Public release of material...
 

In this thread, I am going to post later on tonight the screenshots of some of our best grids, as well, as some of our best concept art. And this is only the beginning. Soon, I am going to try to convince Jesse to interview some of our Team members, and post the interviews here, so stay tuned. ;)

oh yeah sorry for the delay..it's been a **** week. And the screenie is on my laptop.

new goodie!

Love those grate/things layout you guys used on the door openings! ;)

Very well done indeed; I like the way you've merged LBA1 and LBA2 in some of the design. I cant wait to see more!

Is it only me or is the image a bit stretched?

should be 'unstretched' really. I made it smaller to fit.

Um, I don't like it very much ;). The buildings in the front obstruct the view too much, you should have elevated the back and add stairs. Also that telescope is pointless there, it's a desert, with sand, and winds from the sea, the telescope needs to be in a building couse a single grain of sand would destroy the lens - pointless.

The sidewalks around the buildings should have some sort of an outline, couse they look awkward.

The doorways look like they where placed on a already done building, couse you can see bricks behind the arches where there should be none.

TWO guardhouses? It's rather pointles, one should be enough, but in fact both of them obstruct the view too much.

Lamp-posts around the corners like that are strange, too much light would get wasted, better find some lamps to hang them on the wall.

That whole "camp on a roof" section is seriously wrong...

Also those four "hatches" don't suit that small building very much.

Anyway, what DJ said, integrating tiles from both games is a great idea tough, did it take much work to do it?

We're always open for criticism. ;)

That's partly correct, considering that the city is currently totally flat, which is a bit unrealistic. It won't hurt adding at least some height to it for better visibilty. It's just a matter of work to move the buildings upwards.

I guess we'll find a solution for that.

This is a major problem, because adding a line of bricks around the buildings would make the street smaller and have problems with interfering with other objects, like the sewer grate. If this is not possible, I'd apply for a new tile for the house basement. The problem is, we currently don't have an active person on the team responsible for the creation of new bricks.

What do you mean exactly?

This is something I have already talked about with OBrasilo, we previously had a lamp completely behind a building where there's no street, I'd say we need a little more cleanup on that.

We'll have to elaborate on them a little more.

Okay, that's a question for OBrasilo, though I don't think it was particularily easy.

To cut it short, we hope to continue on working on our grids during the christmas holidays, you know the story, there's not much time around...

LBA Image Creator makes it very easy to convert bricks to work from one palette to another (to be shown correct when you put an image from one game to the other game), a tip if you are gonna do it again (it does it easy for sprites/spriraw/lims too). It also got dithering, to maintain better quality than normal conversion (most of the times :p)

I'm not sure how is the technically easiest way to implement the images to the game/LBArchitect

- Jasiek: Based on the useful-ness of your advice, we have decided, that you are now part of our Team, as our Main Grids Advisor. Enjoy your new position, and check your PM's.

- LBAWinOwns: Actually, the problem is inethe .BLL (Brick Layout Library) format, since the LBA 2 sound, and floor, types, are different from the LBA 1 ones. I used a special converter I wrote, for the conversion. ;)

Lol, I think I know why you've got so many team members.

ah right, the whole 'telescope' is a unit linking together bricks, the linking information is in the .BLL files, while the bricks are in one of the HQR files, right?

Still, what does the format of sound and floor has to do with it?

lol what the?
you cannot employ people single-sided! :P

btw; man Jasiek is so right...i didn't take a closer look appearently. The doorways do look awkward and the camp on top of a roof is funny ! :D

Alright, if you thought, that the LBA: The Great Rebellion would have no unique style of its own, then you were wrong. The following screen-shots represents just the tip of the iceberg of what we're preparing for you:
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/8...dle2rd5.th.png
This is part of a city, located on Brundle Island. So, what do you think? ;)

Looks good so far !! I can't wait for all those mods to come !

Very nice guys, keep it up :)

The first building: heed Jasiek's advice. Also, I'd like to add that the arrangement of buildings makes everything feel clausterphobic.

I think there's overall too much repetition in texture and design. Try to add sidewalks in between buildings to break up the monotony of the floor.

On the second image, good design with bridges and underpasses. The building textures and ground textures are ugly and repetitive. Overall, these levels appear as if they were carelessly slapped together. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but if I was a player who chanced upon this game, with no knowledge of LBA, that's exactly the sort of thing I'd say. People that know LBA might not say it, but they'll still think it.

Good luck on improvements and such.

Yeah, the biggest problem is some of the textures are coming accross as too repedative.
The floor tiles especialy.
Maybe using a "high pass" filter?;
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20.../hajba_pfv.htm

I find this very helpfull one making textures look good.

Also, just a random idea; Is it possible to have the water under the bridge darker?

Still, very good work. And its more important to get areas done then perfect imo.

I don't see how they could use a "high pass" filter on the LBA engine... Or maybe are you talking about generating several close tiles with the filter ?

He's talking about using a filter in photoshop.

Oh, sorry, didn't take the time to read the article, I thought it was something else. That's interesting reading.

After considering all the points on the first grid, we present version 0.2 of it.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/707...udo2hr8.th.png

Any more comments on it are appreciated. :)

Oh, cool !! I like this one better actually !

Much better, indeed. Much better. This is starting to look like an actual Twinsunian location.

I think it's a more aggressive and scary design, which might be considered un-LBAish. Especially if it's a scene early on in the game (which in LBA was a time of mostly fun exploring).

Maybe keep the trees and park-like architecture?

This ↓
Is definitely not an early area of the game.

Pretty cool. Although you're still using many original LBA textures/bricks, so it look more like an addition to an original scene rather than a new scene or new style.
You can look inside the buildings, but I guess there'll be some kind of doors, right?
If you look at the middle building there are two lanterns placed next to the door. Doesn't look very LBA-ish, but way more important is that they are placed on a V shape like gutter. It's not a place where it would stand solid and surely there would be a shadow anyway.
Keep the textures simple and not too detailed. It's better not to be distracted this much. Also, if you keep the colors of the walls different than the ground, they won't blend in with the environment so much.
Oh and keep in mind the direction of the bricks. Light comes from the left, so the right side of buildings should be dark. Right now some of the bricks are reversed (like the lower stones on the walls of the buildings, which are lighter on the right side than the front), or don't have any noticeable 'angle color-difference' like the yellow ground near the water.
If you do need to have detailed textures then make multiple textures so they won't repeat that much. Look at the grass textures of LBA for instance.

Not yet there but an improvement the the previous map, yes.

If you look at any original LBA grid, you'll see open doors as well. Doors are active objects. They are not in the grid, but the scene. :p Yet, in LBA 2 those hatchways didn't really have doors. We might find a solution for that problem later.
I didn't really think of where to position those lanterns. I failed on that part, you're right. I'll move them around a bit.
What exactly is too detailed for you? The buildings?
Both of these tiles are coming directly from LBA 1, they're not modified or newly created. Though, when looking at it now, the bottom parts of the buildings could really get some help.
Thanks. :) Keep the comments coming, guys!

Great job guys keep it up!

Yeah, this second design is much better, clean and simple.

Getting excited:D