Recolouring for track tiles?
Posted: 27 Oct 2008 11:15
I´ve never understood the diverse efforts towards "new" tracks. Nevertheless, there are more "track sets" than Turbo train .grfs available at the time being.
IMO, tracks are one of the more unimportant parts of the game, mostly because they only add (negligible) graphical effects but don´t contribute to game play, in contrast to vehicle and building sets.
In addition to that, there are more problems with track sets:
- frankly, most of the new ones don´t look good. E.g., the CS rail set looks really weird with its Moiré effects,
- there are constant problems with bridges due to the way bridges are implemented in TTD. To overcome this, each track set has to include bridges as well, which in turn generates problems with foreign bridge sets,
- there are problems with some of the station sets. Some station tiles need special track ground sprites because of sorter problems and due to the way of the newgrf implementation, these sprites have to be included into the station set´s sprite blocks,
- there are copyright problems because in TTD "tracks" are incorporated into the landscape ground tiles. Changing those as well to avoid these problems would amount to a whole new landscape tile set.
IMO, there´s much too little benefit with regard to the large number of inherited problems.
A different approch would be to leave the original track tiles "untouched" but only recolour them. To illustrate the effect, here´s a screenshot with track(bed) colours shifted one index up (lighter). IMO, these would look already better in case the original ones are being felt too dark, and in addition, the original track sprites used inside the NewStations would blend well too (it´s more shady inside a station).
The needed recolouring could be done inside TTDPatch and in this way there would be no copyright problem. Just to mention it, it would be possible to map each of the original colours to a newly specified one. It doesn´t mean that you may only lighten or darken the original track tiles.
regards
Michael
IMO, tracks are one of the more unimportant parts of the game, mostly because they only add (negligible) graphical effects but don´t contribute to game play, in contrast to vehicle and building sets.
In addition to that, there are more problems with track sets:
- frankly, most of the new ones don´t look good. E.g., the CS rail set looks really weird with its Moiré effects,
- there are constant problems with bridges due to the way bridges are implemented in TTD. To overcome this, each track set has to include bridges as well, which in turn generates problems with foreign bridge sets,
- there are problems with some of the station sets. Some station tiles need special track ground sprites because of sorter problems and due to the way of the newgrf implementation, these sprites have to be included into the station set´s sprite blocks,
- there are copyright problems because in TTD "tracks" are incorporated into the landscape ground tiles. Changing those as well to avoid these problems would amount to a whole new landscape tile set.
IMO, there´s much too little benefit with regard to the large number of inherited problems.
A different approch would be to leave the original track tiles "untouched" but only recolour them. To illustrate the effect, here´s a screenshot with track(bed) colours shifted one index up (lighter). IMO, these would look already better in case the original ones are being felt too dark, and in addition, the original track sprites used inside the NewStations would blend well too (it´s more shady inside a station).
The needed recolouring could be done inside TTDPatch and in this way there would be no copyright problem. Just to mention it, it would be possible to map each of the original colours to a newly specified one. It doesn´t mean that you may only lighten or darken the original track tiles.
regards
Michael