Creating outdoors day scenario

[Duckman]

Have ye ever tried of making outdoors scenario (thicket), but so that it you play it at DAY? I did... and finally managed! Believe it or nay, it was a lot of work to make it BOTH not showing a black line at horizon and not rising or lowering roads from other ground, but it is possible (RTC editor 0.49). Try it out, the results are good if ye ar patient enough!

[Ameena]

I think Linflas managed that when he was trying to make a dungeon called Forest of Doom. Think it was Linflas, anyway. Can't remember who but anyway, I remeber seeing screenshots of an outdoor, daylight landscape.

[beowuuf]

I think Gambit and Lnflas have both done this, but screenshots and tips would certainly be welcome from another designer who has cracked it their way!

[Gambit37]

Yep, there's a couple of works in progress with day time outdoor areas:

Forest of Doom:
http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=25912

Bloodbane Rising:
http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=27781

Note that Bloodbane Rising is an over ambitious project of mine that probably won't ever get made the way I originally envisioned. Whether it ever sees the light of day is currently unknown, but some of the outdoor work done on it may be used in a smaller Fighting Fantasy inspired adventure...

[THOM]

I think the main problem is that in DM you have a restriction in the view. You can see just 3 squares far which is okay in a cave or a dungeon where is not much light. But at daytime you should normally have a bigger range of distanceview.
I would be interested in how all of you managed that.

[Gambit37]

Yes, that is the big problem. You can mitigate it a bit by setting things in fog/mist, but you'll always have the problem that static distant objects (like trees, monsters, etc) will appear to "pop up" from nowehere when they go from being four squares away to 3 squares away.

You can do some clever stuff for special events, like Linflas has with Yaztromo's tower in FoD, but for generalised items you have to live with this problem. Just use your imagination to pretend it's not really happening...

[linflas]

Zed5Duke also released an outdoor fighting area called Warlord, but as Thom mentioned, you cannot have Ishar series 5-squares view with RTC unfortunately

[Duckman]

I think the main problem is that in DM you have a restriction in the view. You can see just 3 squares far which is okay in a cave or a dungeon where is not much light. But at daytime you should normally have a bigger range of distanceview.
I would be interested in how all of you managed that.

Ok, thom and beo, i tell ye how i did. Results may not be the best possible but it worked acceptably this way:

1.Extract the roof and ground bitmaps from the RTC.
2.Delete some bottom from the ground bitmap. With me, 8 bits worked best.
3.Use turned colours for the roof bitmap, and double it's height.
4.Import the edited bitmaps.
5.Add more y-offset for the imported floor bitmap file. I raised it 8 pixels.
6.Make a new wallset, like you would make a thicket but with the edited roof and floor.
7.If ye want to make roads, clone ye'r wallset and change the floor image into default, and change the magic map icon to anything of ye'r preference.

[linflas]

can you provide moving screenshot(s) of your wallset ? seriously, i wanna see that !!

[Duckman]

can you provide moving screenshot(s) of your wallset ? seriously, i wanna see that !!

I have no problem taking screenshots but i do not know how to put them in internet. sorry

[Gambit37]

Upload them somewhere like http://www.tinypic.com/ -- it will create some http:// links for you that point to the image you uploaded -- then copy the links here and we can see them for ourselves

I don't fully understand your description (although it sounds like you've done it the same way that both Linflas and I have done) so it would be cool if we could see it.

[Duckman]

Upload them somewhere like http://www.tinypic.com/ -- it will create some http:// links for you that point to the image you uploaded -- then copy the links here and we can see them for ourselves

I don't fully understand your description, so it would be cool if we could see it.

Ok, i'll try

[Duckman]

'Ere (hopefully it works, have'nt done 'tis before)

[Gambit37]

OK, cool. I see what you've done.

I don't think it's going to work properly because the line between the sky and the ground is too sharp. Have you seen what Linflas and myself have done? You need to find a way of having the sky blend into the ground, so that the ground seems to go off in to the distance. Have a look at these screens to see what I mean:

[Duckman]

OK, cool. I see what you've done.

I don't think it's going to work properly because the line between the sky and the ground is too sharp. Have you seen what Linflas and myself have done? You need to find a way of having the sky blend into the ground, so that the ground seems to go off in to the distance. Have a look at these screens to see what I mean:

Aye, it would be good to add that thing too. Ye have done well.

[PaulH]

This is something I am experimenting with now. With one wallset and roof/floor it is easily achieved, but integrating several wallsets in the frame doesn't work very well!

[Gambit37]

Yeah, it's very tricky to mix indoor and outdoor wallsets together and have them blend well. Adamski did a good job in Tower of Champions, though there are some significant problems there too. At the end of the day, due to the limitations of the DM engine, we simply have to suspend our disbelief and use out imaginations

[PaulH]

Has anyone ever made a decent outside 'forest' wall set?

[Gambit37]

Sort of, yes, but it's a dark forest, not an airy daytime one, plus I'm saving it for use in something -- so no, you can't have it (well, not yet anyway.)

[PaulH]

Lol. Tis hard work creating one, that is for sure!

[Gambit37]

I posted some screenies of how far I'd got with the forest stuff in that old Bloodbane rising thread:

[PaulH]

Does look good! I think I will improvise with a lot of standalone trees and shrubs rather than a specific wallset

[ian_scho]

One of the DMJava dungeons (in LotR style) did this. The wallset consisted of always being surrounded by at least 3 trees deep!

[Gambit37]

Yep, that's what I do in the wallset shown above. The misty trees in the distance are the ceiling. I also use just FRONT walls and no side walls, then place FLOORITEMS that are treess at least two deep in front of the boundary wall.

[Trantor]

Paul, couldn't you just use the EOB2 forest? That has to be available somewhere...

[Gambit37]

EOB wallsets need some work to fit the DM perspective, but yes, it's doable. For EOB assets, check out the Resources sticky post at the top of the Custom Dungeons forum.

[PaulH]

I checked this out, but far too 'wall like' and poor res when adjusted.

[Chaos-Shaman]

hi everyone... I have to say, when i layed eyes on the FoD, i got very excited... at the time i did not understand how in the world that it was done. It looked fantastic, so i can say that it was from that point on that i wanted to learn how. i sure hope linflas is still working on it, and this bloodbane looks like it came from the original makers. nice work guys

[Gambit37]

Thanks. Unfortunately Bloodbane was put to rest -- over ambitious! I'll be using some of that work in another game sometime. There's more discussion about outdoor graphics in this thread if you're interested: http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 31&t=27934

[Chaos-Shaman]

thanks gambit37

i did read that thread, i have come to the conclusion that because of the different platforms, that it has somehow divided the efforts of the Dungeon Masters which is a good and bad, depending. since i'm an outsider, it would be nice for me to know who is working on what platform, this is so to not pester the wrong people. is there a list somewhere?