Triglav National Park
A somewhat more diverse ground textures mod.
Hello everyone,
Basically this wasn't really meant as a mod, but it somehow came about because the purple empire terrain was, with all respect to the game devs, just ruining the immersion for me. So I went and raided a couple texture sites (kudos to all the brilliant texture makers there) and played with Photoshop a bit, until I was happy with how the land looked...
The way I see the bad guys is that their surroundings would likely be burned, scorched, volcanic, covered with ash and the trees would be withered and greyish-brown. Probably not everyone's preference, but call me a cliché. However after I've changed that, I wasn't entirely content with the grassy mountains for the good guys, and wanted stone mountains instead. And after that most of the other textures I wasn't entirely happy with, kind of followed.
So now I'm relatively satisfied with the way the map looks. It's a bit more contrasted, varied, less flat and monotonous.
If you'd like to use this pack, just putting it into your Mods/Gfx folder should do the trick. Maybe. I dunno.
Rapidshare: http://rapidshare.com/files/1116797509/TNP.zip
Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rn0p886t06f5puj
This is how it looks now:
http://s9.postimage.org/5fwnufcjh/TNP000.jpg
http://s17.postimage.org/a0mdlabwt/TNP001.jpg
http://s14.postimage.org/7qo73yd4f/TNP002.jpg
http://s10.postimage.org/eon96rvef/TNP003.jpg
http://s7.postimage.org/qji94chax/TNP004.jpg
http://s9.postimage.org/lbq3bgshp/TNP005.jpg
http://s10.postimage.org/snjyj8kon/TNP006.jpg
If you like it, enjoy.The pack is entirely available to use or modify for everyone as you see fit. If you want to recolour it, retexture it, etc, feel free and we can post it here...
Increased resolution and textured trees
After Sratner's initial suggestion to texture the trees a bit too, I've increased the tree texture resolution from 256 to 512 and put some leafy details over them.
Whether the increase in filesize (by nearly 4 times) is worth the barely visible detail in game is up to you...Drop dds files into Mods\Gfx\TNP\Gfx\HKB\Trees
Rapidshare: http://rapidshare.com/files/515279174/TNPTrees.zip
Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4189mx3c1g6n739
Now trees look somewhat like this:
http://s18.postimage.org/mv8qa0q1j/Trees01.jpg
(The download links may work or not work, depends on what money extraction tactic the download provider is trying to use. Let me know if they again stop working and I'll reupload somewhere else.)
If anyone wants to mod or alter my mod, change any colour tones, textures, etc further, I'll be happy to put your download links and info in this post.
Where are the three heads? I demand three heads!
<---
fantastic work!!
Thank you, crimsongekko.
I've played with the tones a lot, and the empire terrains have a bit of a brownish touch to them even if they are mainly greyish. If there's one thing I don't want to see anymore it's the purple, lol. Of course with the files provided, everyone is free to do what they like with them, Purple, orange, pink, whatever tickles your fancy. Fantasy worlds tend to be a very subjective matter and what works for one, may not necesarily work for the other, so the adaptability approach is probably the best. Why I like Stardock.
Very nice.
Any chance of applying a texture to the trees? Close up, they look rather plain compared to the detailed ground texture:
(Please ignore the skath couple in the corner.)
Thank you. I wasn't really going for a full graphic overhaul of all elements. only changed the bits that bothered me.
Also, the trees have a rather small texture, to give them more detail would require a size increase, which would result in memory use increase and a slower framerate, what with the hundreds of trees seeded on the map, methinks.
If you want to experiment however, the map tree dds textures are in "Elemental Fallen Enchantress\Gfx\HKB\Trees"
Not to dis the mod (I think it looks very nice - particularly the mountains), but the purple is actually intentional because it is one of the two colors Stardock uses to signify "life". If you've played other Stardock games like GalCiv, you'd know that the purple planets are the best for this same reason. The empires in Elemental are people who lives on VERY rich land (even better than the Kingdoms), they don't live on broken, dead areas with nothing growing. The kingdoms simply exploit the land more to make up the difference.
Well, as now, when I changed it because I didn't like the previous, I'll be sure to change it again if I get bored of this If you're bored of it already, the files to change are the ones in "Terrain" that have "fallen_" in them. Feel free to give them any tone you like and also welcome to post them here for anyone to DL (see second post in this thread).
i highly doubt that there is any engine that loads the same texture as many times as it is used by the amount of objects on screen. usually you load the texture once (if it is used) and apply it to as many objects that use it on screen. increasing the size of one texture should have next to no impact on performance.
Makes sense what you say. There are some half dozen or so tree textures, making them twice the size could make them look twice better.
I can absolutely agree with this, as have no general qualms about Stardock's game design decisions.
Like I said, I only changed it to suit my personal, entirely subjective taste and perception of how I personally like to see goodies and baddies portrayed.
All the files I provided here are available to all of you to use in any way you like, partially as well, if you so please, so you can only install the kingdom or the wildland ones if you like. You can also repaint, recolour, retexture etc, them and post in this here thread for all terrain modifications to be gathered in one post maybe (see second post in this thread).
with a big emphasis on the word could. larger texture size does not mean better quality if you consider mipmaps. if the texture is bigger than the displayed object on screen the game will use mipmaps which may look worse depending on how you create them (manually, automatically, which sharpening filter etc.). of course this also depends on the users resolution.
Yar laddie! All ya pictures be a scurrilous X! I canna see nuthin'!
Yeah I figured I needed to spice up the post a bit.
Goddamit why do these things never work as they're meant to?
They all showed up alright to me, but only on my comp...ok, changed to just links now.
Thanks for the notice.
some before/after comparison pics would look glorious
another suggestion, it would be awesome if you could diversify plains from deserts. they seem to use the same texture right now, which looks very desert-ish
Meh, I can't even get the regular pics to work right on this forum... :/
Not sure I understand what you mean.
Desert now has obvious sand dunes and light sand, unlike any other terrain... http://s9.postimage.org/lbq3bgshp/TNP005.jpg
This started as awesome, now it's getting awesomer and awesomer...
that's the texture yeah. plains tiles adjacent to desert often share that texture with the desert tiles ( i.e. no visual difference except for props )
Nothing I can do about how the game attributes textures and where it places them, really. I didn't use the same texture for any other terrain, so if textures get used in odd ways in game, that's the engine's doing...
Updated first post with a trees rework. There you go...
thanx for the hires trees, I'm sure my 2gb gpu will love those
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