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Here are two medium size office buildings I was able to produce finally.
First one is on 4x4 and other is on 4x3 tile.

I realized that as these buildings are based on the real life buildings, I am I still not sure what map orientation I would like to use for my game, so I will now focus on the houses and apartments for a while.

Why not try for full 360-degree rotation?

kamnet wrote:Why not try for full 360-degree rotation?

Well, I could. But then I could do less buildings and my ambition is to cover larger area (Luxembourg City and surroundings, to be specific).

The game does not allow multiple views (and because of this it never will, I am sorry too), so I could optimize.

Well, we'll see how far I will get with this.

you have a very distinct drawing style. looks nice.
the top building is gorgeous. even though I'm surprised that your floors are not 7 pixels on that one
but some really nice work, like your usage of color and like how you drew all the things on the roofs.
how long does it take you to draw a building like the first one?

Silverx50 wrote:you have a very distinct drawing style. looks nice. the top building is gorgeous.

Many thanks! I must say I like yours too.

Silverx50 wrote:even though I'm surprised that your floors are not 7 pixels on that one

Haha, I knew that this comes up. Actually, this building has this kind of facade where one floor is covered by two rows of glass (btw. I actually try to verify that this is not the case when I start with my usual floor height mantra ), so actually both buildings have about the same amount of floors (they are also located close).

The second building has 1 extra pixel as I could not get the look I wanted without it (and to be honest, both buildings have very heigh floors).

Silverx50 wrote:how you drew all the things on the roofs.

This is my strategy. If I get tired of this, I still have created a nice set of assets that others could use to make the game better. This is also most complicated part as I mostly have to rely on satellite imagery for this.

Silverx50 wrote:how long does it take you to draw a building like the first one?

It took me about two full days worth of man hours in total plus tens of reference photos over many visits (satellite images just did not cut it for me and it was on my route, so no big deal over this).

The most complicated thing for me was actually fitting of the repeating patterns (windows etc) so that I am not missing few pixels. I have to develop some methodology here to make it easier and faster for me.

Luckily (if I could say so) I have some excess time due to injury of my non-drawing hand and I hope to get much better in this so I would not need this much time.

I estimate that this kind of building should be matter of one evening (i.e. about 4-5 hours) if everything is well prepared (a lot of reference photos from correct angles , some pre-made stuff for the roof etc) and I know what to do.

And, I actually had the same question about your stations.



PS. I also included the "source files" (GIMP) of the both buildings to illustrate the techniques I have developed so far.

PPS. I tried to draw these buildings in a way that it would be possible to use them for different purposes after small modifications.

luxtram wrote:

kamnet wrote:Why not try for full 360-degree rotation?

The game does not allow multiple views (and because of this it never will, I am sorry too), so I could optimize.

No, the game doesn't allow for 360-degree rotation of a building as placed. But players can place objects facing any direction. I know the back of buildings don't look as awesome or sexy as front of buildings, but it does give players more flexibility in deciding where and how to place buildings.

kamnet wrote:

luxtram wrote:

kamnet wrote:Why not try for full 360-degree rotation?

The game does not allow multiple views (and because of this it never will, I am sorry too), so I could optimize.

No, the game doesn't allow for 360-degree rotation of a building as placed. But players can place objects facing any direction. I know the back of buildings don't look as awesome or sexy as front of buildings, but it does give players more flexibility in deciding where and how to place buildings.

Thanks for the technical correction. This is indeed what I meant.

In principle if there is some trick (in the game or in some editor) that would allow me to flip two identical views then I would be more motivated to draw two additional sides. I have to think about the light. Perhaps it is easy to do.

While some people my fuss about shading not being right. I suspect that most players really won't care if a preliminary release of an object doesn't have correct shading consistently across all objects.

cool set, I recognize the buildings


P.S: feel free to try the CFL Set I did (but still not completed..dumdidum)
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=70074

if you want to improve them, feel free to contact me (speaking lux. too )

Phreeze wrote:cool set, I recognize the buildings

Cool. More is coming.

Phreeze wrote: P.S: feel free to try the CFL Set I did (but still not completed..dumdidum)
if you want to improve them, feel free to contact me (speaking lux. too )

Yes, I see that it is missing passenger wagons of the electric trains for example if I am not mistaken. And buses and trams... I have to consider it definitely if I get that far.

Also perhaps you are also interested to create some buildings? Or you have at least a favorite one you would like to see?

passenger wagons for electric trains ? not really i guess. I don't know if the Wegmanns are already in it, I guess. I'm still working on cargo waggons, but I was lazy over the last months. They are nearly finished. (more talk on the dev thread, too much offtopic).


@your stuff: I have no skills in designing buildings, and I can't code them :X

another offtopic: I you see luxembourgish translation errors, message me I translated the whole stuff myself

This BCL (Banque centrale du Luxembourg) office building near former central city bus station.
Actual building is longer and would more likely fit 3x1 area, but this version could be also used as replacement for the houses.

Phreeze wrote:@your stuff: I have no skills in designing buildings, and I can't code them :X

Well, actually, I could have said that about myself less than month ago. So this should be not an obstacle.

If you can put two pixels next to each other then you can do it.

Drawing a building is actually very straightforward if you follow just small set of easy principles and techniques and I am more than happy to guide you if you are willing to give it a try.

Of course you probably do not start with the Gare but for example those blocky modern white villas are an easy way to get started.

Phreeze wrote:another offtopic: I you see luxembourgish translation errors, message me I translated the whole stuff myself

I am sorry, I could not help with this. I am just a resident.

Here is one of the few higher buildings from the city.

A very nice building, well done.
love your way of drawing all the roof implements they give the building a very complete look.
and the way you texture the two large roof areas is so smooth, something I haven't been able to get done that nicely.
as always I look forward to your next piece of work.

Silverx50 wrote:A very nice building, well done.

Thank you for the support!

Silverx50 wrote:and the way you texture the two large roof areas is so smooth, something I haven't been able to get done that nicely.

I am afraid that part of the trick is that I do not mind the OpenTTD palette (my idea is to get these into the game as 32 bpp graphics).

But in short what I do is the following.

I generated a block of noise (GIMP->Noise->HSV Noise, brown background, desaturated later, if you want to experiment, I had to tweak it a little to get the desired results).
I did this after I was not satisfied with my IKEA Arlon roof (did not update that though).

I color the roof uniformly with the desired color and put the noise layer above it. Then I use the selection tool to select the roof and generate the mask for the noise layer based on that.

Then I set the noise layer into burn mode and tweak opacity and the brightness and contrast of the noise layer till I am satisfied with the result.

I had today and opportunity to take few shots of the areas I am drawing.

This is also small overview of what I am being up to.
It should be mentioned that some of the details of the older building (Post office) are from Silverx50.

This is some impressive work luxtram. comparing the drawings to the picture you took you got the shapes and basic outlines really well done.
my favorite though is the building with the orange part. really like how that one is coming out.

This is part of the new RTL Group towers that is being built in Kirchberg.