A bit of Graphic art help needed

[wolph42]

While working on Dungeon builder 3 I came to the conclusion that the path I had in my head (rebuild of DB2) is completely infeasible and actually a moronic way to go.

With the new dungeon builder I want to be able to build ANY kind of (square grid) dungeon. This basically mean that you choose a background texture and overlay it with 1x1 tiles where the walls are. Tiles can be 1x1,2x2,3x, etc for the computation it does not matter.

The result however will look rather ugly, so what I need is:
- Bevel
- Drop shadow
Now it is a bit tricky and I need input from a more experienced graphic artist

To elaborate. I could create a transparent Bezel and drop shadow and apply this where needed (some nifty coding required but thats up to me). Where stuff becomes hazy though is at the corners. Both outside and inside corners. If you apply a bezel/shadow layer to tiles that are in a corner position this starts to overlap OR lack overlap.

What I need is a minimal amount (I already figured out that 1 is not possible, but pls prove me wrong) of these bezel/shadow layers for all circumstances.

To get a feeling of all possibilities: take a 3x3 square and go through all possibilities (these are a lot I can tell you but most will require the same type of overlay with a lot being the same when flipped of rotated).

Maybe a simple solution is:
1. one straight bezel/shadows just for the edge
2. one outside corner bezel/shadow for a corner that touches nothing
3. one inside corner bezel/shadow for 3 tiles touching each other
With this simple solution you will have bevels that overlap for outside corners (and an extra piece of drop shadow to fill up the gap) and the other way round for inside corners (so overlapping drop shadow and missing piece for bezel). Where the missing corner pieces would thus be placed with code.

Im open to suggestions.

posted on Cartographers guild as well

[Jagged]

Well I have done the bevelled edge bit, but not the drop shadow.

Link: Tiles

[Jagged]

There is also this: Shady Walls

Sure there is a post of it in this forum too.

[wolph42]

Thanks. Shady walls is useless for this puprose. The bevels however not. Still it woul be nice to have it combined with drop shadow.
Looking at them I see I need the inner and outer. Now help me out:
1. all 4 outers are the same right? They are just a rotation of the original??
2. as for the inners: what are the short ones for?
I think I can work with this, however as said, would be nice if dropshadow is added!!

[Jagged]

1. all 4 outers are the same right? They are just a rotation of the original??

No. They are shaded differently. North and west are light, east and south are shaded.

2. as for the inners: what are the short ones for?

Short walls. I doubt you need them. You will need the corners though.

[Jagged]

Doing a dungeon builder using these tiles was one of those many things I was planning on "getting round to"

Although I was never planning on doing a random room generator. I was thinking about reading the drawings on the map and working out which squares were room and which rock. Then draw the dungeon based on that.

[wolph42]

1. all 4 outers are the same right? They are just a rotation of the original??

No. They are shaded differently. North and west are light, east and south are shaded.

2. as for the inners: what are the short ones for?

Short walls. I doubt you need them. You will need the corners though.

clear thnx.

Doing a dungeon builder using these tiles was one of those many things I was planning on "getting round to"

Although I was never planning on doing a random room generator. I was thinking about reading the drawings on the map and working out which squares were room and which rock. Then draw the dungeon based on that.

well, im on it now. So do you think you can add the Drop shadows? (pretty pls with sugar on top?) I'll get started with the bevel tiles for now as they will do the basic job. After debugging the Dungeon builder debugger (go figure) I was finally able to debug the DB itself, which is now starting to work more predictable.

[captainsinith]

I am certified in Adobe Products, I can definitely do anything graphic oriented that you would need. And in high definition.

Hit me up if you still need anything or have other graphics.


ROCK ON!

[wolph42]

I am certified in Adobe Products, I can definitely do anything graphic oriented that you would need. And in high definition.

Hit me up if you still need anything or have other graphics.


ROCK ON!

awesome sauce!! well as you can deduce from the last post (of me before this one) I'm looking for dropshadow to be added to the bezel graphics that Jagged created a while back. I don't need high res and I only need the inner and outer bezels to be 'extended'. So its not much really, but would be really appreciated if you could do this. (download the pack to see what i mean with inner and outer). Feel free to either edit those or create your own.

HOWEVER I would also appreciate it if you could generate, find, point out, suggest (etc) textures for floor and wall. from

Jagged's example

you can see that the bevels are applied to the 'wall' texture and below that is the 'floor' texture. The dungeon generator will only generate square filled walls, so not the inner walls you see in the picture. For variety it would be nice to have additional textures (seamless).

The latter however is currently not so important, the former is highly appreciated!!

edit: change of heart, see post below.

[Jagged]

Just for the record, those tiles are designed to be used with an additional line drawn round the edges in the same texture as the walls. 10 pixels wide for 50 pixel grid, if I remember correctly.

It has been a while. I am sure the capt can probably do better from scratch.

[Full Bleed]

Doesn't Java FX offer any graphical tools to create dynamic shadows and bevels, etc?

I just wonder if further adoption of those tools/abilities would render some of this teeth gnashing irrelevant.

[wolph42]

Change of heart. I've been looking into Jaggeds bevels and concluded that its too complicated to implement. A simpler system is required. The calculating power of MT is limited and applying jaggeds system would probly take 20 minutes for a level to calculate. Thats way overboard.

HENCE I need a simpler bevel system. which consists ONLY out of (one?) bar(s) and small-outer-corner(s) again preferably with drop shadow. So get more something like

this

Untitled-1.jpg (120.69 KiB) Viewed 1289 times

Edit: One possible solution might be 4 images:
1. edge bezel, but shorter than the boundary (to be filled in by no 2 and 3)
2. outer-corner bezel
3. straight transition bezel
4. inner-corner bezel

Here a picture which hopefully clarifies the above

DSC_0110.JPG (60.54 KiB) Viewed 1286 times

[wolph42]

urgh, when drawing the stuff out in excel I got stuck once more, so I decided to do a Proof of Concept in PS. It turns out then only 3 images are required:

Bezels Example.jpg (23.28 KiB) Viewed 1273 times

(I FU the corner with dropshadow a bit but that only makes the picture clearer)

You might need to zoom in a bit on the picture, but as you can see, with these three my goal can be achieved.
1. Edge with dropshadow
2. inner corner
3. outer corner with dropshadow
The dropshadow-corner is placed ON TOP of the two overlapping edge bezels so the overlap disappears.

So my original question now boils simply down to those three images, but then nicer. It would be nice to have versions for a 50, 100 and 150 pixel grid. Currently I'm working on a 50px grid to test.
and then there's still the request for textures. In the above pic I would thus need a texture that replaces the yellow wall and one for the cyan floor.

Here the proof of concept images:



and here with background so you can see how they fit in a tile:
1x2

1x1

2x2

[Jagged]

Well you don't actually have to use tiles at all. You could just draw the bevel. They are just small areas of transparent white or transparent black, with a single pixel black line.

bevel.jpg (22.36 KiB) Viewed 1263 times

This example is a 4 pixel wide shape. Black at 60% and white at 30% opacity.

[wolph42]

Well you don't actually have to use tiles at all. You could just draw the bevel. They are just small areas of transparent white or transparent black, with a single pixel black line.

And how would I automatically apply these in a generator?