Sorry for the very late response but I hadn't had the time to work on the forests since then.
The article you cited is quite old and many things has changed. :P Currently, I use noise textures to change the density of vegetation (see image 1 for the noise texture of trees). But as you noticed at each spot all the trees have the same probability (image 2).
Now, we can give different weights to each tree. For instance, in image 3, the original LPC tree is 20 times more frequent than any other tree.
Another parameter of the generator is how tightly the trees are packed. In image 4, they are slightly more packed and in image 5, it is as tightly packed as possible. I am a bit reluctant of packing trees too much because I don't think it matches well the gameplay of the game.
I think I will experiment more with forests with one dominant tree and a density like image 3 or 4. I would be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Regarding slight recolors, I may work on that in the next version. I have already planned to support sub-palettes for objects in the next version to be able to change the color of wood and the upholstery of pieces of furniture. So recoloring the trunks and leaves should be easy.
@ElizaWy I never said the contrary, at least I don't mean to. Even when releasing on itch.io or any other platform without conforming to licenses you can get sued.
As a game creator, I don't think this would be very valuable. Personally, I think the people that complain about licensing are either a bit lazy or reluctant to credit properly the artists. Recently, I came across several projects that are using LPC assets on itch.io with no credits at all. But if you are organized it is not that hard to keep track of the assets used. Dealing with licenses and credits is not something that can be avoided by game creators. For instance, even Minecraft has pages for credits on its website.
In addition, if someone starts using LPC assets, he will use a lot of assets and have a lot of artists to credit so even if few artists have no piece of art in the final product, I don't think it makes a big difference and it credits the entire LPC community. Finally, I don't think the format (atlases, individual assets, etc.) is really important for game creators because more often than not, the images will be preprocessed/ingested before being used in a game.
From an artist perspective, I can see the value of keeping track of each asset separately. It will be easier to extract just a piece of art from a pack, rework it and release an updated version. It will also allow other creatrs/artists that are not using all the LPC assets to easily take just a piece of art and adapt it to their project.
I don't want to discourage you but it looks like a lot of work, that you will probably do alone and may not be useful to many people (I think you are the only active artist working on LPC tiles with Baŝto who works on sci-fi tiles, the others are more working on characters and equipments). So make sure you want to do it and that it will be useful to you to not lose your time! :)
Sorry for being a killjoy, just giving my opinion, but you can ignore me! :p
@bluecarrot16 Nice idea! :) But I plan to translate the game in French (my mother tongue) soon, I will have to find an equivalent pun. :p
I just realize that in the trailer we mostly see biomes where the vegetation is sparse on purpose. I attached few screenshots of biomes where the vegetation is denser. It is not very tightly packed like in The Legend of Zelda as it is not what I am looking for gameplay-wise. But I may revisit the biomes to pack more the vegetation. I am also thinking of not mixing all the different types of trees in the same forest to have oakwoods, pinewoods, etc.
@castelonia Thanks! Yes, there is slowly more and more content. But it still lacks a lot of content to fill the world and for the game to be a good sandbox game.
Thanks for the feedback, it is noted! :)
Yes it is, the music in the trailer was made by Hitctrl and is called RPG For Wenches, Ale, and Loot!!, I also use RPG Never Go Full Bard in the main menu. There is no music in the game yet, only environment sounds. I have to work on this.
If you do not plan to support a lot of clothes, you may be interested in some extensions of the LPC characters proposed in this topic. In particular, I am thinking to Evert's "Grab" animation.
You cut the skill tree in purpose? We want to see more! :p
I am curious, what information do you use to create the shadows for trees? I am thinking in adding this feature in my own lighting system.
I think you should make the repo public as soon as possible and put a README to explain how to set up the project and launch the game.
Good luck in your project! I will follow its progress!
I have already planned to rework a bit the arrows for the next version: they currently do not appear at the right place. I totally agree with you that the trajectory of arrows would benefit from a pseudo-3D effect. I think items would also benefit from this when they are thrown. I will have to think about this. Thanks for the idea and the link!
Yeah, it is a well-known technique. I will surely work on that when I will add magic as I plan to use particles for spells (version alpha 4 or 5). I also plan to make the chimneys emit some smoke particles.
