AuthorTopic: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset  (Read 16863 times)

Offline startselect

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #50 on: October 25, 2018, 11:11:57 am
I've made all track parts and some stops, next up are the mine carts!
As always, all C&C super appreciated!

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #51 on: October 25, 2018, 01:03:43 pm
The tracks are pretty readable! I think the parts where they cross look wrong because there's no indication of the rails cutting into each other or overlapping, they just look drawings slapped onto one another. Don't forget, the cart wheels have to be able to navigate these, and the way you've drawn them, the bottom rails are inaccessible to the wheels.

I like the idea of using a pile of wood as a terminal point. However, the shading on the locks looks a little strange, why are the logs getting darker towards the cuts where they remain straight and prominent, but not towards the wides, where they'd be curving away?

On a more worldbuilding-oriented note: Anything used to stop a minecart will get banged up. Unless the logs are brand new, the cart-facing ones would not be so perfect. In addition, because they'd get banged up, it's a little wasteful to use perfectly good logs for the job. Wood that's already messed up would be a more likely candidate, perhaps with waste rock. A pile of rubble from the building of the mine was likely the most common way to build a stop, and that could include both rock and metal.

Now that I think of it - a huge consumer of wood in mines were the supports that kept the ceiling from collapsing, maybe you should add some of those. Large natural caves don't usually need them, but they also usually have very solid walls, whereas yours appear to be made of fairly loose/fractured rock. Having a realistic amount of wooden supports would probably look ugly and get in the way of the player's movement, but having some supports along the walls and on some of the pillars and outcrops would look nice.
In addition, those supports required thicker beams of wood than the rails, and those would be perfect candidates for your wooden rail terminus.

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #52 on: October 25, 2018, 02:37:53 pm
I thought about doing the rail piece to select direction where the tracks split but it felt like it would clutter it up to much and decrease the readability. But maybe I could add openings for the wheels so they at least have a place to roll going either way and leave the mechanism of selecting a direction to the players imagination :P

The darkening on the logs is supposed to be water damage from being in a damp mine. Sort of like this:

Darkening at the ends where the fibers are broken and water can enter easily. But having them banged up a bit where they meet the track is a great idea!

And I think a pile of rocks to stop a mine cart might lead to a very short lived mine cart, maybe wood to dampen the impact and rocks behind to add weight and rigidity to the logs?

Yes support beams are on my list of features to add, both as alternative wall sections and as crossbeams holding up the roof, just haven't gotten to them yet :)

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #53 on: October 25, 2018, 06:46:17 pm
It doesn't read as water damage because of the saturated brown colours. Maybe something cooler/greyer would work? Also, when there's water damage, it doesn't abruptly stop at the cut. At least some of the surface of the cut would be damaged/darkened too since the wood rots beneath the surface too, perhaps all of it, depending on when and how the damage happened (i.e. whether the wood was already cut when it went into the wet environment).

The way piles of rocks worked was that the rails would go up onto the piles. The mine didn't collide with the pile, it just couldn't go up the steep incline. Gravity is what stopped it, not impact.

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #54 on: October 26, 2018, 04:48:01 pm
Haha, that makes so more much sense! Crashing into anything is probably a terrible way to stop a mine cart :D
Got rid of the logs and replaced with a ramp up on a pile of rocks.
Also tried to fix one of the rail switches, tried to give them some volume going up against each other so that they would look like they where the same height. How the mechanism works is still a bit of a mystery xP

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #55 on: October 26, 2018, 06:19:02 pm
With those old rails wodden, the "mechanism" was "it goes whichever way we push it" xP I think the new rails work pretty well for this. The one issue I see is that in those areas, the different rails don't align, they're at differing angles, which means the distance between the rails changes, which means a cart couldn't use them. Perhaps replacing those two long segments with two shorter segments each would help.

I think a more substantial and perhaps less steep pile of rocks for the terminals would be better. These feel like they'd break/topple.

