KarlosTKG now on GitHub

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Hmm, very interesting results there!
I think I like the blue wall, definitely breaks the monotony. But the colors themselves are too vibrant/saturated perhaps. Don't feel like a proper material.

The main issue with any attempt in coloration basically is that results are unintentionally becoming monochrome. Like if you go with blue hues, it becomes all blue, same with grey or brown/rust. If you see real rust in textures in comparison you'll see all sort of colors like yellow, red, orange, purple and green. It's not just brown, brown, brown.

Good advice. I am rather constrained by the game engine here though. Each wall (meaning the full set of tiles of up to 640x128) can only be 32 colours and to work properly they need to be from the game palette itself, which lacks some of the shades needed to add that variance.

Secondly, game takes the texel colours and adjusts them by both the depth cue and the gouraud shading terms.

It's not easy to make meaningful edits to the game palette since some of the shading tables are hard coded into the binary. We can of course fix that at some point by making it a loaded resource (the palette and the shade tables), but for now I am just working within the constrains ot the palette. I chose blue here because it has enough shades to look reasonable under most of the common lighting conditions.

[grond]

With all these problems with the palette, I wonder whether some sort of infrared view would fit a good alien story. Like the aliens are invisible in the visible spectrum and you thus need some special goggles and everything is just greyscale...

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by grond

With all these problems with the palette, I wonder whether some sort of infrared view would fit a good alien story. Like the aliens are invisible in the visible spectrum and you thus need some special goggles and everything is just greyscale...

I have an overbearingly grey version of some of these textures already.

[abu_the_monkey]

@Karlos
like Tsak suggested, the blue looks pretty good with silver bolts, what do you think?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

@Karlos
like Tsak suggested, the blue looks pretty good with silver bolts, what do you think?

It does. That's the raw blue - the version in my level C shot has blurred the oblique noise to make a softer colour with 3 shades from the original two (I do all this in PPaint).

I'll get them committed but they are spread over a few files. Such is experimentation.

[Karlos]

All assets pushed to the misc/redesign branch.

[Karlos]

All assets pushed to the misc/redesign branch.

The brighter bolts look a bit like solder on a PCB to me

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

It does. That's the raw blue - the version in my level C shot has blurred the oblique noise to make a softer colour with 3 shades from the original two (I do all this in PPaint).

I'll get them committed but they are spread over a few files. Such is experimentation.

PPaint is what I have been using/rediscovering, and it is pretty good

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

All assets pushed to the misc/redesign branch.

cool

Originally Posted by Karlos

The brighter bolts look a bit like solder on a PCB to me

true

[Karlos]

On the flip side I just don't know if rivets of any description make sense for the setting. It's supposed to be a maintenance deck on the orbital station. Maybe I need a different style all together.

[abu_the_monkey]

maybe less Star Trek Enterprise and more Alien Nostromo?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

maybe less Star Trek Enterprise and more Alien Nostromo?

Heh, yeah. I'm planning a more alien encounter for level E. My plot divergence is that Level C is the maintenance deck to reach the reactor core powering the station, which will be level D. Rather than the dull boss encounter it is today I plan for level D to be a get the breed compromised reactor working again to prevent the station, and the docked indomitable making a rapid unscheduled disassembly in the upper atmosphere of the planet. The plan is for the level to look like you can return but make sure push forwards is the only way. This will lead you through some alien level, through which an escape to the surface via teleport is the only way out. That replaces the current level E. Level F will be a ground location, something like a foundry, hence the hot chasms, pools of corrosive crap, etc.

Level G will be the first encountering of the surface environment, albeit from the open sky courtyard area, as it has now.

Once on the planet, facilities are spread across the globe, linked by point to point teleport. Or at least that's the idea I have. The latter levels are increasingly breed compromised/coopted.

[Tsak]

Did a very quick'n'dirty test just as an experiment:



Upper left is the original. Then the others are hue-shifted per palette (blues, greys, reds) just with different amount of saturation. If you check the blue parts for example you can see how the ramp starts from cyans, then goes to blue and then towards purple when it gets darker.

In regards to grey colors I pushed them in this case towards beige/browns to make a contrast with the blue parts, otherwise you could shift them to blue or greens instead (f.e.).

All the above are just quick ramp adjustments (of course) so even with the hue shifting, the textures per se do remain kinda monochrome. If done properly you'd want to use more ramps to fill up details and enhance the texture coloration. Like, f.e. you could insert to the browns some desaturated green hues or even mix pure greys.

Originally Posted by VladR

And this is why this was a full-time job BITD. It's a lot of slow, methodical putzing around the palette. Never had patience for this kind of experimenting myself, but would be able to follow a guideline, though.

Would you happen to have a good reputable link summarizing all these gfx concepts for us programmers writing the engine and doubling as 2D artists ?

Depends on the project, art and what you're looking for. For hue shifting techniques and color theory in general there are various tutorials in ytube.

[abu_the_monkey]

it adds a lot of depth and looks great, but, the way AB3D2 works (at this point in time) trying this would probably end up with something looking like a child's first drawing

[Karlos]

I've scrapped more texture ideas than I care to count because they just don't work in game, especially in varying lighting scenarios. Some colours have to be avoided at all costs because their brightness variations during shading map to inappropriate colours.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

it adds a lot of depth and looks great, but, the way AB3D2 works (at this point in time) trying this would probably end up with something looking like a child's first drawing

Yup, I know
Just a little teaser into what could have been perhaps.

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Yup, I know
Just a little teaser into what could have been perhaps.

or what is to come...

[Karlos]

I can't see the images for some reason.

[Karlos]

Can someone repost them or embed them?

[paraj]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Can someone repost them or embed them?

Hope it's OK with Tsak (link requires being logged into google).