More Symbols Like SS6 (Isometric Cities)

Hello, I am looking for more Symbols like SS6 (isometric and similar in terms of art style) Any recommendations? Thank you!

Comments

  • Try Dundjinni archives, B10_Overland Symbols; also Isometric Town (annual 146) and beaumaris Castle (Annual 149)

  • taustinoctaustinoc Surveyor
    edited February 2023

    You might take a look at Minish Cartography. The style is pretty similar, the prices are pretty reasonable, and the Creative Commons license allows commercial use. The one drawback is that they come in one bit sheet, and you have to snip them up yourself (png with transparent background, though so it's pretty easy.)

    https://minishcartography.com/asset-packs/

    LoopysueMapjunkieEge Sayın
  • 6 days later
  • I noticed I was getting traffic to my site from this forum and found this posting.

    You've said the big sheet of assets is a bit annoying to work with. I've been planning to make my assets more friendly for digital use, what format would make the assets most easy to work with for you? Split into individual png image files or something else?

    roflo1LoopysueEge SayınMathieu Gans
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    edited February 2023

    Individual images makes life much easier. It is also very helpful if the images have good (but not too long) descriptive file names, and for larger collections, organizing the images into different folders (based on the content of the images, not Metadata like file size or resolution) also helps a lot.

    Software like CC3+ (and our competitors) all use the concept of symbols that can be placed, and doesn't have image editor features that allows part of an image to be copied and placed, which is why such combined symbol sheets works poorly. Users need to use an image editor to first extract each symbol and save to a separate file, and then insert that.

    LoopysueScottAJimP

  • Pretty much exactly what you have (png, with transparent background), only with each simple an a separate file. And as Monsen says, descriptive file names (that aren't too long - especially for CC3+, where you get weird things happening sometimes if you have long file names that all start with the same letters).

    (Note: You can never have too high of resolution, but what you have now is very good for digital. Bit low, maybe, for print, but I'm not sure how many people would be working with that sort of symbol set to print out anyway.)

  • I've updated my free sample asset pack to contain the assets separated into individual files, available at the link below if you want to take a look.

    In terms of the naming, what sort of character length would you want to see? For the sample pack I've tried to keep the names short while giving a good description of the asset, are these names too long or are they about right?

    LoopysueMonsenScottA
  • The filenames look good to me. For use with CC3+, most people will copy the images into a directory in the ProgramData hierarchy for ProFantasy (C:\ProgramData\Profantasy\CC3Plus\Symbols\ + some folder name, usually), which is about 40 characters long. Windows only allows 260 characters in the total path + file name, so there's no danger there. (Believe it or not, I have bought mapping symbols where that was an issue - file names that were very descriptive, but so long it broke things in ways that aren't all that easy to fix.) Also, not likely an issue, but there are a handful of characters that are allowable in Mac file names, and in zip files (if zipped on a Mac), that aren't allowable in Windows. Nothing remotely like that here.

    The real peril is in having long filenames that are too similar, because CC3 may not be able to tell them apart. Unfortunately, I don't recall enough about it to offer any details, but I'm sure someone will explain it. But I think you're good.

    One thing I notice is that the SS6 symbols have the shadows going up and to the right, where in yours the shadow goes down and to the left. (Your shadows are more pronounced, too.) It kinda works if I mirror the images horizontally, but the shadows still go down instead of up. I have no idea if that's something that would be easy for you to change, or impossible, or what, though.

    Also, comparing your stuff to the SS6 image set that started this thread, the resolution on yours is pretty much the same, so no worries there at all.

    Here's a comparison for those who are interested:


    MapjunkieLoopysueScottAEge Sayın
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer

    The length of your names are fine, and they are just the way I like them, they describe the content of the image which is exactly what I need to know when looking for something, and not less useful information like resolution and other technical details.

    For CC3+ in particular, the length of symbol names is capped at 31 characters, which means that as long as the first 31 characters of the image name is unique, they're easy to use in CC3+. (For reference, a symbol in CC3+ is more than just the backing image file, and a symbol can reference images more than 31 characters without problem, but when you generate a symbol catalog based on a set of images, the symbol names are taken from the image names)

    I hope you don't mind me nitpicking a bit, but prefixing a name with a fixed string (Iso0 in this case) is a bit counter-productive, as it messes with sorting if you own more than one pack. I often like to sort things alphabetically, and prefixes hamper this. Generally, a suffix is much better. This is just a very minor thing though.

  • @taustinoc thanks for the feedback, that's very helpful.

