Sextant-enHANSed: (I Made my own version of Sextant)
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 9:59 am
(Update Aug. 17th, 2018: Tileset is now available for download. Scroll to bottom of post.)
I decided to play a game on the Europe 1900 map, but couldn't abide using an Isometric tileset on a map that was clearly rectilinear. This meant I needed to venture outside of the comfortable Amplio2 tileset that is FreeCiv's pride. Not only that, but I needed to enter the world of Square Tilesets, of which there are but a few.
I first looked at Trident, but it was just too tiny and too rough for me to imagine actually playing a GAME with it.
Then I found the Chess tileset which although it was nice and fancy, I need SOME color in my life!
Then I found Sextant, which looked as though somebody said "Trident was great! What if I made it 2x as big?" (No offense GriffonSpade, you do great work!)
But it's size looked about right, and I thought maybe if I could replace or modify some of the textures, it would be serviceable.
So I took it upon myself to modify Sextant into a form that I could tolerate actually using in a game. I got pretty far in my beautification, then got stuck, then dropped the project. And then one year later I thought "Why did I never finish that Europe 1900 game?" So I loaded it up and saw the graphics and remembered "Oh yeah, that's why."
So I got back to work copy/pasting sprites from other tilesets, editing existing sprites to make them prettier, and making my own sprites where required. And I have finally managed to create something where I can look at it and say: "Yeah, I could probably play on that*"
*Note: I have not yet actually played on it yet. Just looked at it a bunch.
I have some pictures to share and then some questions to ask.
First: Pictures!!!!!
Here you can see my lovely Farmland, National Borders, all-new Riot graphic, and custom Tile-yield Icons.
Here you can see my lovely Irrigation, a warmer color tone for the Plains, and the truly wondrous way that the Amplio2 cities get their corners clipped off.
Questions:
How should I go about sharing this? Put a zip file up somewhere to download? Put it on the wiki?
I've tinkered with just about every image-file in the pack, and have thoroughly lost track of what I have or have not touched. How can I get my attributions straight?
How does this compare to Sextant 2.6? I haven't looked at the original Sextant in over a year. Is there anything I would need to add that has been changed?
TILESET NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Preview of current version:
TO INSTALL: Download the latest version (v0.1) and unzip it in the "/Freeciv-2.5-???/data" folder, to make it part of that Freeciv install.
Alternately, locate your "/UserName/AppData/Roaming/.freeciv/2.5" folder, and unzip the file into there to make it available to all Freeciv installs.
I decided to play a game on the Europe 1900 map, but couldn't abide using an Isometric tileset on a map that was clearly rectilinear. This meant I needed to venture outside of the comfortable Amplio2 tileset that is FreeCiv's pride. Not only that, but I needed to enter the world of Square Tilesets, of which there are but a few.
I first looked at Trident, but it was just too tiny and too rough for me to imagine actually playing a GAME with it.
Then I found the Chess tileset which although it was nice and fancy, I need SOME color in my life!
Then I found Sextant, which looked as though somebody said "Trident was great! What if I made it 2x as big?" (No offense GriffonSpade, you do great work!)
But it's size looked about right, and I thought maybe if I could replace or modify some of the textures, it would be serviceable.
So I took it upon myself to modify Sextant into a form that I could tolerate actually using in a game. I got pretty far in my beautification, then got stuck, then dropped the project. And then one year later I thought "Why did I never finish that Europe 1900 game?" So I loaded it up and saw the graphics and remembered "Oh yeah, that's why."
So I got back to work copy/pasting sprites from other tilesets, editing existing sprites to make them prettier, and making my own sprites where required. And I have finally managed to create something where I can look at it and say: "Yeah, I could probably play on that*"
*Note: I have not yet actually played on it yet. Just looked at it a bunch.
I have some pictures to share and then some questions to ask.
First: Pictures!!!!!
Here you can see my lovely Farmland, National Borders, all-new Riot graphic, and custom Tile-yield Icons.
Here you can see my lovely Irrigation, a warmer color tone for the Plains, and the truly wondrous way that the Amplio2 cities get their corners clipped off.
Questions:
How should I go about sharing this? Put a zip file up somewhere to download? Put it on the wiki?
I've tinkered with just about every image-file in the pack, and have thoroughly lost track of what I have or have not touched. How can I get my attributions straight?
How does this compare to Sextant 2.6? I haven't looked at the original Sextant in over a year. Is there anything I would need to add that has been changed?
TILESET NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Preview of current version:
TO INSTALL: Download the latest version (v0.1) and unzip it in the "/Freeciv-2.5-???/data" folder, to make it part of that Freeciv install.
Alternately, locate your "/UserName/AppData/Roaming/.freeciv/2.5" folder, and unzip the file into there to make it available to all Freeciv installs.