Matrix Games Forums

Here's Spain and a very rough proof of concept for mountains and hills.

I've also moved the beaches onto the ocean tiles along with the borders. This prevents terrain from overriding the beach, so we can now actually see the beaches south of Lisbon and around Barcelona.

I think I'd like to connect the mountains and hills together a little better and have more opportunity for solid hill tiles. I'll have to see what I can come up. I think it will work. I hope it will work...

Looks perfect!

Just saw the Spain pic, mountains could use another color, let me see if I can find a pic somewhere.

Here are some possible examples.

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1734731/fortress-europa

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/854965/ ... d-portugal

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/122082/invasion-sicily

Brilliant.
I'm also reworking my retro mod, going for a look from S&T Magazine Operation Cobra.
The fill.png is a pain, and I'm finding the transition from plains to woods tile, also hard to smooth and line up.
Your work is sublime. Please continue, I can't wait to get my hands on your pixels.

Ive been using some of the artistic filters in gimp to achieve some good hills textures.
Mosaic
Emboss
Duplicate and then disolve the texture layer over the base colour.

Wow. BTW there is a text toggle in the editor to make the letters black on the map.

Map Edit -> lower left says Default Test Colorization

Zovs wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:49 am Just saw the Spain pic, mountains could use another color, let me see if I can find a pic somewhere.

I'm thinking of using brown for hills, dark grey for mountains and light/whitish grey for alpine, that way there is a clear distinction what each tile is. It takes just a few minutes to modify all the colours on the map though, so if you give me a reference later I can make it look like anything. I may end up releasing alternate graphics in different colours for those who want to mix and match. Everyone's taste is different!

AlvaroSousa wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 12:46 pm Wow. BTW there is a text toggle in the editor to make the letters black on the map.

Map Edit -> lower left says Default Test Colorization

I had tried both but each has their drawbacks.
Note I still haven't cleaned these areas up. The black tends to clash with the land-sea edges and rail lines, turning unreadable. Where it works the dark text looks amazing, including on the oceans. The white text is never unreadable but always a bit meh on the grey terrain.

Thanks for the great work on the editor, I was able to strip all the tile fill in one click. Once I've got the art finalised all I need to do then is tidy up all the hills and mountains like one big puzzle game, then I should be able to just import the terrain tile changes into the other scenarios. Would this cause any loss of custom information assigned to that tile? The goal is that while the map is edited to suit the new style, no gameplay changes have been made and all the terrain is what it was before, only with different tile visuals.

Finally, there's one major issue with my method. I'm abusing the tileFills, I'm using it as a solid colour to smooth out tree lines and help with connecting hills and mountain mountains. The drawback is that with control mode enabled the tile fills are tinted with the nations colour.
This shows the effect.

I realise it's a tall order, but would it be possible to have an option in the editor that modifies or moves the tileFill rendering when the game is running so that it isn't tinted?

Dont worry about the control tint, it's toggled on/off anyway. Gives players the choice.

You can always change the alpha on the control.png to zero.

Perhaps the Alpine tile should be a two lighter browns to white, so it feels contoured from hills.

Magpius wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:47 pm You can always change the alpha on the control.png to zero.

Perhaps the Alpine tile should be a two lighter browns to white, so it feels contoured from hills.

I'd still prefer to have a usable control view though I feel a bit lost without it.

Need some opinions on this.

There are obviously wood and forest tiles. Previously the distinction I was using was if the forest juts out a certain amount into the tile you can assume it's wood and not plain. If it takes up a large amount of the tile it's definitely a forest.

But I had an idea to make it a bit clearer using tileFills again. I've added some sort of copses that can be painted on afterwards. I think it's clearer than it was, but is it too noisy? Thoughts?

Most tiles except for a handful are done, pending changes. I think this is the best I can do with hills and mountains, not sure on the colours yet.

In the progress of painting the map right now.

Below is a comparison with vanilla. The new map is a little noiser than I'd hoped.

I like your railroads better than mine.

What a slog, just Turkey, middle east and North Africa to go. Hopefully all done this weekend.

Referencing a height map while painting the hills and mountains, so everything should roughly feel right. No tile types changes, only the graphics. Painstaking.

Trialing out height map colours.

I like this a lot better!

Zovs wrote: Fri Apr 22, 2022 3:00 pm I like this a lot better!

Yeah I think I do too. I played with the colours a bit more and think I've settled on something that looks good.

Map is released now! I've posted it to the correct forum: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 7#p4989917