    In terms of the asset shadow directions, I can't really change those unfortunately. The ground shadows can be modified as I'm now creating those digitally and have them in a separate layer in my working document. However, the shading on the buildings that match the shadows is painted onto the assets during the colouring step (I create all my assets with physical materials, ink, watercolour paint, etc.. and scan them in before a bit of digital processing to remove the background and add the transparent ground shadows) so the shadow direction can't be changed without redrawing the asset. This was something that I always recognised as a problem, due to the way I make the assets I just had to decide on the convention I was going to use at the start and now I make all my assets that way to maintain consistency within my range.

    @Monsen thanks for your feedback as well. I can certainly change the naming to make the pack label a post-fix. I'll consider my naming going forward to allow my whole range of assets to be sorted easily, not just assets within a single pack. I'm thinking using the convention (asset type _ asset theme _ pack label) would work quite well, I'll give some examples below. Let me know what you think, would switching asset type and asset theme work better?

    house1_elven_ios0.png

    house1_middleeastern_ios0.png

    house2_nuremberg_iso0.png

    ruin_nuremberg_iso0.png

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer

    Let me know what you think, would switching asset type and asset theme work better?

    I think that is a situation where both options are actually good, because both are very viable sorting options. But filenames can only be in one format, so I guess the format as currently presented is fine. Actually, I think the one you present above is the best of the two, because if I just want middle eastern stuff, I can easily filter on the keyword in Windows explorer, and then sort the result among them.

    minish_cartography
  • The shadows aren't a deal killer for me. It would have been nice if they could be altered (or removed entirely, at least for CC3, which has some very sophisticated tools for things like that), but oh well.

    It can be worked around, to some extent, by using those same tools to add a similar shadow to the the SS6 images. It's not perfect, but you have to look to notice.

    BTW, how much more in the way of assets is there in your Patreon? When I finally have the time to dig into this, the more symbols the better. :)



    JimPminish_cartography
  • hsv216hsv216 Surveyor
    edited February 2023

    Really do like the packs @minish_cartography (and will pick them up). Just my 0.02c regarding the naming convention, I think it is better and easier to use by not having the type as the first part of the name, but rather the pack or set.

    This way you can sort the folder by pack, (or set) i.e. if it is ruins (asset pack 7), then you have all the ruins grouped together, not all the houses from ruins, and medieval cities and commercial and farming, etc all sorted together. This then means you have a whole list of houses for example, but only really want one of those from a specific pack (or set), then you are doing the same thing forcastles, and then the same thing for inn's, etc.

    So for example having a folder with filenames like this:

    house1_ruins

    house1_medieval

    house1_commercial

    house2_ruins

    house2_medieval

    house3_ruins


    Is harder to sort and use (in my opinion) than this:

    ruins_house1

    ruins_house2

    ruins_house3

    medieval_house1

    medieval_house2

    commercial_house1


    Could still have the prefix in there (or suffix) as needed. I think having it as a prefix is also easier to clearly identify which pack it relates to, but neither here nor there, I would probably just rename them or move them to a specific folder for the pack (or set) to make it easier for me to use anyway. Could still use windows explorer search in either scenario.

    minish_cartographyroflo1
  • @taustinoc in terms of my Patreon, I don't currently have any Patreon exclusive assets (though this may change in the future), all the assets go up on the drivethrurpg store for general sale eventually. What my patrons get (depending on the tier) are complimentary copies of the asset packs and my other products and they get products earlier than the general public. Patrons also get to vote on themes for future asset packs and see earlier and more complete work-in-progress updates on my current projects. Patreon is really what allows me to keep creating regular asset packs as it means I can devote regular time to creating assets and don't need to focus on commissions as much so if you are able to support me through Patreon that would be great.

    @hsv216 thanks for that feedback, I have already started the process of separating the assets but I'm not so far through that I can go back and update the naming convention one last time.

    I'm currently in the process of going through all my existing packs and adding individually separated assets, it will take me a bit of time to do this but hopefully I should be able to get this done in the next week or two. Anyone who already owns any of my asset packs should be notified by email when the various packs are updated.

    JimP
  • 14 days later
  • All my asset packs have now been updated to include individual assets in the format discussed above. Thanks to everyone who help me work out the format and naming convention for the assets.

    I see that DrivethruRPG is currently having a sale for a few more days which includes most of my products so if you were waiting to pick them up now is probably quite a good time.

    hsv216LoopysueMonsenroflo1JimPScottAMapjunkieTheschabiEge Sayın
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