Haha, I have heard several times that snake tastes like chicken so I found it funny to drop chicken meat. Maybe I should rename the item "Drumstick", or maybe not. :P
Hey, the version alpha 2 of Vagabond is released on itch.io! :)
Chopping, mining and crafting are the main features added in this version. In addition, with this release, a free demo is now available.
The next version is expected around May and will add farming and housing features. I have already commissioned some new LPC assets to bluecarrot16 to achieve this. I can't wait to be in May. ;)
If you find the time to try the game, I am interested in your opinion and any feedback.
The only thing I don't like about pvigier's approach is that the shapes/indices (https://gitlab.com/vagabondgame/lpc-characters/-/tree/master/indices) cannot be edited directly in a practical way (one would have to convert them to RGBA, then convert the edited RGBA back to indexed; not impossible, but kind of a pain).
I don't like that either! :p I think the main reason I staid with this approach is that my game is consuming grayscale images and palettes directly.
I think this is what makes the most sense from an artist point of view: to have an RGBA image that defines the indices and the canonical palette, and that can be edited directly. To compute the canonical palette, we could just get the colors in the image and sort them by lexicographic order.
However, I see some issues:
* if we want to change a color in the canonical palette, we may change their orders and all the associated palettes are invalidated and need to be updated.
* we can't share the palettes between images if they don't use the exact same set of colors.
But I am afraid there is no silver bullet.
I haven't figured out how we should handle objects with multiple "materials" (e.g. several independent color palettes). For instance, the base bodies and their eyes, or the helmets that ElizaWy just posted and their red plumes. I suppose an advantage of the JSON palettes here is that different materials could have different standard palettes, which could be concatenated unambiguously.
I tried this too on the leather cap (to recolor the cap and the feather). My approach was to have a main palette that defines all the colors in the image, and several subpalettes to replace a subset of colors of the main palette. I had a JSON file to store metadata (e.g. the colors in "blue_feather.png" will replace the colors 2, 3, 5 in "leather_cap.png").
I just have grayscale images and palettes. RGBA images are only generated to preview or make edits with true colors (and then I get back a grayscale image).
This way I am sure that I don't have wrong/obsolete recolored images that live somewhere. There is only one truth for the indices.
I don't claim this is ideal but I wanted to share the workflow I am using. And I think separating the shapes (the indices) from the colors (the palettes) make sense, philosophically at least.
Sorry for the very late response but I hadn't had the time to work on the forests since then.
The article you cited is quite old and many things has changed. :P Currently, I use noise textures to change the density of vegetation (see image 1 for the noise texture of trees). But as you noticed at each spot all the trees have the same probability (image 2).
Now, we can give different weights to each tree. For instance, in image 3, the original LPC tree is 20 times more frequent than any other tree.
Another parameter of the generator is how tightly the trees are packed. In image 4, they are slightly more packed and in image 5, it is as tightly packed as possible. I am a bit reluctant of packing trees too much because I don't think it matches well the gameplay of the game.
I think I will experiment more with forests with one dominant tree and a density like image 3 or 4. I would be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Regarding slight recolors, I may work on that in the next version. I have already planned to support sub-palettes for objects in the next version to be able to change the color of wood and the upholstery of pieces of furniture. So recoloring the trunks and leaves should be easy.
@ElizaWy I never said the contrary, at least I don't mean to. Even when releasing on itch.io or any other platform without conforming to licenses you can get sued.
Hi!
As a game creator, I don't think this would be very valuable. Personally, I think the people that complain about licensing are either a bit lazy or reluctant to credit properly the artists. Recently, I came across several projects that are using LPC assets on itch.io with no credits at all. But if you are organized it is not that hard to keep track of the assets used. Dealing with licenses and credits is not something that can be avoided by game creators. For instance, even Minecraft has pages for credits on its website.
In addition, if someone starts using LPC assets, he will use a lot of assets and have a lot of artists to credit so even if few artists have no piece of art in the final product, I don't think it makes a big difference and it credits the entire LPC community. Finally, I don't think the format (atlases, individual assets, etc.) is really important for game creators because more often than not, the images will be preprocessed/ingested before being used in a game.
From an artist perspective, I can see the value of keeping track of each asset separately. It will be easier to extract just a piece of art from a pack, rework it and release an updated version. It will also allow other creatrs/artists that are not using all the LPC assets to easily take just a piece of art and adapt it to their project.
