Thank you Tiles and Tokens

In honor of Gaming Geek fans, as well as those who enjoy my work, each month there will be a new icon, token or tile that can be used with one of the digital tile sets currently available on Roll20.net and soon the Gaming Geeks website. We will be uploading these to the FB page as well: https://www.facebook.com/gaminggeeksindiana - Unfortunately, FB's images gallery automatically does away with any transparancies, so the tokens and tiles will be posted there and here for folks to enjoy for free. We do ask that you give us credit for the freebie tiles and let other know of the blog and FB page. Thanks!

The Tulip Tree token is in honor of the 2014 GenCon in Indianapolis; my home state!

One of the other more practical uses for the tiles...

One of the more practical uses for the digital tiles was for those who do landscape design, and don't have a ton of money to spend on mapping or landscape design software.

A quick run through this evening showed me a couple things:

• First, it is both exhilarating and spooky in a stalker kind of way that when you change the orientation on a Google map, you will actually get 4 different views of property
• Second, I need to do a lot of work on the poor man's flagstone (i.e. broken concrete pieces) tile set
• Third, I need to get my butt moving on creating stack wall sets. 

Aside from those things, I am relatively happy with how easy it was to reconstruct the property, albeit the front yard is too close to the house. Looking forward to doing a redo on this this coming week. Looking to develop the tiles mentioned above, as well as carpet juniper tiles and a few other odds n end tiles.

Experimenting with Tiled

Well, after making quite a few tilesets, making maps has been more fun than ever. This past week, I decided to use the rock tiles to create the first set of cave settings. Unfortunately, although I can use shadowing tiles wonderfully in Tiled, creating lighting tiles is not as productive.

In the first picture, just a quick mock up of a cave network. Placing torches on the wall certainly gives the players an idea of where the light is, however it is just not that defined.

Taken into Photoshop and using the burn tool, several areas are targeted to suggest a difference in lighting in areas inside the cave network. Trying to figure out how to translate this into Tiled this week. 

So far, the results have not been good... wish me luck.

UPDATE: So, here is an updated version of the cave network mock up, using 'light' tiles on their own layer in Tiled. Because the tile editor allows for transparency/opacity, I took down the light layer to approximately 65%. Initially the light tile was create in the scale similar to the map: 64px x 64px. The first trial produced less than stellar results. By taking the tiles and saving in a 128x128 scale, allowing for greater curvature in the lit area - or the light circumference, it does let the viewer know the approximate distance that the light source is giving off and differentiating those areas to not lit ones.

More and more tiles

Many more photos taken today to use as reference and starting points for more tiles. This weekend's endeavor: making stone/water border tiles, water tile, and mountain rock tiles...and maybe an addition on the shadow tiles or two...

Tiles update

Wow...over 600 different tiles and counting. Can't wait to get the new sets up on the web. They've been set up to a 64x64 or 128x128 gaming grid size, well mostly the 128's and one heck of a learning experience. Just when I think I'm going to cheat or stop short, a quick opening old files of the first few maps using the first few tiles, really helps to keep pushing for better tiles.

This evening, I took a break from making individual tiles and used a mapping program called Tiled. It is quickly gaining favor here due to the layering ability and ability to add object layers to break the 'soldiering' of tiles. Kudos to the creator of Tiled, if you haven't looked it up, here is a link: http://www.mapeditor.org/

And here is a shot of a quick map made this evening of digital tiles for dirtpaths, shadows, trees, perennials and meadowlands at 25%

And zooming in to 100%, you can really start naming off the various plant life. I love detail. Looks like there is a tile or two that still doesn't blend properly, but again, that is fun part of making test maps. I can print out tilesheets, and fix those identified. Otherwise, things are coming along phenomenally! The many many many hours spent traversing through paddy laden cow pastures, tick infested woods and along sun scorched roads to photograph plant life, then hours of creating digital trees from single branches and photographs and finally seeing it in map form...it's been most definitely worth it. 

Cheers for now!

Tiles, tiles and more tiles on the way

Having fun exploring the world of digital tiles again, this time with much more fervor and gusto! Actually, it is probably due to the fact that as one makes more and more tiles, the wrapping and understanding of how they lay out becomes much easier.

This is a quick shot from a few weeks ago. I've now made over several hundred tiles and they are being organized into better groups. Scale is based on the 64x64 and 128x128 tile size. To test how they wrap, I am using Tiled, an open source mapping program that allows regular soldiered tile layers and object layers that can be placed off the grid. Love it! Creating a source of tilesheets that can be used by a variety of individuals: rpg-ers, writers, artists, gamers, landscapers, etc. Quite exciting!

Sculpting in Springtime

Now that spring is here, I've had the chance to begin preparing to do some sculpture work outside. First up was this little fellow:

 

Ok, not so little, the disembodied forearm and hand stand approximately 24" tall. Looking to combine the 3D modeling principals with wire mesh for some fun ferroconcrete sculptures this year.