Re: [Adonthell-artwork] Graphics repository

[Kai Sterker]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 12:11 PM, James Nash <address@hidden> wrote:

> I made some good progress on them last night. Won't be home tonight but
> should start uploading some more PNGs over the weekend.

Nice. Should be able to free some time on the weekend for doing stuff,
too. Will be gone on vacation starting the weekend after that,
however. Only for a week, though :-(.


> I've been keeping track of the measurements on scraps of paper so can
> provide any missing ones. IIRC the walls should always 8px thick
> horizontally and 6px thick vertically.

That's what I figured out, too.


>> Touching up the editors is certainly a priority ;-).
>
> Once I've used them for a bit I can hopefully provide some feedback &
> suggestions.

There'll be many, I guess. But it will be good to bring the editors
into a usable shape, as I think that will be important for getting Dun
Barethsol done.


>> On the bright side, the corner model "merges" the two (or more)
>> images, so during map making, this artificial split is of little
>> concern.
>
> Shouldn't be a problem to do. Could you explain a little why this is so I
> can cater for it in future gfx?

The problem is that the renderer works on sprites when it gets to
determine what to draw and in what order. So if you build a corner
tile out of a single sprite, you get a fairly big bounding box that
might overlap with objects that are placed in the corner. When that
happens, the renderer has a hard time figuring out what should be
drawn first and what second. But if you split the sprite in two, you
end up with two bounding boxes that match exactly the area covered by
the walls. Any object inside the corner will not overlap with the wall
parts and the result will be much better.

There are some parts where overlap cannot be avoided completely:

* Objects that are not rectangular, like sloped ground or diagonal
walls. Even if you'd model precise wireframes for those, the renderer
will always only look at their rectangular bounding boxes.
* Since the collision detection system treats characters as
ellipsoids, they might actually overlap with scenery objects such as
stairs.

In general, a few pixels overlap does not matter. In most cases it's
handled correctly and when it isn't, it's barely noticeable. What
kills the renderer is complete overlap, where one object ends up
inside another, such as might happen with a corner wall piece.


With that in mind, we might want to make the floor an extra layer that
does not overlap with walls below or above. The current WE map does
not do this, and so far it's okay, but in the long run it might be
better to do it right in the beginning. But that would either require
special "border" floor tiles that contain a bit of wall, or additional
wall pieces that are just as high as the floor. Would only be required
for front walls, as you wouldn't notice any gaps at the back.

Kai