Modding Help Waterfall Tilesheet w/ animation

Discussion in 'Mods' started by GlassArrow, Apr 13, 2017.

  1. GlassArrow

    GlassArrow Orbital Explorer

    Hi everyone! I've been working on making my own maps and stuff and have been trying to make them look good and balanced for multiplayer use. One problem I have come across is creating my own waterfall tilesheet so that it has animation. I am not the best at texturing or anything of that sort. This is what I currently have (without animation): waterfall.png

    And this is what it looks like in the map: waterfallLocation.PNG

    I've tried to make it animate by shifting the original waterfall down a few pixels and having several frames of that, but it just does not look good at all. It is very jumpy and does not have the feel of a waterfall. I also tried to add more frames and decrease the time between frames, but it still does not flow very naturally. Again I am not the best at this so I was wondering if someone could help make me an animated waterfall? Thanks!
     
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    • HopeWasHere

      HopeWasHere Existential Complex

      Here is an example of what a pixel waterfall looks like at each frame:
      [​IMG]
      The water has a distinct line that moves down the falls. Don't know if that helps...
      You're work is looking great so far, keep it up
       
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      • 13akoors

        13akoors Scruffy Nerf-Herder

        What mod is that work from? It looks really good as is.
         
        • HopeWasHere

          HopeWasHere Existential Complex

          I just found it on google, I don't know what permissions you would need to use it
           
          • 13akoors

            13akoors Scruffy Nerf-Herder

            darn. Well, I'll look into it.


            It's funny, I've been looking for someone to make a custom waterfall tilesheet (i'm hopeless at building tiles). I hope you're able to get it done.
             
            • Aristatide

              Aristatide Tentacle Wrangler

              Your upper edge is situated slightly too far back in relation to the cliff. Consider IRL waterfalls--because of the way the water is moving, the white-edge will usually start precisely at or even sometimes slightly below the actual precipice of the falls. By situating it that far back, it makes it look more like a rapids or other rapid-downgrade instead of outright waterfall.
               
              • GlassArrow

                GlassArrow Orbital Explorer

                Thanks for the examples and tips! Here's what I got now: waterfall gif

                I've adjusted the starting location and have a distinct line that goes down each frame. I currently have 2 frames and might add 2 more to get a better flow, but it looks decent right now. I need to work on the top transition and I'm going to add water flow around the bottom as in the example that HopeWasHere posted.

                One of the problems that I'm not sure how to deal with is that the game recognizes water tiles and adds an animation overlayy onto them. I knew it did this, but did not realize that it makes it look like all water in the game flows up (or north?) which is contradicting the waterfall. I have no idea how to transition into that without potentially creating my own water flow overlay of some sort. Does anyone have any tips for that or if someone has done something of that sort?

                And if anyone has any tips or suggestions about the waterfall in general, feel free to give them.
                 
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                • 13akoors

                  13akoors Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                  I don't fully know how water tiling works, but are you saying the game detects when certain tiles are water, or does it require you to tell the game it's water? If you're registering the tiles as water, the easy way to fix that is to not register the tiles as water, since there's no reason anyone should ever be able to interact with it

                  EDIT: I downloaded and used the tilesheet provided by Hope, and didn't have the issue yours is showing. (That said, the tilesheet isn't perfect)
                  http://imgur.com/a/glM0J

                  How exactly are you adding the waterfall to the game?
                   
                    Last edited: Apr 15, 2017
                  • GlassArrow

                    GlassArrow Orbital Explorer

                    I just replaced the tiles as you would. I don't know how the game does it or if there is another tilesheet that it uses, but if you look at any of the water ingame you will see a "waterflow" animation that makes it kinda look like the water is flowing up, you can see it in the gif I linked below and above the waterfall. That "waterflow" is not present when I use tIDE to edit the maps. I don't know if certain water tiles do it and others don't but I don't see it any of the tile properties in tIDE so I assume it's something the game may recognize?

                    Is your screenshot from the game or your map editor?
                     
                    • FieryChaos

                      FieryChaos Cosmic Narwhal

                      Any tile defined as "Water | T" on the tilesheet will have that overlay, which is most "water" tiles defined in vanilla; the game will not automatically apply the water filter, it has to be defined in the tilesheet. I believe the animation is in the "cursors" file under "LooseSprites" if you want to edit it.
                       
                      • 13akoors

                        13akoors Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                        Map editor. I've never had any instance where something loads differently in the game than the map editor. I'll remake the map section and see if loading it in changes anything.

                        EDIT: Strange, it does change upon loading into the game, which it shouldn't do.
                         
                          Last edited: Apr 15, 2017
                        • 13akoors

                          13akoors Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                          While I agree that that sounds like how it should work, at least for my attempt, no tiles were defined with "Water|T", and yet the filter was applied anyways. In fact, I attempted to make sure it wouldn't do that by adding "Water|F" to the tilesheet itself. Is there some way to force "Water|F" on the tilesheet to make sure it doesn't happen?
                           
                          • GlassArrow

                            GlassArrow Orbital Explorer

                            I just figured it out! Both the properties Water|T and Water|F will cause the overlay to occur. You need to completely remove both of those properties and there will be no overlay!
                             
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                            • Maleha

                              Maleha Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                              Not sure what became of this, but I'd hoped for another update. :oops: Decided to try my own hand, Hope's sheet is actually from an open sprite resource site so we should be able to use it. Tweaked it a bit, matched it to ingame colours, adjusted the top of the cliffs and the grass transition and this is the current result. (I went with the shown "river" width because that's the one used in the hilltop map and I was planning to make a small river in a custom map I am working on.)
                              [​IMG]
                              This is just a test animation at 250 ms, don't have an actual sprite sheet yet... only thing I am unhappy with currently is the top of the waterfall... animation feels a bit choppy, but I don't know how to fix that. :notworthy:
                               
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                              • Voltaic123

                                Voltaic123 Pangalactic Porcupine

                                Wow, that looks really good! I think maybe just make it a bit faster? I don't notice any choppiness with the top :3
                                 
                                • 13akoors

                                  13akoors Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                                  Agreed. I feel it matches the look of Stardew Valley very well, so you're already 90% there. Just some slight tweaking.

                                  That said, I personally am looking for a wider waterfall for a custom-ish map (about 3x the width), so I wonder how it would look at a wider river. But as for the current river as shown, I think you nailed it :)
                                   
                                  • Entoarox

                                    Entoarox Oxygen Tank

                                    that texture is setup so the middle row can be safely tiled to make the waterfall as wide as you want.
                                     
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                                    • Maleha

                                      Maleha Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                                      Was kind of busy today and slept it over, and decided it's fine as is so I'll just put the tilesheet here ._.
                                      [​IMG]
                                      If you open it with a grid view, you can see that you can basically multiply the center two tiles if you want to widen it. Here's an example (200 ms): [​IMG]
                                       
                                      • Entoarox

                                        Entoarox Oxygen Tank

                                        Like how it looks, now I am just *really* curious how it interacts with CA's own water effects that arent visible in tIDE....
                                         
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                                        • Voltaic123

                                          Voltaic123 Pangalactic Porcupine

                                          @Entoarox

                                          [​IMG]
                                          Doesn't look too bad if you can ignore the fact that its a little physics breaking ;) I think the color is still a little off though? Ill mess around with that. It also needs seasonal versions, since everything changes color. (Hopefully I didn't miss any frames in the animation, I was very tired when I put this together last night.)
                                           

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