If someone wants to take a crack at this, this tutorial may be of help: http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/tutorials/isometric_tiles/ . Also, I'm happy to answer questions about making Flare-compatible tiles.

If the task goes unfulfilled, I can probably do it myself. I hope to work on the grassland tile set as my next big task for Flare.

Hello, I'm interested in this job. As an example of my work I'm attaching a FLARE tileset I made a few months ago. I don't have any problems regarding the artistic side of things, but I'll need a bit of help defining all the shapes and types of tiles needed for the bridge (i.e. : middle section, start ramp, destroyed tile, etc.) I'm thinking of first creating the bare building blocks to get the size and tiles types right (and to get feedback), then it shouldn't be that hard to "dress" them into whatever style they need to be.

Myckel: if your bridge has a noticeable arch then yes, you'd have to alter the hero height.

If the bridge is flat I'd just fake it; offset the position of the bridge so the top of it aligns with the regular grid.

Myckel: I don't yet have an estimate of how long this would take to make. Though the only challenge I see is getting the initial bridge components right (which may not be that hard, just the "fear" of unknown), after that it's all familiar teritory. Of course I'd like to finish this in a decent amount of time. I'll start this weekend and we'll see how well things progress.

Since FLARE doesn't do real elevation (at least not to my knowing) I'll keep the bridge walking area at the same level as regular tiles and then fake the elevation. I was thinking of using the Grass and Water Tiles as a base, so the bridge will fit nicely with the terrain. The part going into the water, the part where the bridge meets the land etc.

Forgot to mention about the license, I'm open to any requirements as long as it falls into open source philosophy.

Hello, here's a rough first set of building blocks for the bridge. Since the elevation is faked and is based on the original grass&water tilesset, the height of the bridge is as it is. Right now it reminds me more of a ramp than a real bridge, though that should change when these basic blocks get more details and such. The question I'm reluctant to ask (since I don't know of an immediate solution if the answer is no :P ) is whether the bridge's small height is problematic? One way to tackle it would be to make the bridge sides taller and more detailed.

These basic blocks will then of course be "dressed" into a more stone&medieval shape, right now it's just about the bare technicalities.

Clint: any comments on the basic blocks, especially the technicalities? I imagine example on the left will work better, where the walking area and the wall are separated.

One more post: The bridge doesn't look as flat if I make the side walls bigger. I also forgot to add, that I plan the bridge to include crossroads, so map makers can do all sorts of shapes and paths using the bridge + addition pieces, like broken bridge end, interesting details and such. Ah, I'm getting a good feel about this project now :)

EDIT: but then again, it can look even more bridgy.

If I were making a bridge, I'd definitely separate the wall/edge sections from the floor. That way it would be easier to make narrow or wide bridges.

Imagine a 3x3 tile area that covers basic bridges in one direction: the corners are like posts, the walkable edges are specialized to make the bridge to grass transition look good, the other edges are the bridge walls, and the center is a plain walkable tile.  There'd be another 3x3 set that covers the other direction (running topleft to bottomright); basically render the same 3D objects from a new angle.

Then a bigger bridge could be built by repeating those tiles in whatever direction is needed.

Thanks for the comments from both. I'm happy to hear you like the initial work and also that separate floors and walls are the way to go. This then solves most of my technical dillemmas/unknowns I had.

For the crossroads, I don't think real bridges have those. But I was thinking more along the line of game/RPG needs, where you'd perhaps want more freedom when designing environments. The pieces won't be actual crossroads, but more like turns, corners and such, so you'll be able to build varied bridges, not just straight-one-way stuff. In any case the additional pieces can only add to the tileset while still allowing to have regular bridges if the designer chooses so.

I'll see what I can do about the gates. Seeing FLARE uses them with the dungeon tileset, there's obviously a way to make them, I'll just have to check Clint's blend files and tiles to see how they were done. Perhaps a guard house/niche tile on the side wouldn't hurt as well?

Some progress.

EDIT:

I'm also posting the WIP blend file, which will be updated as I go along (release early, release often :) ). Released under GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/OSARE/bridge.blend

And even more progress, this time the gates. Also, the blend file from my earlier post is updated, same license. Left to do are bridge-land transition and broken bridge-water pieces, both of which shouldn't be too hard to make. Then it's texturing and rendering.

EDIT: and quick bridge pillars/towers

The last of the modelling bits, bridge start and broken bridge. Now I'll have to clean up the tiles a bit, then it's texturing and rendering. The blend file in my earlier post should be updated shortly, same license. And yes, it does resemble a castle in a way :)

 EDIT: Ok, the blend file has been cleaned up and updated. All the relevant tiles are on layer 1, lights and camera on layer 2 and the rest of the wip and unneeded junk on layer 0.

