Second disaster of the day. I'm coming down with flu... again. Had it just before Christmas, now I've caught a slightly different strain. So no textures for a few days, as I can't concentrate properly.
Don't worry too much. Right at the moment I can only find reports related to a 'serious flu outbreak' in the UK in what we call the 'gutter press' - cheap newspapers that specialise in rooting out juicy bits of gossip and scandalising it to create a fresh new panic every 5 minutes and boost their online views.
The good old Beeb has nothing on it. (The BBC - our national media giant)
I caught the bug as a result of caring for my 84 year old mum, who is already recovering from it after just 4 days of having gone down with it. Though its clearly highly infectious (I was following all the standard hygiene precautions), I'm not unduly worried about having caught it myself. If she can throw this thing off in less than a week, then so can I
I was aware of the Intel/AMD processor security crisis a few days ago, and was expecting a few rushed updates. I wasn't, however, expecting things to be as 'rough and ready' as they are. The updates are absolutely RIDDLED with bugs!
Half my windows apps no longer work, and all the apps that didn't come directly from the Windows store are down. Its total chaos!
Fortunately the key bits of software I'm using right now for the textures and such seem to be unaffected by it all. Its me that's the actual problem at the moment!
Well, I'm not recovering as fast as mum, but I haven't got someone rushing around doing all my shopping and such.
I've not been able to look at the screen for too long without my eyes hurting quite badly until today, so I've been doing a lot of thinking.
I've realised that I'm not really keeping track of the relative scale of things all that well. By that I mean some of the fills might cover hundreds of miles, while others only represent about 50 miles. Being new to this, I need a pattern to go by - how many hills in a fill... how much grassland in a fill, etc.
So I've chosen the Herwin Wielink style as a model as far as scale goes, so if there are 5 pingos across the HW tundra style, then there will be 10 in mine, since I'm doubling the resolution and doubling the area each fill covers (the HW textures are 500 pi square, and mine will be 2000 pi square in the final version). It might work, or it might not, but I can only try
Anyhow. The other problem I realised I was having is that my own textures are rather to contrasty for their own good. If you look at the HW style fills they are all mid-tones. Not even the snow and ice are all that white. So I need to reduce the contrast in my own as well to achieve a better harmony in the resulting maps.
I'm still hoping to make my own fills subtly a bit more colourful though
This is the latest attempt at the summer tundra. I've added the ice around the base of each pingo. The winter tundra is next up. I'm going to have to seriously reduce the contrast in that one!
I've also started a sort of map, and realised that most of the fills don't actually work all that well together, but instead of overloading this thread with a thousand different versions of everything, I'm just going to keep working till I hopefully get to a stage where I can show you a half decent map
Well, the swamp needs to be a little softer (has hard edges like cracks), and the deserts a little sharper (is too blury) I would say. Otherwise, I REALLY like the rest of it. A lot.
Both of those things I've decided to do by hand. If neither are working after all this time in Genetica, then its time to try something else instead
EDIT: I think the transparency acne you can see in the swamp area is related to certain pixels in that fill being very nearly black. The rest of them seem ok on that front. (the grass patches not quite meeting up is just clumsy drawing on my part)
Oh dear! I've already changed it. But never mind. I'm sure everything will change a huge amount before I'm done with it all
And now for something completely different.
As part of the exercise of trying to wrap my head around the map colours I've made myself a CC3 map colour rosette. Each ring represents a rise in 10 degrees from level, so that the outer ring has a pitch of 10 degrees, the next one in has a pitch of 20 degrees, and so on. This is expressed by the particular shade of blue in the colour mix.
The pitch reaches 80 degrees in the centre-most ring. That's only 10 degrees off vertical, which I won't need to use - not even for cliffs. In a top down map you just don't see the actual vertical face
The radial variation around the compass is in red, which gives the direction that each bit is facing. Again the rosette is divided into 36 segments, so each consecutive spar of the rosette is 10 degrees different to the last one.
I have no idea if anyone will ever find a use for this rosette, but I'll be using it to pick colours from to paint my hand-painted map files for things like mesa and sand dunes.
Since making this rosette it has occurred to me that it would have been better to start with the faces lined up with the points of the compass, but I just didn't think of that before it was too late.
