Castube and future releases

[Jerrythabest]

Ah yeppee. Finally. The world's <strike>most wanted</strike> one and only tileset combination is finally released. And there are more to come. And you may decide the combination. And I'll make it.

Get Castube v1.0.3 (latest version) here (http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/downloads/info.php?levelID=4370).


Suggestions are welcome. If you would like to see certain tiles to be made/added to this tileset, you may ask. Any fixes you would like to see? You may ask. I've set up a poll (http://www.bad-bunny.name/jerry/rrforum/viewtopic.php?t=233) on the RRf to select the following combination. Please note that this tileset is the first of a pack with many.

Read the readme for details.

Please do not edit or upload elsewhere without asking.

[n00b]

One and Only?
Huh hah hah HAH HAH!

[Violet CLM]

Okay, the tileset itself isn't really too cool right now - severe lack of transition tiles, and no background - but I do like the motion blur effect. Can I add it to the JCSref article?

[Jerrythabest]

sure =D

I'll make horizontal shadow background transition tiles too in a next version

EDIT: poll up!

[Violet CLM]

Added.

No, what I mean is, all you've really got are a few tiles that connect tubelectric platforms with castle platforms, you don't really take advantage of the fact that you have all these graphics available to combine. I'd expect to see more tiles like this:
<img src="http://www.tachyonlabs.com/sam/Castubesug1.png"><img src="http://www.tachyonlabs.com/sam/Castubesug2.png">

[Speeza]

agreed other wise it just looks like you stuck 2 together.

[Jerrythabest]

aha! that's actually an aspect of combining I never thought about.. omg this is ashaming :o ah well everyone vote on the poll (http://www.bad-bunny.name/jerry/rrforum/viewtopic.php?t=233) too! I'll make some of those nice combo's soon

Added.Link?

[Birdie]

one and only tileset combination
the teamfoo tileset "1.25 patch" or whatever was a combination of more then 4 tilesets. So yours isn't first, or the only.

[Jerrythabest]

I'm pretty sure it's not as good as this one? }>

[Violet CLM]

Link? Uhh... you go to JCSref, click the topic listing, and then it's called "Motion Blur"...
...oh, fine, <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/jcsref/node.php?node=82&mode=id&menu=topics">here</a>.

[Jerrythabest]

oh yeppee I'm in there :lol: I even have a link =)

ah well, I'll probably do some work on 1.0.4 tomorrow.. the first thing I'll do is moving the big font E a few pixels up. it's not perfect now :(

[Sacrush]

Since I cant vote at the poll, I like to see beach and jungle combined.
So you have the ability to make an island with a beach and at the middle of the island a jungle.

[Jerrythabest]

just sign up on the RRf and you should be able to vote :roll:

ah well, I'll just count your vote.. but don't blame me if I forget!

[Sacrush]

just sign up on the RRf and you should be able to vote :roll:

ah well, I'll just count your vote.. but don't blame me if I forget!

I don't want to start a account just to vote for something. Why don't you start a poll on the JCF?

[Jerrythabest]

I dunno if JCF allows 25 options
I dunno if JCF allows you to select how many options must be chosen
I'm quite sure JCF doesn't have the possibility to load the results into a spreadsheet
<strike>I try to get people to the RRf and have them read things like my clan news</strike>

[cooba]

I'm pretty sure it's not as good as this one? }>That doesn't anyhow make your merge "one and only".

[blurredd]

From the Castube Readme:
The castle and tube backgrounds have been taken out because the quality of all tiles would suffer (there would be too many colors if I included them).
After looking at the palettes, every useful color except for 16 of them can be fit into a single palette. In that case, some set of tiles could be adjusted to use 16 other colors from the palette. For example:

http://www.jazz2online.com/d3/castle-test.bmp

If you ask me, I'd say such a change would actually be an improvement.

[Jerrythabest]

but that would mean I would have to re-draw every pixel of many, many tiles (over 100, prob.)! >O that wouldn't only take more than a year, IMO you don't really need those backgrounds


@coob: ah well, the one and only in this pack then:P or the one and only by me:P or the one and only with 2 tilesets:P or the one and only good one:P

[Violet CLM]

Uhhh... no, it wouldn't. It would involve changing the palette used by the image, and possibly some use of a color replace tool, that's all.

[Birdie]

I think he's using mspaint.