Wow! I'm very impressed. I'm excited to see this in game in the future.

New blend file + textures. Same license as before. Roof and stone textures are taken from Pfunked's medieval building set and temple entrance.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/OSARE/Bridge1.zip

Also, textured bridge. There are a few details left to texture, then it should be more or less done.

 And thank you pennomi :)

These are rendered tiles, but they are put together in Blender and then rendered. Actual tiles will be more or less the same.

I textured the remaining parts of the bridge and tweaked some material settings. If you are happy with the current result I can move on to rendering individual tiles and making the blend file easier to use in case someone else will want to render the tiles with different materials, modified stuff etc.

EDIT: Here's the latest version of the file with textures http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/OSARE/FLARE%20Bridge.zip released under GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0

I'm glad you like it :) and I'm replying to your message as we speak.

EDIT: Ok, the last one for today. Tomorow I'm rendering tiles.

These look great. I like the textures especially.

If it's technically feasible, maybe it could use some ambient occlusion or shadows near the water, so it gives the illusion of the bridge being above the water.

It's possible to bake the AO for water on a separate texture, then multiply the original material. Ok, now I'm done done with the materials and textures. Now to clean up the blend file and other boring stuff and ready it for rendering tiles.

Here's the final blend file with the tiles. The tiles are each a separate PNG, since I have no idea in what way to properly combine them into a sprite sheet. Please let me know if the blend file and/or tiles are ok and I'll upload the file to OGA. Released under GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/OSARE/FLARE%20Bridge%20Final.zip

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Clint's tiles are always rendered a tiny bit too big, so that the seams don't show up. This does not seem to be the case here.

So two problems mainly: 1.) Water colour too dark 2.) Tiles don't fit well enough together.

For 1.) I checked the light settings which were different than the ones used by the grass&water blend file. I imported the lights from the original file. This however didn't solve the problem, since as it says here http://opengameart.org/content/grass-and-water-tiles

"I increased the brightness/contrast slightly in post"

This means the water colour difference is due to editing the original sprites in a 2d editor of some sorts. Will have to think about what the best solution for this would be. Re-render the original tiles? Post-process the new ones (can the same effect be achieved?) ?

For 2.) I'll have to ask Clint what sizes would be best used to render the tiles. Luckily the blend file is made in such a way that re-rendering the tiles is very easy and fast, so all I'll need to fnd out is a few correct values.

Also, here I'm confirming Myckel already did his part of the deal and I received the commision.

Ok I guess the 2.) can be solved by chaning the camera Orthographic Scale value to something around 8.200. Can anyone test whether this properly solves the issue with seams? I based this value when I compared how much off the edge of the camera Clint's tiles usually go and I tried to match this with the bridge tiles.

EDIT: Here's the new test file http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/OSARE/FLARE%20Bridge.zip

I cant test it, but does this link answer the size issue?  http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/tutorials/isometric_tiles/

kurt, thanks for the link. It more or less confirms what I did with the blend file, where the tiles go a bit outside the camera edges. I'm 99% confident this will solve the issue. if 1% happens i can always tweak things.

In other news, I changed the water and grass materials so that they now fit the original tiles. Hopefully things should fit in now. If the bridge structure is a tad too dull compared to the grass&water, that can always be fixed without much trouble.

Here's the final final final blend file. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/OSARE/FLARE%20Bridge%20Final%20Final.zip Released under GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0 If no issues are found in the next week or so (Myckel said he'll be away for a few days) I'll upload it to OGA. I'll still need to add a file with credits to authors whose work I used when making this bridge.

Ok, one problem down :) Colours are correct.

Are the seams still showing?

Height issue to be fixed.

The height issue: when I created these grass tiles I put the grass at "ground" level and had the watery areas go lower than that. But this doesn't work well with Tiled, which expects all tiles to anchor to the bottom.

The grass in the Flare git repo isn't currently in use. I tried tweaking some things so that it would sorta behave in Tiled, but it's just convoluted to have the floor floating above the base tile like that.

I'm planning on making better grass that doesn't have these issues.

Myckel, I'd like to tackle one issue at a time so I was wondering whether you're still getting any issues with the seams. If not that's 2 problems down, 1 to go.

For the offset, I'm kind of lost what to do. As far as the blend file goes, the model should be allright. It appears a part of the problem is in Tiled and the other with too much empty space below the tiles. Any ideas from anyone what can be done here? I'd love to see this problem solved myself, but no idea how. Perhaps I'll have to get FLARE and Tiled installed here and test stuff myself and see how things behave.

