Tileset for Alien World ruleset

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cazfi
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Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

As bug #20465 states, we have no tileset suitable for alien ruleset that's meant to be included in freeciv-2.6.

I started development of Alien ruleset at the same time I were working on so called gen-movement subproject of freeciv. Idea of gen-movement was to remove strict classification of units to land, sea, and air units and terrains to oceans and land. Instead unit's ability to move to a tile is defined separately for each terrain. Idea was that in the beginning player is restricted to only a few terrain types, with space for living increasing as game progress. Original name of the alien ruleset in early design phase was "stalker" as a reference to book Stalker where the hero tries to navigate the truly alien
area, touched by the technology of alien visitors, where seemingly arbitrary rules, including twisted rules of physics, apply. Only paths known to be safe may be traveled. Later in development that idea
of restricting movement weakened, but idea of alien (as "weird") world become more and more important. A lot of the Earthly knowledge simply does not apply in this world. Humans are quite advanced themselves -
they accidentally arrive to the planet while flying from part of galactic empire to the other - but on that planet they have hard time to get water to flow the direction they want.

There is life on this planet, even animals. The game is between human factions, but aliens are being used as units. One of the first techs is "Alien Taming" to get "Scout Animal" unit. Later technologies allow
engineering of the alien life to the point it gets human-like intelligence, and consequently full "Alien Rights" but there never is anything like alien-only nations.


First thing to decide is tile size. Based on that I could at least create sort of tileset skeleton to be filled with real gfx. Is Amplio2's 96x48 good size, or should we go with some other tile size?
cazfi
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

I'll be listing here what the tileset needs. This first list is about terrains

Terrains:
  • Grassland
    Alien Forest
    Radiating Rocks
    Hills
    Thick Mountains
    Ocean
    Boiling Ocean
Resources:
  • Resources
    Alien Mine
    Huge Plant
    Thermal Vent
    Fish
    Glowing Rocks
Bases
  • Tower
    Force Fortress
    Antigrav Base
Roads:
  • Road
    Highway
    Maglev
    Tunnel
    Burrow Tube
I'm also considering adding two distinct river types when the freeciv engine work to support ruleset defined rivers is finished.
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

Units
  • Settlers (Earthly)
    Native Settlers (Native)
    Engineer (Earthly)
    Native Engineer (Native)
    Water Engineer (Amphibious)
    Star Marines (Earthly)
    Cyborgs (Earthly)
    Tank (Earthly)
    War Monster (Native)
    Crusher (Native)
    Cyber Alien (Native)
    Rex (Native)
    Paradropper (Native)
    Turtle Defender (Earthly)
    Earth Sub (Burrowing)
    Hunter (Burrowing)
    Light Saucer (Antigravity)
    Bomb Saucer (Antigravity)
    Spitter (Native)
    Heavy Spitter (Native)
    Explorer (Earthly)
    Scout Animal (Native)
    Raft (Sea)
    Ship (Sea)
    Destroyer (Sea)
    Batle Unit (Amphibious)
    Amphibious Transport (Amphibious)
    Freight (Earthly)
    Caravan (Native)
    Stealth Spy (Earthly)
    Teleporting Missile (Missile)
    Antiburrow Missile (Missile)
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

For the record: I've been testing with one tileset myself, but I cannot distribute that due to license terms of the gfx used.

Those coming from civ2 modding should remember that we use pngs with alpha channel. You may want to take advantage of that. Civ2 had just one color (pink) reserved for what parts one can see through (totally transparent). With alpha channel there's no such reserved color, but you control level of transparency of each pixel just like you control how much R)ed, G)reen, or B)lue there is (so it's not RGB but RGBA).

In my tileset I tried partial transparency on two things. Stealth Spy unit was partly transparent. Problem with that was that even owner of the unit had sometimes hard time locating that chameleon unit, so in the end transparency was set to such a low value that it gave colour behind the unit to come through the unit just a bit. Second thing was making certain parts of the "Fish" special semi-transparent. This special appears on both Ocean and Boiling Ocean tiles, of which former I had as quite blue and latter as red/brown colour terrain. The colour of the terrain made fish appear very different depending on where it appeared even though it was the same Alien Fish gfx.
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

Factions (Nations). These require flags of some sort, and probably separate symbols for units. There's also chance that these get replaced with something more sensible.
  • Adventurers
    Galactic Sound (band)
    J&W Corporation
    Kindergarden
    Lunatic (sea barbarian nation)
    Madmen (land barbarian nation)
    Math Club
    Secret Society
    Team Gladiators (sports team)
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

So, I just started working on an Alien World Tileset(only tiles(t, ts and tx), I can't draw units, flags and stuff) based on the old trident tileset, and I was wondering, should Ocean terrain and Resources(Grassland) look different from the original? And what should the new river look like?
~ AVL
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

Caedo wrote:So, I just started working on an Alien World Tileset(only tiles(t, ts and tx), I can't draw units, flags and stuff) based on the old trident tileset
Thanks. Though it would be nice if we had concensus on the matters of tile size and isometric/not before actual work. What if someone else now wants to do the units in Amplio(2) size?
Caedo wrote:should Ocean terrain and Resources(Grassland) look different from the original? And what should the new river look like?
Ocean is rules-wise almost identical to what classic rulesets have, but it's up to you if you want to give this Alien planet's Oceans distinct look from earthly oceans. They just should be easy to tell apart from "Boiling Ocean" that can be traveled only by units that are after "Thermal Module" in tech tree.
Current grassland helptext: "For some reason, there is Earth like grass and animals around."

I'm currently testing version that actually has two distinct river types, known by their color: "Green River" and "Brown River".
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

cazfi wrote:What if someone else now wants to do the units in Amplio(2) size?
Well, I'm just starting creating tilesets, and the Amplio tileset is somewhat more complex than trident. I will probably create the graphics fitting for alien-amplio too, when I get everything ready for alien-trident.
cazfi wrote:I'm currently testing version that actually has two distinct river types, known by their color: "Green River" and "Brown River".
The Green River probably doesn't flow on grassland(because it would be hard to distiguish), does it?
~ AVL
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by Sarilho1 »

Caedo wrote:The Green River probably doesn't flow on grassland(because it would be hard to distiguish), does it?
Try a lava river if it isn't too aggressive.
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Re: Tileset for Alien World ruleset

Post by cazfi »

Sarilho1 wrote:
Caedo wrote:The Green River probably doesn't flow on grassland(because it would be hard to distiguish), does it?
Try a lava river if it isn't too aggressive.
Both river types give movement bonus, i.e., it's assumed that anyone can sail it. Both rivers can appear in any land terrain, but there's no particular reason one of them would be green - we can change that to another colour, or even to something completely different. Currently the only difference between the rivers is that Brown River gives production bonus (in addition to trade bonus) while Green River gives food bonus.
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