[Violet CLM]

<a href="http://www.very-secret.info/paint.html">Okay.</a>

[blurredd]

but that would mean I would have to re-draw every pixel of many, many tiles (over 100, prob.)!
Actually, all the tiles that would be need to be changed for my idea (minus the Castle 1 Night warp tiles which weren't included in your set anyway) are there in the image I first posted. And even if you're only using MSPaint, you wouldn't need to redraw any pixels or use any color replacing tool. You could've use TilesetPal along with resaving the image without a palette, but I don't want to get into that right now.

Here's what would be my proposed palette as seen through palette events:

http://www.jazz2online.com/d3/events.bmp

Or with a few rows rearranged:

http://www.jazz2online.com/d3/events2.bmp

And with either of those palettes, theoretically a background such as the following could still be possible:

http://www.jazz2online.com/d3/tubelec-bg.gif

You're probably going need a tile that contains the entire palette to make sure everything works. And just so you know, I used the sprite colors from Castle 1 so that the stain-glass windows would still look the same. I hope you have still have a version of your set before you did any color reduction for your convenience. But anyway, you're free to try whatever you want.

[Jerrythabest]

I should take a look at the first beta.. however I'm quite certain I already did the colors there... Maybe I'll just have to make castube again and use your palette idea... it looks nice and there will probably be less color reduction... but that would require a lot of work (actually all work)... at least, I don't have to do the medium pillar anymore, you did it;P

the problem is.. I don't know exactly which tiles don't use the wall tile colors.. afaics (as far as I can see) it's just the medium pillar, so in that case it's worth the effort

used programs:

mainly mspaint
palette suite for modifying the palette
psp for loading modifications

[Birdie]

All this "Work" can easily be done very quickly, its just replacing a few colors.
psp has a good enough color replacing tool, I suggest you use it.

[blurredd]

...So you have PSP yet you choose to use mainly MSPaint. Did you want an extra challenge, or are you unwilling to make a crossover?

[Jerrythabest]

well since PSP caused me to have spent a whole day creating a single tile (see the beta's) I decided I'd rather use the pixelperfect ease of Paint. it's just.. PSP doesn't even have all of paint's features and others of them (like the fill tool) work worse when pixelperfecting

Example:
A=black pixel
B=nearly black pixel
C=white pixel

making black pixels white with the fill tool:
first after
paint psp
BBBBB BBBBB CCCCC
BAAAB BCCCB CCCCC
BBABB BBCBB CCCCC
BAAAB BCCCB CCCCC
BBBBB BBBBB CCCCC

some way that tool trashed the tileset


also, PSP eats that much memory that when I have PSP opened with 3 huge images (read: tilesets) and have JCS, WLM and a number of small background tools open at the same time, Jazz runs out of memory! So, I had to close psp to test my tileset and then, about a minute later, had to open it again.. which takes awfully long...

my conclusion:

I used PSP since I don't have any other program that can load palettes into images.

[Stijn]

PSP's fill works just like MSPaint's, if you configure it correctly... You probably set "tolerance" to something higher than 0, or "Match Mode" to something else than "RGB Value".

If you need Paint's Pencil tool (used to manipulate individual pixels), just set the size of PSP's Paint Brush to 1. I wouldn't know about any other features Paint has but PSP doesn't...

[Jerrythabest]

I also like paint's selecting better.. and why did they make psp's ctrl+v shortcut paste as new image instead of paste as new selection?

anyway, I'm pausing Castube a bit since I'm more busy with the RR League right now, so I'll just write down all changes that need to be made on a list or so.

[blurredd]

You get used to pressing Ctrl+E instead. And being able to paste a new image easily comes in handy. Also, you can't go wrong with rectangular selections and Magic Wand, as well as being able to add or subtract from a selection.

also, PSP eats that much memory that when I have PSP opened with 3 huge images (read: tilesets) and have JCS, WLM and a number of small background tools open at the same time, Jazz runs out of memory! So, I had to close psp to test my tileset and then, about a minute later, had to open it again.. which takes awfully long...

I would guess you're using PSP 8 or some higher version. But surely you don't need to have WLM or similar programs running all the time.

Anyway, I can't image working on tilesets anymore without the usefulness of grids, in particular the ability to snap to grids. I could bring up other arguments favoring Paint Shop Pro, but if you prefer more work...

[jam]

Jerry, you should use GraphicsGale. You can make a 32x32 grid on it as well as a pixel grid, and deal with palettes, but it is more orientated to pixel editing etc.

