Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Wyrmsun is an RTS / Grand Strategy game which features elements of mythology, history and fiction.
snv
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by snv »

Andrettin wrote: Thanks for modifying the rock, it looks nice, but unfortunately it's licensed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 instead of the GPL 2.0. I mean, since graphics and code is (according to my understanding) "mere aggregation", it is legally fine to include CC-BY-SA 3.0 graphics in Wyrmsun, but it is nicer to have everything under the same license for simplicity's sake (I did include some CC-BY-SA 3.0 sound effects, but I intend to have those replaced eventually with suitable GPLv2/CC0 alternatives). I wrote a message to who posted the original graphics for the rock to see if they would be ok with a GPLv2 license. If he accepts, would that be ok for you as well? In any case, I darkened the rock a bit and removed the green pixels surrounding it, I think that makes it fit better in the game
You can use it under GPL, if original author agrees.
Andrettin wrote: Wyrmsun already has a forest tileset, which was made with graphics by b_o and Jinn. That grass with cliffs looks good though, thanks for posting it and making those edits =) The editing and recoloring you did makes those graphics a lot more fitting with the rest of Wyrmsun's graphics than the original ones. The angle of the tiles also seems appropriate, too. The problem however is that to make use of new grass tiles is that they would need to have transitions to dirt tiles, so that they are compatible with the rest of the tilesets (and they would need a "solid" grass tile too). I think that it would also be better if the cliff's south transition didn't require two tiles, to make it equivalent with the north transition space-wise. I would like to add cliff tiles to the game eventually, as that would make maps look more realistic, and could result in interesting mechanics related to cliff height.
Cliff's south transition can be easily be resized by simple moving layers of pixels and a little cleaning.
I wrote my random map generation code in Lua, but I should probably move it to the executable at some point to make it faster. Implementing reachability analyses would be a good improvement as well.
Actually, my map generator was initially integrated with Stratagus, completely with GUI to it. The idea was similar to Wyrmsun. I've just scrapped it back in 2006, due to the dissatisfaction Lua and C++. Back then I also had a lot of improvements to pathfinding and AI. For example, AI colonized islands (if they had gold or lumber), attacked only when it had enough troops to defeat opponent, patrolled perimeter of the base and gathered all troop for defense, when attacked. This was a pain to do with C++.
Did you do that for your map generator? I'm going to take a look at your code to see how you implemented the generation.
Nope. It works due to the way it hierarchically places rock, forest, land and water, and where it place peasant it check space for gold mine and farm and town hall.
What are the advantages of using Lisp instead of C++/Lua? I'm not very familiar with it.
List processing and code as data, I had nightmares with map loading in Stratagus and saving AI's state. While my entire WC2 implementation in Lisp, completely with GUI, was under 1000 lines of code ( https://github.com/saniv/symcraft/tree/master/historic )

As of now, I'm not using Lisp, but my own dialect of it, called Symta, which doesn't use garbage collection to be as predictable as C++, yet it manages to automatically free stuff like lists and arrays.
snv
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by snv »

Here is a quick edit of Whispers of Avalon tileset to produce a coast, compatible with Stratagus and Warcraft 2's summer tileset. I've haven't taken anything from Warcraft 2, besides palette, which can't be copyrighted.
http://opengameart.org/content/coast-ti ... -stratagus
Image
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Andrettin
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by Andrettin »

snv wrote:Here is a quick edit of Whispers of Avalon tileset to produce a coast, compatible with Stratagus and Warcraft 2's summer tileset. I've haven't taken anything from Warcraft 2, besides palette, which can't be copyrighted.
http://opengameart.org/content/coast-ti ... -stratagus
It's nice of you to make this, but I think that the dirt tiles are a bit too close to the WC2 tiles (it uses the same colors and the same sort of patterns, although as you said it is not exactly the same), and the water tile is exactly the same as the third variation of the WC2 light water for the summer tileset.

For instance, here are the dirt and water tiles Jinn made for Wyrmsun, and which are used for Wyrmsun's forest tileset (Wyrmsun does not use the WC2 summer tileset, all the graphics in the game are open-source):

Image

They are much more differentiated from the WC2 ones, and if anything, the direction we want to take with the art style for the future is to make it more distinctive when compared to WC2, rather than less.

