The Mana World Forums

there have been various desert themed tileset. but for some reason everyone who made a tileset decided to make a new sand tile from scratch. i think it is a very bad idea to reinvent the wheel over and over again. not because it means a lot of unnecessary work. i think that is bad because it creates heavy style differences between the tilesets and makes intermissions between them more difficult. for that reason i would suggest to find one sand tile and use it as the base tile in all tilesets that require sand surfaces. possible candidates are:

the old one:


nomad river "high sand":


nomad river "low sand":


Adarias sand type A:


Adrianas sand type B:


when i forgot any sand tile flying around here please let me know.

in case you think that it is total bullshit what i say and you think every tileset should have a different style then we should at least agree on one sand tile that has to be included in every desert tileset and to which every tileset has to have an intermission to. that is necessary to allow mixing of the tilesets on one map and to create fluent intermissions.

"Adarias sand type B" looks like the kind of sand you find on beaches, consisting of ground shells etc. nice, but not very desert-ish (too much white).
"Adarias sand type A" - see "a", only under water. we should keep an animated copy of this one around, should someone get his mind around to implementing map animation...

But the sand you find in the deep desert is quite different in color and texture than that which you would find in city streets, no? I was going for a sorta dirty beaten flat look. Personally i like the old ones, but i was told not to use them

Maybe a certain hue then to unify, since texture is supposed to change based on where the sand is found?

(btw, intermission literally means 'time wasted,' and implies a (hopefully brief) halt to all things important. perhaps you mean to use the word 'transition'?)

They are different sand types, I don't think any of them should be a "reference sand tile" for anything else than the specific area in which they are used.

Edit:
Just another note: I think the first three fit well together in one area, and the last two in another.

Bjørn wrote:They are different sand types, I don't think any of them should be a "reference sand tile" for anything else than the specific area in which they are used.

Edit:
Just another note: I think the first three fit well together in one area, and the last two in another.

I agree

My thoughts: Why cannot we use them all where applicable?

Rotonen wrote:My thoughts: Why cannot we use them all where applicable?

My thoughts exactly... that makes five of us I guess.

well, when you all think so i have to obey.

but may i suggest to replace the desert tile on the old desert maps with the new one from the nomad tileset? i think it looks much better then the old one.
a preview how it would look:

it may look strange to you at first glance because you are so much used to the old tile. but at a second glance the new sand looks much better in my opinion because it is much more gridless and archieves a better illusion of perspective (the old one looks like it is viewn from top down and not from a 45° angel).

replacing the tile was just a little hack job. the borders of the road and other objects aren't right yet. but i can do much better than that when i put some effort into it.

I agree

yeah its not hurting my eyes as the old one did

Crush wrote:nomad river "low sand":

This is my vote to replace the old generic sand tile.

And I totally agree about the Adarias tiles being more appropriate for beaches.

finished!
i used the opportunity to correct some minor errors, too. i also made a new crate. i couldn't stand this perspective error anymore. you can find the new versions of the desert tilesets on the cvs or in the next version which is scheduled the day after tomorrow. that usually means that it will come out in about a week.