[n00b]

To be honest, I never figured out how to deal with palettes in GraphicsGale, but TilesetPal and PalleteSuite fill that gap quite nicely if you're have troubles with it as well, Jerry.

[Jerrythabest]

well I don't have palette problems at all, for some reason psp just trashed my tileset a few times.. I have no idea how.. I'll make some screens soon

I'll give GraphicsGale a try when I'm back working on the tileset... it sounds useful

@blur I do have to run WLM all the time. how else do people contact me? if WLM is running, I don't get messages for new e-mails too...

[jam]

Get a real email account so you can use POP3.

[Jerrythabest]

I've got one. btw, hotmail is real too..

[Grytolle]

Get a real email account so you can use POP3.POP3 sux ++webmail

[Jerrythabest]

yeah indeed I agree

anyone willing to vote?:lol:

[Jerrythabest]

I'm back here to announce that I feel like working on Castube again after busy times at school are over (= probably next week already)... I'll try out that program later today as I've never tried it... I think I'm going to put the tileset together again from the beginning, so that no color reduction has been used, and I'll try to use the second palette Blur made, as well as his recolours in post #17.

[Jerrythabest]

Just tried GraphicsGale and must say that it's just what I've been looking for. Now I only need to make the hard choice bedween Blur's palette event palettes to start rebuilding Castube. =)




EDIT: And now I've also examined both palettes really good, with the conclusion that the Castle tileset actually doesn't use over 100 of its palette's colors... If the tileset extractor was released when I started making castube I could have used the castle palette the way I'm going to use it now ;p Tubelectric has many unused (or duplicate) colors too, though less, but I think I can make an (even) better tileset this time ;p

[MoonBlazE]

You might also want not to use 18 tiles just to credit yourself, especially when all the work you have to do is translation and not actually draw something. ;p

In fact, the whole variation of color in blocks you have is completely useless as no one hardly uses them and when they do it's still the most matching color they use than a choice from a rainbow.

[Odin]

I've got one. btw, hotmail is real too..

Gmail (and IIRC hotmail) can use POP3.

[Jerrythabest]

Just shut up about that ;p


As for the rainbow-colored tiles, maybe you are right. But still, why would I remove them? They use only the JJ2 palette and there is still enough space for animated tiles...

Somewhere this week I will make the palette I'm going to use for the new Castube.

[MoonBlazE]

Because you should replace them with real tiles. ;P

[Jerrythabest]

Why replace them? I can add real tiles too. It's not that awfully big (yet)...

[MoonBlazE]

Because tiles that no one will use are just something that unnecessarily increases the amount of scrolling and annoyance while using the set, not to mention it gives an impression of "I couldn't come up with anything better".

[Jerrythabest]

Oh well, I'll come up with much more, and thus better, next release. Just wait.

[Jerrythabest]

This is what I got now:
http://84.107.204.56/castle_tube_pal.jpg

I hope you understand Dutch.

Now I only need to merge them in a way that gives good palette events and then I finally got a normal palette ;p I wish the tileset extractor was there when I started making Castube. Would have saved a lot of time ;p

[Jerrythabest]

Made my own palette now, with the following palette events working correctly:

- Carrotus pole (dark brown with light parts)
- Diamondus pole (shade light to dark brown)
- Jungle pole (brown with brownish red parts)
- Psych pole (yellow)
- Small Tree (brown leaves)
- PIN: 500 Bump (brown with red text)
- PIN: Carrot Bump (red with original colored carrot)
- PIN: Left Paddle (brown)
- PIN: Right Paddle (brown)
- Snow (very light brown)

I might get the water to work pretty nice too, just need to find and move around the correct colors for that.


As you can see, it's overally a brownish list. Everything except the carrot bump and the psych pole looks like wood, which is a nice difference in the stone worlds Castube is made of. The brown snow may be a bit odd, but it's at least something, the alternative would be dark red, which is completely wrong for snow.

[cooba]

Well, my advice is not to use 87,0,203 and just go for #000 ;)

[Jerrythabest]

Oh wait I got it working now ;) Just forgot to refresh the tileset in JCS after recompiling ;p that (what you said) would've been my alternative of course ;)

EDIT: found out that I made a mistake while moving around with colors in the palette, after fixing it the snow sadly looks a lot darker. There are no other side effects.

