The Mana World Forums

Hey everyone,

I'm almost done with upgrading the rock-walls of the desert tileset. I don't think it'll ever be very pretty without a complete redraw... but it will hopefully be sufficient for now.

So.. what to do next. The wiki seems somewhat outdated and unclear (I think).

I wish to participate by either drawing tilesets and items, or creating maps, but I have no idea where to start and who is doing what. So, what is needed (besides everything?)

PS Mabye an issuetracking system should be in order, where you can assign yourself a task, and is activly maintained, and maybe a central point to speak to on any development area..

Othello wrote:Hey everyone,

I'm almost done with upgrading the rock-walls of the desert tileset. I don't think it'll ever be very pretty without a complete redraw... but it will hopefully be sufficient for now.

So.. what to do next. The wiki seems somewhat outdated and unclear (I think).

I wish to participate by either drawing tilesets and items, or creating maps, but I have no idea where to start and who is doing what. So, what is needed (besides everything?)

PS Mabye an issuetracking system should be in order, where you can assign yourself a task, and is activly maintained, and maybe a central point to speak to on any development area..

We already have a tracking system, look for http://mantis.themanaworld.org/

When you want to speak about development you could join our developers channel #tmwdev or #tmwart on freenode.

We usually prefer starting developers to work on what they prefer, as you did for the rock walls, before assigning them needed tasks. When you run out of ideas we could easily find you one, but first we need to know how you work before we can find a suitable task for you.

Else you can start working on a new tileset or something on the like, or refining item icons.

Hey there, if you're looking for something to do, i actually need icons for the new skill dialog http://mantis.themanaworld.org/view.php?id=209.
This is what it looks like right now


We need icons to the left of each skill. There are no magic or craft skills yet, so don't worry about those. Are you up to it? .

PS: If you do them, they'll have to probably be in svg format so we can export them to other sizes to use elsewhere in the game.

Pixeling them in the correct size would lead to better results IMO.

I'm alright with creating graphics for skills. I can both do SVG as PNG. I think for the game-style pixel-based would be better, so what size should they be?

I'm actually not sure what size atm. I'd like them to be able to fit evenly to the left of each skill name and progress bar, but i'm not sure exactly what scale that is. I'll check in a bit.

As for bitmaps versus svgs, I think it'd be more prudent to have the images be resolution independent so we can export them to whatever size we want and then touch them up for that size if needed. We have no idea what we might use them for in the future, so better be safe and save ourselves the trouble then, no? These're really basicly icons that we want, right? Icons take very well to being made this way anyway.

Crush wrote:Pixeling them in the correct size would lead to better results IMO.

I don't see any problem with doing the icons in Vector

If you do it properly (the vector graphics) its easy to retouch and use at (almost) any size. I attempted to make a sword in Inkscape. I'm not very familiar with it yet, but it works nice.

Ah, this sword is a good example why it is not a good idea to use vector graphics for icons. Don't get me wrong: It looks really good in a larger scale. But when you render it to a 32x32 bitmap (tmw inventory icon size) you will notice that all the details on the hilt are reduced to unrecognizable blur.

But a sword that has been pixeled especially for a resolution of 32x32 looks much better.

The big advantage of vector graphics is that they can be upscaled without any loss of quality, but the same does not always apply to downscaling.

Othello, thanks alot, that looks very nice. Keep up the good work.

Crush, your point is valid. I wish you'd said it exactly from the begining though :). I think the way it's done is that svgs are made for a certain size range. This looks more like something for a larger range though. Nonetheless, it still seems pretty good. Maybe some optimizations for the hilt, but other than that, it doesn't seem much worse than your other example. Especially for our purposes.

I don't really totally agree with that.

The original SVG the lines where 1 pixel wide at 64x64 pixels. When you resize that to 32x32 (even in SVG) the lines are only 0.5 pixels wide, which makes them unclear.

However, if I then modify the line width to be 1 pixel at 32x32, and export it to PNG then you don't have that issue so much. Besides that everything in vector graphics is editable, so I can always make lines darker if needed, and retouch it afterwards to make it better.

I always make a vector-image first when creating illustrations, and retouch it later pixel-wise if needed.

compare orignal: with optimized for 32x32

Nice example of a sword

oh well...
maybe it will be helpful:
http://noirstudio.pl/tmw/concept-arts/c ... eapons.svg

Nice work 'i'! Brutal blades

So, is everyone alright with the vector-based graphics for these icons? I personally think its the best option, you can always retouch later.

So in short: Rodge, I will make those skill icons, like the sword done above, if thats alright. However, what pixel dimensions should it be optimized for? my guess would be 32x32... else it'd be to big

Othello wrote: So in short: Rodge, I will make those skill icons, like the sword done above, if thats alright. However, what pixel dimensions should it be optimized for? my guess would be 32x32... else it'd be to big

Ja 32 x 32. And thanks, I'm looking forward to them :).