About tiles that have a similiar color as steel (cf. issue #251)

[Forestidia86]

That issue struck me as I was playing Nessy's levels:

Destroyable tiles looked like steel colorwise and that confused me.
In particular it was matt/bricks/18 and if combined with other tiles the small geoo/construction/concrete (in particular here: 008) tiles; I thought they were steel pieces.
(I have to admit I was extremely tired as I played these levels, so I'm not fully sure if I would have been as confused if I had been in a better state of mind. And I don't know if anyone else has this problem.)

I don't know any good solution.
Simon seems to want to implement a mode where steel is specifically marked as such but that feels more like a workaround. You have to suspect that there is unclear terrain but then you try out anyways or you have to check every level you play. I really don't want to speak against such a feature; it's really nice to get information about the level and it can be helpful. But the best thing would be you could see it without such means but maybe that's not viable. To be clear I don't want these tiles to be culled but maybe they can be marked or recolored?

(To be clear furthermore that is not directed against Nessy's level design; these tiles are available as terrain pieces and have their aesthetics. It's if at all more a problem about these tiles itself.)

Again if nobody else has a problem with it I can live with it since now I know that this can occur.

[Simon]

Issue #251

I agree with you: The offending destructible tiles should get repainted. You're 100 % correct that any steel-earth-differentiating viewmode would be a workaround.

I've discussed this with geoo in IRC shortly. We considered two solutions: a) all steel gets nubs, or b) all earth may not look grey-and-shiny. We found a) impractical since there are fine-grained steel pieces:



Therefore, all earth should get clearly differentiated from this. Here are the most problematic earth tiles:

matt/bricks/18
matt/bricks/19
matt/bricks/20 (also its upper bars have wrong shading. Light should come from top-left.)
geoo/construction/pillar_32
geoo/construction/pillar_base
geoo/construction/pillar_bottom
geoo/construction/pillar_top
geoo/construction/pillar_top_shaded
geoo/construction/concrete/008

-- Simon

[Simon]

Here's a proposal for the shiny grey columns matt/bricks/{18..20}.png:

Level images with this tile

-- Simon

[Forestidia86]

Thanks, I think this looks less confusing now.

[geoo]

Some possible variations for the concrete pillars.

btw, the first time I encountered the rock pieces from Matt's earth set I was also wondering if they were solid, as opposed to the earth pieces themselves.

[Forestidia86]

Thanks, geoo.
I personally think, that the non-round ones look most like concrete and not like steel, are therefore the least confusing.
Of the round ones the clearest seem to me the ones to the far right, whereas the ones one the far left still look somehow shiny like steel.

[geoo]

The one on the far left is what we currently have, for reference.

I agree that the hexagonal ones look most like concrete, however the strong visual difference to round pillars might make some levels look weird where the author intended for a round pillar. However, either way, I'd be happy to provide hexagonal pillars in addition to the round ones if we stick with some round variation. I could make the new round ones a bit brighter, as I think right now they might be a bit too grey while the blocks feel more white.

[Simon]

I like the hexagonals best, they're clearest, and the far-right pillar second-best. I assume the far-right is the last one we had in chat yesterday.

-- Simon

[geoo]

I made a selection of the hexagonal pillar tiles, using different patches from the texture.
Look through them and find a collection that tiles together well.

For a future release, we could also include a few variations of the main pillar tiles to make it less repetitive, and one of the long ones.

EDIT: The 10 different pillar pieces and how they tile (or not). Ideally, we'd just pick one that works without or just little modifications, and adapt the top/bottom pieces to it.

[mobius]

I made a selection of the hexagonal pillar tiles, using different patches from the texture.
Look through them and find a collection that tiles together well.

For a future release, we could also include a few variations of the main pillar tiles to make it less repetitive, and one of the long ones.

EDIT: The 10 different pillar pieces and how they tile (or not). Ideally, we'd just pick one that works without or just little modifications, and adapt the top/bottom pieces to it.

I like 2,3,6 and the last one the best

@geoo: what program(s) do you use to make the textures? (originally)

[Simon]

I like 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11. Some holes are good.

How well can you make them tile with each other (hide the seams between two occurrences of the same tile)? My crude technique to tile is: Select entire tile, copy, vertical-flip the copy, scale the copy to 20 % vertically but keeping 100 % horizontal size, then attach or overlap at either end of the original tile.

mobius: geoo and I use GIMP for tilesetting. I've even begun using GIMP for my rare simple pixel art and spriting; I used GraphicsGale for pixelling before.

-- Simon

[geoo]

Attached are the proposed pillar replacements/additions. Everything seems to tile well.

Also attached GIMP templates in case anyone wants to mess around some more, but I'm quite happy with the result.

EDIT: Also template for squisher trap.