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[Ironhand]

~TILE MAGIC!~

Hey guys!

I think a lot of you have already seen my Tile Magic concept.
For those of you you have not, here's the idea:

Spoiler: So you want to be a tile wizard... (click to show/hide)

Traditionally, tiles are drawn like...
this
 |    ...so in-game they look like this
 |           _______________________|
 |          |    |    |    |    |
 |          |    |    |    |    |
 V          v   v    v    v   v


The white/black part acquires the foreground color
and the magenta background is, well, the background.
You can change the color of the white part by slapping a color on top.
You have sixteen color options.

And that transparent region is most often black.

So why not just paint it that way?



Bam. All of a sudden, that background color is now
available as a secondary color! You can use it however you want!
Now you have a whole lot more color combinations to choose from.


In my new graphics set, I'm using this concept in a variety of ways:

Fancy trees!

These won't be in the first release, but they're an eventual goal.
The idea is that the trunks stay the same color (brown),
and the leaves change color and even fall off (black)!

Gems that don't fill up the whole square:

The stone around them still looks like stone.

Colorful mushrooms!

The underground is going to be a fun place!

And other plants, too:


And even fish:



...
And wait! It gets better!

Check this out:

Those were all made from the same tile!
Make the background black, and you get a snake or a worm or an olm or whatever.
Make the foreground black and you get a moghopper or a toad or a frog.
Color them both and you get a squirrel or a chipmunk!

Same with these:

Dragonflies, fairies, butterflies, birds...

Spiders and crabs!

By overlapping on tiles like that,
you're freeing up other tiles that can be used
for more kinds of cool plants or whatever you need for your mods.


Of course, such incredible wonders do not come without limits.
These ones are very manageable, but the following should be kept in mind:

Tile magic covers two things very well:

Vermin,
and plants.

This is because the tiles and tile colors for those things are defined in the RAWs.
Remember that most of the items in the game don't let you choose their colors.

As long as you can change the colors of the raws, you're pretty safe.

So!
Here's the deal!

I think this is gonna be the next big thing.
And I want you all to help me come up with some AWESOME tiles!

My graphics set (which you should totally come check out, by the way) is 18x18,
but that doesn't mean that I want you guys to make 18x18 tiles.

Make tile magic for your own tilesets! And let me know how it works out!

You're also free to use my ideas (some credit would be nice, but I'm not gonna hunt you down or anything).

This thread is intended to be a think tank for tile magic!
Get drawing, people!

[Djohaal]

One word: Sweet!

Gotta test it by myself later, this seems almost too good to be true 

[Mike Mayday]

Buh-reel-yant!

I'm on it. Will be great to test it on my 21px tileset

[ManaUser]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't this do funky things if one of those vermin walks over a mud puddle?

[bdog]

science or "how to use what you've got to make things more complicated and more fun!"

I love it!

Don't get me wrong, I love this POC, and if it's gonna work then modders will have more than 256 tiles to use (imagine bags that shows as bags on stockpiles and as gender tags on menus - if it could be done ofc)

One thing: will this still work with d# changes (png transparency etc)?

[Ironhand]

It practically relies on PNG transparency.

You can do it with bmps, but mine use semitransparent PNGs.
That allows me to do things like shading both colors, and blending the two colors.

The bags/gender signs thing is one of the ones that I can't do, unfortunately.

As for the vermin thing, yeah. The vermin's tail will change to brown, or whatever.
Or red, if it's walking through blood. Etc. I really think it's an acceptable loss.

[Arucard]

I have to admit, when I saw the update about the snake/squirrel in the graphics thread originally, I didn't understand what you were saying. This explains much more clearly, and now I know why everyone was excited about that squirrel! That's pretty genius, so great job on discovering this method. 

[Djohaal]

I wonder if some similar tinkering could be used to fix the barrell/pump sprite (it looks so ugly as pumps right now). And what about bins?

[Ironhand]

Actually, yeah. Here's the one I'm using in my graphics set:

It's more of a proof of concept than anything else.

The downside is that you get some (dim, but still annoying) barrels in your underground rock.

Also, stuff like barrels and bins are a little more limited, because you can't actually choose their colors.

[Phoebus]

Have you tested in 40d# if they work?

I'm asking because in my experience many tiles are hardcoded to a black background.
Also, many tiles are using the background color for special function (like when designating cut trees and gather plants, the background color is displayed as brown and the foreground as black.)

Just wanted to hear a confirmation from you.

Is that barrel using ALTTILE?

[Ironhand]

No, ALTTILE only works with stuff that have RAWs. Like plants and animals.

And all the stuff with black backgrounds is the same deal. Most of that isn't editable in the first place.
There's no difference with the 40d stuff; at least, none that changes or hinders the principle behind Tile Magic.

I don't see any reason that the merge should mess anything up. It will allow us to use transparent .pngs, so it's awesome.

That's the tile that I use for a barrel and a screw pump. That's what running a screw pump looks like in-game with my set.

[Ironhand]

Nobody else jumping on this bandwagon, huh?

You can see my magic tiles in action in my new graphics set.
I've released my first trial version, which does not include any of the graphics sheets that I've made
(because of all the graphics bugs in 0.31.04), but it is a good way to admire tile magic doing its thing.

You can find links to it in my thread. It is very WIP, but I think you guys will enjoy it nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm gonna be kinda busy for a while here, but if I manage to slap together any new tiles, I'll come show them off.

[Deon]

I use it for plants in Genesis mod. I changed your stone tiles (I don't need that many ) to creature tiles though, to give graphics to them, but otherwise I use other stuff by you and it's very awesome.

Fancy trees!



These won't be in the first release, but they're an eventual goal.
The idea is that the trunks stay the same color (brown),
and the leaves change color and even fall off (black)!

This is the main reason I use it. I just love trees with green leaves and brown wood which stays when the leaves disappear.

[Martin]

During the later 40d# series I started updating my tileset using exactly this idea. Once I get a Mac version of .31 that has working graphics, I'll join in.

[Ironhand]

Awesome.