August Entry: Multiple textured paths

[Redrobes]

Stream running through a wood.

[Steel General]

The stream is really good, as is the snow. Nice job!

[Redrobes]

Thanks Steel ( & Ravs too ). I was going through my photo collection looking for anything that could hack a texture out of when I came across that water. I have some rocky paths in there too and some good heather & bracken so mountain path with that either side maybe...

Now that there is no limit on the number of tiles I reckon some dungeon floor plan is a must too. Another thing I thought of is that because the script chucks out all of the tiles textured like this and you get complete sets, theres some obvious possibilities for stuff like road runs into river and out again where you blend two tiles together before printing them to make a ford.

As usual, more ideas than I have time to try them...

[Redrobes]

Got some marsh from some pics at my local pond.

[Steel General]

What about some kind of ruined buildings or something, though that may be pretty tricky to get matched up...These ideas just keep popping into my head.

[jfrazierjr]

It seems that the challenge rules have changed and there is no limit on the number of tiles to produce so tell me, what shapes of tile path do you need?

I would like to see a few more organic looking linkages from tile to tile. Though I would somewhat limit 100% mix and match, having some tiles with paths (exits) from corner to corner would be nice for some variety as well as a few tiles that start in the "center" and end at a corner so you could explain the link ups on other tiles....

BTW, I LOVE your cut in road effect... very nice. As for tokens/stamps/etc, perhaps a few transparent png's to represent various "weeds" that happen to peek up through the cobbles.... Not every road is going to be 100% maintained to perfection...

[RPMiller]

This is shaping up to be a fantastic set of tiles as well! These are perfect for so many applications and the variety is truly great. Between these paths and GP's dungeon tiles, I think no one will have any problems with encounter maps for some time. Thanks! Oh and I shall hit you with my rep stick while I'm at it.

[Redrobes]

I am not sure what to do for ruined buildings. I can add a few on top as specials from tokens if you like. If you think that there is some way of doing ruins as a textured thing then I am all ears.

I can do many more tiles. In fact I changed all the tiles today to keep within the grid a bit better but it looks less organic than before. I can do more organic styled ones too that would be off the grid. The game would have to manage where your miniature would fall.

I can also do these tiles with and without a grid. I have put the grid on now although the posts so far shown them without. But heres the thing. I have 17 tiles for about 6 sets. Theres a few more sets to do and many more tiles. Right now each render tile is 2K square giving 9Mb pngs. Does the CG have an FTP for all of these tiles because the standard file attachment system is not going to cope. I'll check on my web server to see how much spare I have. This is ideal for a bit torrent.

I can provide a few shrubs and stuff to break up the monotony of the tiles too. This is where a VTT comes in real handy. Pretty sure your maptool could cope easily with shrubs and stuff like that.

GPs tiles are great - this method sorta works for dungeon tiles but you have to tailor the original masks much more to get a good dungeon. My March entry 'Not yer fathers Krenshar' or whatever it was called was done like this as it was a simple dungeon. To do GP's tiles like this would take as much work in the original masks as it would be for the tile itself. Its not worth it by that point unless you had a lot of them to do and they were similar. Buts its perfect for paths and this kind of thing.

[RPMiller]

My personal feelings on trying to stick to grids is don't, but those that are forced to use grids would prefer it I'm sure. For grids, I always use hexes to give me more flexibility, but more and more I use gridless movement so that I don't have to be constrained to a grid.

If you could provide both versions that would be the optimal choice I think, but that sounds like a lot of work. If you go with one that fits a grid, but doesn't have a grid, I think that is the perfect compromise allowing those who use grids to do so and those who don't won't worry about it.

[Redrobes]

I agree, I don't use gridded movement but for this challenge it calls for a grid for miniatures. Providing a grid or no grid is trivial. I change a character or two and then type 'make' again and go off for a cuppa, wait a few minutes for the whole set to get produced again - with no grid. Adding extra tiles is just as easy too.

For me personally, I will be using this where I provide it with a custom set of tiles which make up a custom map and then let it rip. So get a 1K square mask, chop into 16, run script, stitch back together and you have a 8K square map textured. The hardest part is generating the texture maps and tuning the texture engine to provide just the right texturing but once thats done once then its all automated for the future. All the 3D terrain which I have done is all done the same way. That script is quite large tho with about 30 or so texture rules.

The point of me doing this is really to get these scripts together and not really going for the win of the challenge but generating all the tiles should help everybody out a lot I think. I am hoping that people, absolutely anyone, can take these and generate some towns and forest paths etc without having any skill at all. There will be no excuse for not partaking in the CWBP after this ! If we need a special one in the future to fix up a particular point then whoop up mask, run script, done.

The bit I have only just realized is just how to get these tiles out without caning my web space limits. I'll prob set up a page on that space and a web page to catalog them and if it all gets silly then ill look for a better home for them. If people download the ones they need then that would be good. If lots of people all suck the entire lot down in one go then it could get a bit crazy.

They will be the usual creative commons I think.

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