Jayhawk glyphs

[Son of Moose]

Dear Jayhawk

Would you be prepared to honour CotN with another comprehensive series of your excellent and extremely useful glyphs?

These could yet again form the basis of more "City Block" formations --- such as those appearing on the other classic city builder series webpages. These "City Blocks" often gave rise to most stimulating and informative debates --- and I strongly urge the community to become involved in these pictorial debates and discussions.

Maybe someone with some programming experience (which alas I do not possess) would be able to devise some sort of programme (featuring relevant ingame variables such as desirability, etc.) to enable fans to build preview (and prototype) cities OUTSIDE of the actual game. Indeed, if maps are unfortunately restricted in size within the actual game (which I fear that they might be), such a fully functional add-on programme would offer hard-core (and potentially overambitious) builders like me an ingenious option to side-step such limitations.

Maybe this site might be prepared to host various City Building competitions employing Jayhawk's glyphs (possibly incorporated in the abovementioned add-on programme).

This possibility actually excites me far more than the game itself (which probably will be subject to restricted map sizes) --- especially as I have a grand design that I would dearly like to test and develop. Am I being totally ridiculous in my request --- or are there others who feel like me who desire the possibility of near unlimited creativity (even if it is actually outside the main game)? [There might well be a possibility of placing parts of ones grand design into multiple ingame cities --- so that this aditional source of creativity might not necessarily be in vain].

Any comments?

P.S. My kindest regards to you Jayhawk

[Jayhawk]

Welll...assuming it will be useful to build blocks for CotN I will most assuredly create a set of glyphs and (reuse) a script for planning cities outside of the game

[Son of Moose]

I am sure that your glyphs (together with a suitable programme to accommodate them for building and planning purposes) will indeed be exceptionally useful to the game!!

If mods are possible (please refer to my earlier post), maybe you might even be able to add a couple of additional glyph structures to the game. [Just a thought ]. Maybe Azeem will be able to share some of his gardens with us by using these glyphs.

With kindest regards

[Miut]

Jayhawk, I'd love to know how you make your glyphs. Any chance of a Tutorila for them so we can make our own? Getting that 3D effect on art work is what I have no idea how to do...

[Jayhawk]

Hmmm, basically, it's painstaking pixel-pushing, Miut.
No real secret there.

[Miut]

Jayhawk, sorry for not replying, desk top had to have C drive reformatted after it took 6 hours to Repair (not) my Windoze installation prior to my move. I sat for 4 hours looking at "Finihsing in 19 minutes." Yeah, right. I had to wait cos it was still changing text and moving, and had allen over so often I was glad to get it working at all.

Finally did the dastardly Reformat Drivce C bit. Now after another fall over and apparently working repair while installing on clean NTFS small partition (was FAT 32 - I like getting access to DOS in Windows, but it is more stable in NTFS.. and I need stable for a work computer)

Anyhoo.... I don't know how to use an art package for art so if you know of any on-line tutorials... that would help. I can draw fine on paper... I could make lovely glyphs on paper, but they don't scan onto a computer too well...

[Son of Moose]

It would certainly be great (in principle at least) if Miut (and other interested parties) were able to augment Jayhawk's excellent series of glyphs for CotN with possible additional ones (e.g. for desired structures that were not intially included in the game) as long as they are in a standardised format and given the "thumbs-up" by Jayhawk and the senior members of the forum in charge of quality control (an extremely important aspect to consider).

It is certainly fairly vainglorious for various members of the community to create their own series of glyphs --- it would be akin to re-inventing the wheel (and should be discouraged)!!

However, maybe shared knowledge of Jayhawk's technique might give rise to members creating series of glyphs for other well-loved games --- any suggestions? Indeed, my greatest desire might be for someone who is extremely talented (with the spare time and inclination) to oversee the productive of a standardised (most important) and extremely comprehensive set of glyphs to cover some (most) of the other (non) Mediterranean cultures covered in the multi-page thread devoted to this topic. Now this would present a worthy challenge!!! Maybe these glyphs could eventually be incorporated into a programme that would enable the avid designer and builder to create his/her own worlds independent of the game. An appropriate and comprehensive set of terrain-specific glyphs should also be included --- perhaps someone can check out Age of Mythology (and the various editor add-on mods for this game) for nearly 100 diffeent types of terrain. This should surely provide the most hard-core builder with sufficient "cannon fodder".

Just a thought for a future project ---

[Azeem]

Actually, glyph-making isn't too difficult. It just gets tedious, as Jayhawk said. I've tried doing it myself once, but gave up on it because it takes too long. It can be done with MS Paint. Just make each city tile around 4x4 or 5x5 pixels.

[JuliaSet]

I believe the small tiles are made in Microangelo, a program that makes small icons. At this time there is a fee for it. Check here:http://www.microangelo.us/

[Pecunia]

Originally Posted by JuliaSet

I believe the small tiles are made in Microangelo, a program that makes small icons. At this time there is a fee for it.

Microangelo is mainly for creating program icons, not for small images. MS Paint (or any similar raster-based image-editing programme) is perfect for the job of making glyph images, 16x16 per tile.

As a sidenote, a month or two ago I made a start with writing a stand-alone glyphy program in Java. The project is 'on hold' now and far from finished, but I might pick it up again in a couple of weeks.

[JuliaSet]

But that is what I used for the glyphs used in some of the HG programs. I worked with JamesBlonde on one or two of them. It was quite easy to use for the small files. Other graphics programs could have been used also.

To make gifs from screen shots, most any graphics program will do, and takes quite a bit of pixel detail.
Julia

[Jayhawk]

I believe the small tiles are made in Microangelo

Nope, sorry. Plain vanilla PaintShopPro (versions 3 and up). Saves as GIF format files, with a 16x16 pixel size for the single tile ones.

Of course, we don't even know if there will be tiles that can be counted for buildings, but we could always encircle them with plaza tiles (as they seem to be available) and could the dimensions.

I think the most ... artistic part of making the glyphs is reducing a three dimensional image, to a stylised flat one that's still recogniseable. As long as there's difference enough between the various buildings it should be possible, though.

Pecunia's script looks good and the original one I used was created by a long lost forumer by the name of Crassus Pauper.

[JuliaSet]

It will be good fun to see the game and find something to make. Its been so long since I've done many graphics. I'm looking forward to seeing what I might do to support the new game.

Jayhawk has a wonderful touch with the glyph tiles! It will be interesting to see what you come up with this time, Jay!
Julia