I don't want to discourage you but it looks like a lot of work, that you will probably do alone and may not be useful to many people (I think you are the only active artist working on LPC tiles with Baŝto who works on sci-fi tiles, the others are more working on characters and equipments). So make sure you want to do it and that it will be useful to you to not lose your time! :)
Sorry for being a killjoy, just giving my opinion, but you can ignore me! :p
@bluecarrot16 Nice idea! :) But I plan to translate the game in French (my mother tongue) soon, I will have to find an equivalent pun. :p
I just realize that in the trailer we mostly see biomes where the vegetation is sparse on purpose. I attached few screenshots of biomes where the vegetation is denser. It is not very tightly packed like in The Legend of Zelda as it is not what I am looking for gameplay-wise. But I may revisit the biomes to pack more the vegetation. I am also thinking of not mixing all the different types of trees in the same forest to have oakwoods, pinewoods, etc.
@castelonia Thanks! Yes, there is slowly more and more content. But it still lacks a lot of content to fill the world and for the game to be a good sandbox game.
Thanks for the feedback, it is noted! :)
Yes it is, the music in the trailer was made by Hitctrl and is called RPG For Wenches, Ale, and Loot!!, I also use RPG Never Go Full Bard in the main menu. There is no music in the game yet, only environment sounds. I have to work on this.
Hey samuncle! Welcome to the LPC community! :)
If you do not plan to support a lot of clothes, you may be interested in some extensions of the LPC characters proposed in this topic. In particular, I am thinking to Evert's "Grab" animation.
You cut the skill tree in purpose? We want to see more! :p
I am curious, what information do you use to create the shadows for trees? I am thinking in adding this feature in my own lighting system.
I think you should make the repo public as soon as possible and put a README to explain how to set up the project and launch the game.
Good luck in your project! I will follow its progress!
Thanks for the feedback bluecarrot16!
I have already planned to rework a bit the arrows for the next version: they currently do not appear at the right place. I totally agree with you that the trajectory of arrows would benefit from a pseudo-3D effect. I think items would also benefit from this when they are thrown. I will have to think about this. Thanks for the idea and the link!
Yeah, it is a well-known technique. I will surely work on that when I will add magic as I plan to use particles for spells (version alpha 4 or 5). I also plan to make the chimneys emit some smoke particles.
Haha, I have heard several times that snake tastes like chicken so I found it funny to drop chicken meat. Maybe I should rename the item "Drumstick", or maybe not. :P
Hey, the version alpha 2 of Vagabond is released on itch.io! :)
Chopping, mining and crafting are the main features added in this version. In addition, with this release, a free demo is now available.
The next version is expected around May and will add farming and housing features. I have already commissioned some new LPC assets to bluecarrot16 to achieve this. I can't wait to be in May. ;)
If you find the time to try the game, I am interested in your opinion and any feedback.
Here is the new trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_WrCYR2YIQ
Have a nice day!
Thank you! :)
Here they are: https://github.com/pvigier/lpc-scripts.
I don't like that either! :p I think the main reason I staid with this approach is that my game is consuming grayscale images and palettes directly.
I think this is what makes the most sense from an artist point of view: to have an RGBA image that defines the indices and the canonical palette, and that can be edited directly. To compute the canonical palette, we could just get the colors in the image and sort them by lexicographic order.
However, I see some issues:
* if we want to change a color in the canonical palette, we may change their orders and all the associated palettes are invalidated and need to be updated.
* we can't share the palettes between images if they don't use the exact same set of colors.
But I am afraid there is no silver bullet.
I tried this too on the leather cap (to recolor the cap and the feather). My approach was to have a main palette that defines all the colors in the image, and several subpalettes to replace a subset of colors of the main palette. I had a JSON file to store metadata (e.g. the colors in "blue_feather.png" will replace the colors 2, 3, 5 in "leather_cap.png").
I just have grayscale images and palettes. RGBA images are only generated to preview or make edits with true colors (and then I get back a grayscale image).
This way I am sure that I don't have wrong/obsolete recolored images that live somewhere. There is only one truth for the indices.
I don't claim this is ideal but I wanted to share the workflow I am using. And I think separating the shapes (the indices) from the colors (the palettes) make sense, philosophically at least.
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