Clint: You say you plan on making better grass without these issues. Would this make the bridge tileset obsolete since it was built on the current grass version? Would it be possible for you to take a look at the blend file I made and say whether there are problems with the model, or is this offset problem related to rendered sprites and factors unknown to me?

A bit late reply, since I dedicated some time to my degree and other things.

Anyway, it seems almost two issues are now solved, I'll just edit the blend file's camera setting a bit more and the seams should hopefully be fully gone. Mind though, that the seams on the water tiles are from the original grass&water tileset. From here: "Note there is a slightly visible edge line on the water tiles.  I haven't figured out how to avoid this." Here's the new blend file and tiles, hopefully this should do.

As for the offset, it seems the best thing to do is for me to install FLARE and Tiled. Are there any other things I need to have/know to test the tiles.

Also, are the tiles offset only in Tiled or also in FLARE. If they work well enough in FLARE I'd say the problem is more an annoyance than a real problem (as far as the end result is concerned).

It's not quite as easy to drop tiles into FLARE as it is Tiled. You have to make a "tilesetdefs" file for it which requires a decent amount of work. However, if it looks good in Tiled, it will be the same in FLARE.

Don't worry too much about the 28px offset when it comes to the actual FLARE tiles - the tilesetdef file can adjust for that. It is important for Tiled, however. The line between the tiles does need to be solved, though.

If you want help with the tilesetdef file, I can offer assistance there. (Though that's best left until all the tileset is finalized... adding tiles later is a headache.)

Life has been crazy lately. Apologies for not addressing this sooner.

Note that I use two different tile sets, one specifically for Tiled and one for actual use in the engine. This is because my engine allows an x,y offset on each tile to allow tiles of any weird shape. Tiled assumes all tiles are anchored to the bottom of the tile, and typically are the same size.

The grass and water tiles are built with the water extending below the grass. This definitely isn't easy to work with. On the grass and water tile set posted here on OGA I made each tile sized 64x64, vertically centered (the base tile is 32px tall; there's 16px above for tall grass and 16px below for water). However this is goofy to work with in Tiled, because the grass area (which I think of as the "floor") doesn't align to the grid and it's hard to tell what tile you're on (grass floats halfway between tiles).

So I experimented with a version of the grass and water tile set just for Tiled, where the offset from the bottom of the tile to the grass is minimized (maybe 8 pixels?), just enough to fit the water. As in, I actually just moved the tiles down 8? pixels on the tile sheet. So the grid still doesn't quite line up with the grass, but at least it was easier to tell which square of grass goes with which grid slot.

All this to say: the grassland tile set is not being used in Flare right now because it's difficult to work with. The version on the website is fine to use with care (but tricky to deal with in Tiled). The Tiled version of the grassland tile set is almost completely useless and should be abandoned.

I'm experimenting with a better grass (and water) tile set that is much more friendly to the grid and more usable in Tiled. As life permits I'll work on it (it's my current focus). Once it's done, if it is hands-down better than the old grass/water, I'd recommend tweaking the bridge and re-rendering it for the new version.

Also, tips for eliminating tile edges:

• Use "Key" instead of Sky or Premul in Render settings
• Mitch 1.50 oversample is good at not leaving visible seams. Some other oversample algorithms might change edge brightness and become visible when tiled.
• Make tiles slightly larger than needed. The tile edge will be translucent, and when you put two tiles together you don't want a partially translucent seam. Make the tile at least a half pixel too large all around and this seam becomes opaque.

pennomi, thanks for your offer, but as you said, the tiledef for FLARE requires decent amount of work. This is why it would be better to wait until the tileset is finalized.

Clint, it's good to read your opinion and experiences with Tiled/FLARE tilesets. I tried Tiled myself and I saw the issue with tiles in action. With the new grass/water tileset you're making, do you think the current bridge pieces be able to fit in without too much hassle? In Blender and then rendered together I mean.

Myckel, I feel I still have certain obligations here. You asked for a bridge tileset and you got one, but can't really do much with it. And you fullfilled your part of the deal. The problem here is I don't know how to solve this last part of the riddle and I feel I didn't do my part of the deal. Do you have any suggestions how we could sort this out? Perhaps with a partial refund, or wait for the new grass and then finish the tileset, with (hopefully :) ) help from more experienced Clint and pennomi.

Late reply :)

Ok, I'll upload the 3d model in the next couple of days and also see if I can provide additional texture variations. Will post here once the model is available.

Ok, I uploaded the file http://opengameart.org/content/isometric-bridge I didn't include any texture variations. I didn't see much purpose to include a few variations when people can easily and quickly recolour the textures to whatever colour and combination they wish.