As an early Christmas present for all DRODiacs, I am releasing a new graphic mod for DROD 2.0, known as Toscana. The theme is the architechture of the region of Toscany in Italy, inspired by some pictures I took there on my honeymoon oh-so-many years ago. Looking at the black-and-white marble style (look
here,
here and
here [somewhat large] for examples), it occured to me that there is no high-contrast tile set for DROD 2.0. A little experimenting with a black and white floor style led me to believe that would be too stark for long-term playing (although I really don't expect anyone to actually play using this graphic mod much), so I toned it down a bit.
Working on this mod gave me an impression of how damned hard it is to design good obstacles, give decent detail in 44x44 pixels, and create a 3D feeling without destroying the top-down view. Kudos to Erik for doing such a good job at that in the original graphics.
A few notes on the mod:
I did my best to have an internally coherent set of tiles, but I had some problems with seam matching, especially where pit floor and pit side meet, since there are several possibilites for that.
The mod is unfinished, as denoted by its version number. I ran out of ideas for obstacles (and while playing with combinations of my tile set and the original DROD 2.0 graphics, I discovered that the built-in graphics do not use all possibilities, either). I may add more if I had any attacks of sudden inspiration or if someone suggests something. I am pretty much overbooked for the next 9 - 12 months, though, which is one reason why I am releasing it now and unfinished. I have also done almost no shadows, which probably detracts from the quality of the bstacles, but it was just too much work for now.
My artistic skills are absolutely zero. The obstacles were all created and rendered using blender (thanks here to vylycyn for suggesting it and giving me some start-up help), which gives them a much more realistic feel than Erik's hand-drawn graphics. I am not happy about that, but it was the closest I could get to being able to draw. Because the obstacles are somewhere between bad and worse, I am including a second .tim file which uses only the non-obstacle graphics and allows you to retain all original obstacles.
I highly recommend your substituting this for Style2, since the colour scheme used matches up with this style the best.
I spent a lot of time on this, a lot more than intended, but that is more a testimony to my lack of mad grafiks skillz than to the style's thoroughness or quality. Therefore, I would be interested in your suggestions for improvement or critique. The amount of motivation to change the style under constrained time conditions will be greatly influenced by the quality of the suggestions.
This style is based on vylycyn's Sanctum2 Style, which makes it a grandchild of the infamous Flaming Peligroso, and on AlefBet's Style1Tiles.tim. Thanks to vylycyn and AlefBet for their own work.
To install, unpack the file in your DROD2.0/data/bitmaps/ directory and follow the instructions in readme.txt. If you find any errors or omissions, please let me know.
Please use these graphics for DROD-related purposes only. Keep out of the reach of small children. Stay off the grass. Thanks. I hope you enjoy it.
-leroy
____________________________
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street -- footless, dressed in red.
-Jimi Hendrix, "
The Wind Cries Mary"