If anyone desperately wants a version done that way, then I will take the trouble to do one for you
Comments
Sorry guys!
I saw a news item on MS updates today. Computers are being slowed down, its a security fix.
Don't worry too much. Right at the moment I can only find reports related to a 'serious flu outbreak' in the UK in what we call the 'gutter press' - cheap newspapers that specialise in rooting out juicy bits of gossip and scandalising it to create a fresh new panic every 5 minutes and boost their online views.
The good old Beeb has nothing on it. (The BBC - our national media giant)
I caught the bug as a result of caring for my 84 year old mum, who is already recovering from it after just 4 days of having gone down with it. Though its clearly highly infectious (I was following all the standard hygiene precautions), I'm not unduly worried about having caught it myself. If she can throw this thing off in less than a week, then so can I
Half my windows apps no longer work, and all the apps that didn't come directly from the Windows store are down. Its total chaos!
Fortunately the key bits of software I'm using right now for the textures and such seem to be unaffected by it all. Its me that's the actual problem at the moment!
I promise I will when I can.
I've not been able to look at the screen for too long without my eyes hurting quite badly until today, so I've been doing a lot of thinking.
I've realised that I'm not really keeping track of the relative scale of things all that well. By that I mean some of the fills might cover hundreds of miles, while others only represent about 50 miles. Being new to this, I need a pattern to go by - how many hills in a fill... how much grassland in a fill, etc.
So I've chosen the Herwin Wielink style as a model as far as scale goes, so if there are 5 pingos across the HW tundra style, then there will be 10 in mine, since I'm doubling the resolution and doubling the area each fill covers (the HW textures are 500 pi square, and mine will be 2000 pi square in the final version). It might work, or it might not, but I can only try
Anyhow. The other problem I realised I was having is that my own textures are rather to contrasty for their own good. If you look at the HW style fills they are all mid-tones. Not even the snow and ice are all that white. So I need to reduce the contrast in my own as well to achieve a better harmony in the resulting maps.
I'm still hoping to make my own fills subtly a bit more colourful though
This is the latest attempt at the summer tundra. I've added the ice around the base of each pingo. The winter tundra is next up. I'm going to have to seriously reduce the contrast in that one!
Its supposed to be tundra!
However, the marsh and swamp fills will probably use the same basic pattern as this one - just not with the permafrost layer around all the pingos
I've greatly reduced the colour difference between this one and the summer version, and also the contrast.
I think that's all I've got in me today.
I've been working on a Marshland fill.
[Image_10234]
I've also started a sort of map, and realised that most of the fills don't actually work all that well together, but instead of overloading this thread with a thousand different versions of everything, I'm just going to keep working till I hopefully get to a stage where I can show you a half decent map
Thank you
Net time I upload something it will be a map showing the state of play with all the textures
Unfortunately the grass, swamp and desert fills just aren't 'doing it', right now.
[Image_10235]
Another problem - I've been doing too many GIMP maps, and I can't seem to think in CC3 map units very well any more.
Both of those things I've decided to do by hand. If neither are working after all this time in Genetica, then its time to try something else instead
EDIT: I think the transparency acne you can see in the swamp area is related to certain pixels in that fill being very nearly black. The rest of them seem ok on that front. (the grass patches not quite meeting up is just clumsy drawing on my part)
And now for something completely different.
As part of the exercise of trying to wrap my head around the map colours I've made myself a CC3 map colour rosette. Each ring represents a rise in 10 degrees from level, so that the outer ring has a pitch of 10 degrees, the next one in has a pitch of 20 degrees, and so on. This is expressed by the particular shade of blue in the colour mix.
The pitch reaches 80 degrees in the centre-most ring. That's only 10 degrees off vertical, which I won't need to use - not even for cliffs. In a top down map you just don't see the actual vertical face
The radial variation around the compass is in red, which gives the direction that each bit is facing. Again the rosette is divided into 36 segments, so each consecutive spar of the rosette is 10 degrees different to the last one.
I have no idea if anyone will ever find a use for this rosette, but I'll be using it to pick colours from to paint my hand-painted map files for things like mesa and sand dunes.
[Image_10243]
I'd also love to know if I got it right! Thanks
If anyone desperately wants a version done that way, then I will take the trouble to do one for you