I don't mean to discourage you, I'm really happy you want to help the project, but I think that the closeness in this case may result in a copyright issue.
snv
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by snv »

Andrettin wrote: It's nice of you to make this, but I think that the dirt tiles are a bit too close to the WC2 tiles (it uses the same colors and the same sort of patterns, although as you said it is not exactly the same), and the water tile is exactly the same as the third variation of the WC2 light water for the summer tileset.
The dirt tile was drawn from scratch and uses different pattern, although I've tried to follow the style of dry mud channels. The screenshot is indeed comes from WC2 just to illustrate that new coast is compatilble. I've forgot to redraw the water tile. I've recompiled the tileset using the Wyrmsun's water tile ( http://opengameart.org/content/coast-ti ... -stratagus )
Andrettin wrote:For instance, here are the dirt and water tiles Jinn made for Wyrmsun, and which are used for Wyrmsun's forest tileset (Wyrmsun does not use the WC2 summer tileset, all the graphics in the game are open-source):
You can use them as base, because I've provided templates.
Andrettin wrote:I don't mean to discourage you, I'm really happy you want to help the project, but I think that the closeness in this case may result in a copyright issue.
But you can't copyright style. If independent work uses similar style and the same color palette, there is nothing the original author of the style can do.
Andrettin wrote:if anything, the direction we want to take with the art style for the future is to make it more distinctive when compared to WC2, rather than less.
The Wyrmun's cone forest tiles pretty much follow the style of WC2. Basically it makes a good sense to just plagiarize the successful style and art direction, because good art direction is not cheap, but nobody can sue you for plagiarizing it. Blizzard employs best artists in the field, so it will be hard to surpass them in art direction, if we ain't artists ourselves. We can just follow.

I.e. we can take the original lighting model of WC2 rocks, but the different rock shapes and patterns, without infringing copyright.
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Andrettin
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by Andrettin »

snv wrote: The dirt tile was drawn from scratch and uses different pattern, although I've tried to follow the style of dry mud channels. The screenshot is indeed comes from WC2 just to illustrate that new coast is compatilble. I've forgot to redraw the water tile. I've recompiled the tileset using the Wyrmsun's water tile ( http://opengameart.org/content/coast-ti ... -stratagus )

You can use them as base, because I've provided templates.
Cool, thanks =)
But you can't copyright style. If independent work uses similar style and the same color palette, there is nothing the original author of the style can do.
Yes, that's also my understanding.

By the way, I spoke to the author of that rock/runestone (Jim16/Damian Rogers), and he said he is fine with dual-licensing it under the GPLv2 as well =)

I added the runestone to Wyrmsun now, and added you and Jim16 to the credits. Here's a screenshot of it in the editor:

Image
snv
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by snv »

I've produced a quick draft of the rock tileset, based on the rock sprite from Tyrian, which can be used with GPL/CC-BY projects.

http://opengameart.org/content/rock-til ... -stratagus

and a gold mine for use with it
http://opengameart.org/content/gold-mine-for-stratagus

Image
Image

Andrettin wrote:By the way, I spoke to the author of that rock/runestone (Jim16/Damian Rogers), and he said he is fine with dual-licensing it under the GPLv2 as well =)
Okay. I've update the OGA entry.
Andrettin wrote:I added the runestone to Wyrmsun now, and added you and Jim16 to the credits. Here's a screenshot of it in the editor
Too rough. Requires more shadows near the bottom. Also, the green outline was there for a reason of antialised shadow, to make it blend into background. It was edited with original Warcraft 2 tileset in mind.
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Andrettin
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by Andrettin »

snv wrote:I've produced a quick draft of the rock tileset, based on the rock sprite from Tyrian, which can be used with GPL/CC-BY projects.

http://opengameart.org/content/rock-til ... -stratagus

and a gold mine for use with it
http://opengameart.org/content/gold-mine-for-stratagus
Nice =)
snv wrote: Too rough. Requires more shadows near the bottom. Also, the green outline was there for a reason of antialised shadow, to make it blend into background. It was edited with original Warcraft 2 tileset in mind.
Yes, I agree, but unfortunately it is beyond my graphical skills to do a proper shadow. Anti-aliasing can be done in Wyrmsun with semi-transparent pixels, however, so I used "color to alpha" on red, blue and green on those green pixels, making them into semi-transparent black pixels. I then reduced the alpha to 50% of what it was, and this was the result in-game:

Image
snv
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by snv »

Check http://opengameart.org/content/pocket-heroes-graphics

It has some useful buildings, like guard towers. They're small, but with xbrz and some retouch, you can easily get them into Wyrmsun,

Castle can be adapted too, but requires a lot of retouch (separately for walls, towers and roofs). Still easier than working from scratch.
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Andrettin
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

Post by Andrettin »

snv wrote:Check http://opengameart.org/content/pocket-heroes-graphics

It has some useful buildings, like guard towers. They're small, but with xbrz and some retouch, you can easily get them into Wyrmsun,

Castle can be adapted too, but requires a lot of retouch (separately for walls, towers and roofs). Still easier than working from scratch.
Those are indeed nice (and small buildings can be used for the grand strategy mode), but too isometric for the game, I think. Something more top-downish would be more fitting.
snv
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Re: Open Game Art for Wyrmsun

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