale greens 60 through 67 would be much better I think, and then the lighter shades of that. Also some light/dark colour variations to the walls would make it look more interesting, maybe slightly darker around the bottom edge is enough.

The shape of the house is good, but it obviously needs some texture all around.

And don't forget snowy versions!

[Leanden]

The apartment block is good, but something bugs me about the church which atm makes it look like lego to me.

[Yoshi]

Maybe it's caused by the contrast

[SwissFan91]

Hmmm, I know what you mean, Leaden. Thank you for your kind words, and Foobar.

Here's another one, based on this. Still early stages mind, and I haven't attempted any noise on any graphics so far.

[SwissFan91]

This will remain my mock-up post, and I'll edit it as I put new buildings into it.

NB - The cable car station is a WIP newobject, and yes I know it is very bland, I have only worked on one wall so far.

[EDIT] New mockup.

[davis]

I realy love the idea of this set , but imho the buildings need some sort of "distortion" so it fits in with the pixelated style of ttd.

Right now it somewhat reminds me of the 32bpp extra zoom graphics.

[Leanden]

The fact that the mock-up has been done on extra zoom probably doesnt help either.

Instead of zooming the map to make it match the size of your sprites, you should be drawing that sprites to their actual proper scale.

[SwissFan91]

I agree. The colours will be sorted out when the TTD palette is applied to the building (once I know how to get the OTTD palette in paint.net )

As for the zoom, I just did it hastily, so I knew it wasn't brilliant.

[Leanden]

I could never get my head around Paint.net for palletes. I use GIMP instead.

[FooBar]

As far as I understood last time I checked paint.net can't work with fixed file palettes. So you need a more advanced graphics editor to do that. GIMP is fine (check the graphics tutorial at tt-wiki for instructions).

[Eddi]

Paint.NET is something different than windows paint. it should have enough support for palettes.

[FooBar]

I know, but trust me I checked both the program and the internet without result.

If you know how to work with palettes in paint.net please add some instructions here: http://www.tt-wiki.net/wiki/Save_paletted_image_files


@SwissFan91: if you like you can still use paint.net for drawing and only GIMP or something to apply the palette to the file.

[Eddi]

i have never used paint.net myself, but you hear quite frequently that people actually use it for grf development.

[planetmaker]

i have never used paint.net myself, but you hear quite frequently that people actually use it for grf development.

That doesn't mean that those sprites actually have the proper palette. Only that they use the proper colours.
DanMacK and myself have jointly tried to teach his Paint.net to save proper palettes - but we've failed.

So if someone indeed knows better, proper directions how to teach it to reliably use the TTD palette in the place FooBar linked would be welcome. Otherwise I'll also have to continue to consider it a programme not well suitable.

[Alberth]

Random idea: Did you try loading an 8bpp image (displaying the palette in the image), and use that as base for your editing?
As long as you leave the picture of the entire palette in the image, you should keep those colours in the palette.

You do have to check
- Does the program really save again an indexed image?
- Does the program keep the index values intact?

[planetmaker]

Random idea: Did you try loading an 8bpp image (displaying the palette in the image), and use that as base for your editing?
As long as you leave the picture of the entire palette in the image, you should keep those colours in the palette.

You do have to check
- Does the program really save again an indexed image?
- Does the program keep the index values intact?

That way is what we tried. It keeps the palette, but not reliably enough, i.e. dropped it under some circumstances. Which exactly I don't recall, it's only 2nd hand info here anyway :-9