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[Meph]

Tarn wrote up a little script to test worldmaps, and Mike came up with a beaufitul, simplified design that's very readable. It's still very WIP, but I'm curious if you guys have some good ideas.

This is without sites/constructions, good/evil biomes or lakes/rivers.

We used up to 5 variations of different borders and corners, to avoid straight edges; and fill out biomes like mountains or forests with copies of sprites across tiles.

[Rose]

That's looking prety decent, but I feel the hills could use a bit more in-between hills to break it up a bit.

Also maybe a line of sand along the coastlines, unless toady's secretly working on coastline cliffs, which would be amazing.

[Cruxador]

Well, it'll be much more aesthetically pleasing if you mix those corners up and clip some off, round some off, and make others more pointed. The straight edges could use some noise too.

Aside from that, the spritely bits (mointains and trees and hills) could really use some variation so they tile more elegantly, but I suppose you know that since you already did it with the marsh.

That's looking prety decent, but I feel the hills could use a bit more in-between hills to break it up a bit.

Yeah, it would be great if for each border between two hill tiles there was another hill sprite placed overlapping with a random offset from the middle of the edge on both axes with a value in pixels ranging from zero to like three quarters of tile width. And then slap an offset on the center hills as well, of maybe 25% of tile width, and the grid look will be fixed. This kind of randomization would work prettily with mountains and trees too, I reckon, and eliminate the grid-like appearance which is the biggest detriment of the current draft.

[PatrikLundell]

Looks like a very good starting point for a map using the info that's currently used. I assume you've verified that the tile selection/composition logic actually has access to border information (i.e. what's on the surrounding tiles). Tropicality, Evilness, and Savagery will complicate things, of course, as do rivers, while lakes probably won't be trickier than oceans. Covering all biomes (if that's a goal) will probably be tricky, though as Evilness+Savagery will probably eat up most of the color spectrum.

I see hilly desert, which isn't shown in the current version, but on the other hand the deserts don't have the colors of the different kinds of sand. It shouldn't be consider a complaint, but rather a thing to consider whether to keep or not.

[Iduno]

Tarn wrote up a little script to test worldmaps, and Mike came up with a beautiful, simplified design that's very readable. It's still very WIP, but I'm curious if you guys have some good ideas.

This is without sites/constructions, good/evil biomes or lakes/rivers.

We used up to 5 variations of different borders and corners, to avoid straight edges; and fill out biomes like mountains or forests with copies of sprites across tiles.

Do you have one with volcanoes?

[Cruxador]

Looks like a very good starting point for a map using the info that's currently used. I assume you've verified that the tile selection/composition logic actually has access to border information (i.e. what's on the surrounding tiles). Tropicality, Evilness, and Savagery will complicate things, of course, as do rivers, while lakes probably won't be trickier than oceans. Covering all biomes (if that's a goal) will probably be tricky, though as Evilness+Savagery will probably eat up most of the color spectrum.

I see hilly desert, which isn't shown in the current version, but on the other hand the deserts don't have the colors of the different kinds of sand. It shouldn't be consider a complaint, but rather a thing to consider whether to keep or not.

Sand color is very important to the look of a place, losing that info would be a big aesthetic step back. What's more iconic than the red color of the tablelands of the American west, for example. Portraying iconic scenes in a way that resonates is something that the graphic set, in order to be an upgrade, definitely needs to preserve.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Looks nice! Main thing that stands out to me would be the color of the grassy parts maybe being a tad too bright green, though I suppose that's to help with readability? Not sure if darkening it just a smidge is a possibility without mucking the rest up. Also agree that the hills could do with some verticality, and not sure about the mountains, something feels off but unsure what.

[Death Dragon]

That's looking prety decent, but I feel the hills could use a bit more in-between hills to break it up a bit.

Also maybe a line of sand along the coastlines, unless toady's secretly working on coastline cliffs, which would be amazing.

Agree with both of these.
Maybe hills should get a tile backgrond colour that is slightly differently coloured from normal green grass. Or they should be touching each other like the mountains are.

[Rekov]

The mountains look a little like conifers covered in snow.

[IlFedaykin]

Sand color is very important to the look of a place, losing that info would be a big aesthetic step back. What's more iconic than the red color of the tablelands of the American west, for example. Portraying iconic scenes in a way that resonates is something that the graphic set, in order to be an upgrade, definitely needs to preserve.

I have to agree, to a certain extent. I wonder if a bright/dark coloration for good/evil biomes would be better than the current color change...

[Loci]

Sand color is very important to the look of a place, losing that info would be a big aesthetic step back. What's more iconic than the red color of the tablelands of the American west, for example. Portraying iconic scenes in a way that resonates is something that the graphic set, in order to be an upgrade, definitely needs to preserve.

Strongly disagree. Of all the useful details that could be shown on the world map, the color of the functionally identical sand is near the very bottom of my list.

Iconic or not, can you actually find a map of the United States that shows accurate sand colors?

[Death Dragon]

I think displaying the 4-5 different sand colours is more important than making individual sprites for the 50 kinds of snakes in the game.
It would be kinda funny if the tileset actually lost to the ASCII graphics on graphical fidelity on this front:

Iconic or not, can you actually find a map of the United States that shows accurate sand colors?

Google maps satellite images?

[voliol]

I think one issue is that the land is seemingly level with the sea, while stylistically quite pretty, doesn't really highlight the water/ground difference. I imagine it is quite important to highlight this, considering how ubiquitous it is on historical/pre-satellite maps. Sand beaches or even black outlines across the shores should suffice, I believe.

[Cruxador]

Strongly disagree. Of all the useful details that could be shown on the world map, the color of the functionally identical sand is near the very bottom of my list.

Iconic or not, can you actually find a map of the United States that shows accurate sand colors?

When it comes to "useful", ASCII is already fully functional. My understanding is that the premium version intends to go beyond functional on a basic level, and instead be aesthetically a large improvement. And yet, even the ASCII version has powerful aesthetic elements. The beauty of a field in bloom or waves crashing against a beach is something that tilesets in the past could rarely preserve, because of the limited options, and it's because of things like that (as well as generally muddy or poorly readable sprites) that have kept a substantial portion of the player base from considering tiles an upgrade. But even tilesets before now haven't stripped something as simple as representing color, as Toady already does, from easily recolorable things. And sand is easily recolorable - you don't even need more than one color channel, really. I wasn't being hyperbolic when I said that to be (and, perhaps more importantly, to be perceived as) an upgrade, the graphical version can't cut content.

Also, yes, I can find real-color maps. I can't post any from mobile, but most terrain-oriented maps that don't use color for elevation go for real color. Pretty much all maps that go for an iconic orientation to the point of showing cities as cities, forts as forts, and forests as masses of trees will either show true color or even exaggerate it to convey the general impression of a place more strongly. If your Google-fu is too weak for this, remind me in a bit and I'll make up an annotated list of examples.

[VislarRn]

I was wondering if trees could be smaller and doubled by four.
It would change a cartographic style a bit to make more sense in scale-wise. Right-now those trees won't give me an impression of real forest, they are more like small park. They also make mountains look too small.

What do you think about something similar instead?