Hello again, I'm still having problems with a water texture... These 3 textures are what I have so far: Water1 Water2 Water3 Does anyone have any ideas how I can make these better, or tile better? I've tried the High Pass Filter some and all I can get are... blue grass lookin things... :p Thanks Edited by - klutch on February 6, 2002 3:23:19 PM

You could animate your water by making multiple images and stuff.

-Mezz

Edited by - Mezz on February 6, 2002 3:42:56 PM

look at some old school 8bit rgs like ff and dragon warrior. it will give you a better idea of why your water is not looking nice.

some pointers:
as said before animation is key. it will probally give you much better looking water, even with using the same style you are using now. you may want to try some hand drawn water with crayons/markers/pencils. give you a better idea of what you are trying to achieve. look at some photos of oceans and notice the waves. write a simple bumpmapping 2d water simulator. they are crude, but with the textures you have you could create some nice animations. is this for a 3d game or 2d tile based? (i am assuming tile based) heck you could run the simulator in realtime (on todays pcs its not much of an issue, though you will have to have your water in sysmem). you could use pallete animations which will probally look nice as well. look at some other water textures in other 3d games (if its 3d) like hl, quake, unreal (though they used the 2d bumpmaping technique on the texture in real time).

in the end, its more of trying to figure the style your looking for. personally i think the textures look pretty good except they need to be animated (whether through pallete animations, 2d bumpmapping, or frame based).

Hi, thanks for the tips! I''m gonna go try some of them now...

(It is for a Tile-Based game)

There was a guy on here a few months ago who had a series of tutorials of 2D art for games. Someone help me remember who he was or where the tuts were. It was an excellent series though and dealt with different textures. Grass, water, etc. It would probably help you some. Anyone else remember who I''m talking about? Sorry I''m too lazy to do a search.

I installed WarCraft II to look at their water. The only thing that makes their water texture look like water is the animation in it... :p

Anyway, I tried the animation. Check it out here: http://m-hed2000.hypermart.net/DA/DA_Textures/GIFs/water3_ani_html.html



Do you think that makes the water a bit more believable? :p

Edited by - klutch on February 7, 2002 2:02:15 PM

I made another one with smoother animation: http://m-hed2000.hypermart.net/DA/DA_Textures/GIFs/water4_ani_html.html



Could someone answer a question about the code-side of the game?

The programmer wants me to use Targa file format, which is fine by me... But, does that mean I have to have 64 different files (the gif is 64 frames)? 64 textures just for one visible texture in the game could take up alot of ram if you get alot of animated textures, right?

Is there any file type for programing, like GIF, that supports animations?

Thanks, klutch

Edited by - klutch on February 7, 2002 3:01:44 PM

I really like that last animated one. How did you make it? Having said that, I think it would be better if it had lower contrast. Lower contrast makes your foreground sprites stand out more and also reduces the appearance of a 'pattern' in the tiles.

Using one GIF file isn't any better than 64 TGA files. You're still storing 64 frames either way. The filesize may be smaller due to GIF compression but the end result when loaded into memory will be exactly the same.

And the animation itself has to be done by the code: the image format isn't really relevant providing it can be read. They will all come down to a simple list of frames in the end, that are manipulated manually by the game engine.

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Edited by - Kylotan on February 7, 2002 8:14:00 PM