I think something we've both forgotten is these carts were not powered, and they were not fast. They were pushed or pulled by people or animals, and with those rails (and even metal rails!) they were usually not able to build up any substantial speed, they'd stop moving pretty much as soon as you let go of them. Your old pile of wood might've actually worked, just as a way to inform the people pushing that they'd reached the end, rather than as a brake. Those carts didn't need breaks, they were constantly braking just through friction. The use of wheels on rails just reduced the friction enough that they could reasonably be pushed.

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #56 on: October 29, 2018, 12:06:21 pm
Hehe that makes even more sense, so obvious after you've said it too xP
I will go back to wooden pile terminal, but I think what you said about not using good timber makes sense so the new one is just a small pile of slips. Also made a new mockup more akin to what I imagine the "miney" parts of the mines will be like, straight corridors with tracks to try out some of the wall and roof supports. Although in the game they will connect to more "cavey" parts where they found a good concentration of ore and just dug out in all direction where they found ore. Might not make sense mine-safety wise but in a game I think it will be nice with alternating tight and open combat-scapes.
Got a little excited and skipped making minecarts to try out making a support beam :)

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #57 on: October 29, 2018, 01:41:50 pm
I've mentioned this before: wood in mines gets dirty very quickly, on top of just rotting the way untreated wood usually does. This bright yellow coloured wood looks out of place in a mine xP

I appreciate the peg construction :> You don't often see that sort of detail in games.

I get what you're going for with the straight walls, but I think that makes the walls look dull and repetitive, especially with the lack of alternate tiles. Mine tunnels in the age of wooden rails (and even to this day sometimes!) were dug by hand or with small tools, they weren't bore-holes. They often curved, and even "straight" corridors could wind a little or have narrower and wider sections, depending on just how the people dug, plus the exact consistency of the earth there. This isn't solid bedrock, so some areas will be crumblier than others, affecting the tunnel shape.
Another factor is what's being mined? If they're gathering something plentiful (e.g. potash, coal, and other materials that tend to occur in sprawling layers), then straight corridors make sense because the stuff is all around them, they just have to worry about getting as much of it out as possible without causing a collapse. However, if they're mining for a precious material like silver or emeralds, they'd usually be following snaking veins of the material and avoiding wasting time digging tunnels into the surrounding rock. They'd only dig straight tunnels when they've lost the vein and need to find it again, and radiating straight tunnels are a good way to do that.

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #58 on: October 29, 2018, 04:08:37 pm
I've thought about wood color for a while now, I was hoping to find a solution that allowed me to use the same tracks and other wooden parts in several differently colored mines. But the more I think about it the less it seems possible, so I'm starting to accept a wood coloring per mine coloring solution. But should I just find a midpoint between the avg. color of the mine and the different wood shades or is there some smarter way of thinking about this?

You're right that the mockup is a bit to straight, it was mostly to test out alternative wall sections for mines with supports along the walls, when I write the generator for this I'll make sure it isn't so straight and bland. All mines in my game are different metal ores, so wierdly winding paths following the vein would probably be the most true way, but it might not fit with my gameplay, only time (eons and eons of it) will tell :)

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Re: [WIP] Need guidance with cave/mine tileset

Reply #59 on: October 29, 2018, 04:47:45 pm
You could make the wood greyer in general, so it looks more like old wood that's been there for longer than a few weeks. The bigger problem isn't that it lacks the redness of the rocks, but that it has the high saturation and yellowness of brand new wood. A greyer, slightly darker colour will avoid the overly fresh look, and should work in a variety of mines.
You could also make 1-2 alternate versions, e.g. a reddish version and a bluish version, which should be enough for most mines. In your generator, you could then choose the appropriate variant based on the rock tiles being used for a particular area.

Minor variations along the walls will do wonders for making a mine look more hand-dug, even if the corridors are straight on a macro level, so you can still have straight-corridor gameplay if you need it :> (That said, playing in straight corridors is usually pretty boring! Natural curves make for more memorable landmarks.)