<table><tr><td valign="top">Edit2:
Click the image to compare two screenshots made in Return Run.</td><td>http://84.107.204.56/castube_eventprev.jpg (http://84.107.204.56/castube_returnrun.jpg)</td></tr></table><!-- Put my text next to the TOP of the image, please. Ugh. -->

I couldn't fix the snow and the water, sadly. Just don't use water- it's impossible in 8bit ;p

[MoonBlazE]

I couldn't fix the snow and the water, sadly. Just don't use water- it's impossible in 8bit ;p

Imho, no need to excuse for those. Water works fine in 16-bit no matter the palette and whoever runs their game in 8-bit can't complain about graphics. Snow doesn't matter when it's not a snow-orintated tileset.

[Jerrythabest]

Kay =) I'm adding some tiles now so levelmakers are less limited. Only downside is that the new tiles come below the text tiles, otherwise all levels made so far would become entirely incompatible and I don't like to have two versions of my tileset with their only difference being the tile order... Still, I'll try to place anything as logically as possible.

[blurredd]

Water works fine in 16-bit no matter the palette and whoever runs their game in 8-bit can't complain about graphics.
That doesn't mean tileset makers shouldn't at least try though.

[cooba]

Imho, no need to excuse for those. Water works fine in 16-bit no matter the palette and whoever runs their game in 8-bit can't complain about graphics. Snow doesn't matter when it's not a snow-orintated tileset.Someone's a pretty lazy tileset creator here ;)

[Jerrythabest]

I agree that you should always try to get the water working, and snow must be working if you have a snowy tileset ;p

[MoonBlazE]

That doesn't mean tileset makers shouldn't at least try though.

Water uses an array from the background texture's slots so typically it will work in most tilesets. Yet if you look at the example level of Mystic Isles 2 where the water palette is set to a correct gradient it still looks like crap because 8-bit migrates colors horribly.

It's only something you should put an effort into if it's something you want to be used in a set. Kind of reminds me where I critizised Skulg for not making water work in 8-bit mode in her Where Bad Rabbits Go hell-themed tileset. It's not about being lazy or not giving it a try, it's just about being reasonable and conserve your work time. When giving advice that should always be taken into consideration.

[blurredd]

Well, one person not seeing the need for a particular feature doesn't mean no one would want that feature. And so it's often in a tileset maker's best interests to implement a variety of a features, whether it's a standard feature or not. Still, no one's forcing anyone to do anything they don't want to.

The reason Mystic Isles 2's water doesn't look as great as it could be is because water often times uses gradients other than those used for the textured background. It's a similar issue to translucent tiles and how other tiles look underneath them. Judging from Mystic Isle's palette, it might've been relatively easy to add extra gradients just for making the water look better. From what I can tell, the more complete gradients a set uses, the more likely the water will look good. Incidently, having a palette composed entirely of gradients can make it easier to create different versions of the same set, which is always a plus (I might've felt more compelled to use Mystic Isles again if it came with an evening and/or night version).

My comment wasn't meant to imply all new tilesets should have water that works in 8-bit (although that wouldn't be a bad thing). It's to say that if you have the tools and the knowledge, might as well at least try, and even if you can't get it right, it's probably not going to be the deciding factor of whether or not your set gets used.

[Violet CLM]

Water uses an array from the background texture's slots so typically it will work in most tilesets. Yet if you look at the example level of Mystic Isles 2 where the water palette is set to a correct gradient it still looks like crap because 8-bit migrates colors horribly.
<a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/jcsref/node.php?menu=&node=Underwater%20Ambient%20Lighting">*cough*</a>

[Jerrythabest]

That's interesting. So if you want fully working water in 8bit you'll have to make a tileset where you simply can't avoid the word 'blue' in its title. Awesome. 16bit owns.

[Violet CLM]

Uh, not at all. IF you wanted the water to be blue, then MAYBE you'd have to have a blue textured background, but aside from that, you suffer very few color restrictions. Take a look at one of the official JJ2 sets sometimes, which make much better use of color than most any user set, and see how they make use of the 80 distinct colors available above the textured background.

[Soulweaver]

You've got a really good tileset idea, but there are too few pieces to bring these two different tileset types together so you still have a lot of work to do. But just keep it up! I'll keep an eye on this topic!

[Jerrythabest]

Umm well adding pieces is exactly what I'm doing now that the palette is done ;p