Art guidelines?

[joshcarter]

Dear Tynan and modders,

I'd love to see some artistic guidelines and templates for RimWorld mod art. I'm doing some art right now and some questions keep coming up, for example:

1) Should this be top-down or perspective? If perspective, from what angle?

2) Black outlines or no black outlines? How thick?

3) What's the palette of natural items? Metal items? Stone? (etc.)

Of course, I know these things are in flux, and "guidelines" aren't absolute rules anyway. However, the more that modders are looking to a common standard, the more cohesive the in-game experience will feel. Consider the Apple Human Interface Guidelines in its various forms -- it helped a lot of third-party developers make their apps "fit" with each other and the system as a whole.

I'd also love to see more templates, for example the layered Wall Atlas PSD file that Tynan posted. These are really helpful for getting a designer started on the right track. More please!

I'm not looking for anything immediate here, just a long-term goal for Tynan and Rho (and leading modders) to gradually get some resources out there that mod artists can refer to when creating new art. Rimworld is beautiful in its simplicity, but even simple requires a level of consistency, or else things start to "look wrong."

Thx for listening,
Josh

[Evul]

I think people should do as they please
BUT i am always make the RimWorld Vanilla graphic as standard for all my mods and projects. if some one whants to make texture packs they can do that. But my mods will be vanilla first hand.

Cause i don't think it look nice when some stuff look different then other.

[Architect]

I personally prefer to mod features in with the understanding that they would look like they were top down. However, sometimes to properly display a graphic, that just isn't possible. I guess it really is up to the artist, but I'm saying top down

[shadowtajun]

Would love to know myself. Currently I've been doing all sorts take a look here: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=2390.0

But I think so far front on has been the best to show graphics. BUT it looks odd in the top down view we have. Black outlines seem very handy, I'd keep them.

And recommended dimensions would be handy. How tall is a human in pixels? the whole human I mean not just the height of what is in the texture pack (which is in sections) If I'm going to make a wind turbine that is 128 x 256 (from the front) is this going to be gigantic? or is it going to be too little?

[Kirid]

I've been thinking about this alot, and pulling my hair out when my textures look terrible in game.
Tynan has said the viewpoint won't change, though the art assets probably will.  http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=200.0
Here's what I've got so far for guidelines, though many things aren't set in stone considering we have limited examples to draw from right now:

Buildings- Top view, Most have 3 Pixel Outline, Others include Bed(1PixelColored) Grave(No Outline, LauchPad(4PixelColored, or none)
Walls, Stone, Minerals - Perspective view, 3 Pixel Outline
Humans and Muffalo - Side View, 3 Pixel Outline
Squirrel and Boomrat* - Side view, 2 Pixel Colored Outline
Plants - Side View, 1 Pixel Colored Outline
Terrain - Natural and Structure Floors - Top Down View, No Outline
Weapons and Metal - Side View, 1 Pixel Outline
Meals, RawFoodMeat, Debris, Silver* - Top view, 2 Pixel Outline
Projectiles and Filth - Top view, No Outline
RawFoodPlant - Perspective view, 2 Pixel Outline

Outline is black unless stated colored, means its a darker version of whatever color is on the inside.
Exceptions:
   *Squirrel and Boomrat- side unless they go up, they become top down view
   *Silver - Its more representative that an accurate portrayal, unless the silver coins are 2 foot wide.

The differences  are vast even between similar objects. Many objects have a varying border if you include the shading, Walls vary from 3-4, Stone from 2-4, Workshops are 2-3. I don't think the outline impacts the overall visuals nearly as much as perspective.

By no means should this be a strict guideline, if anything it shows how perspective and outline can be unique to what you want to create. I hope it all made sense, It took awhile to write up.

[StorymasterQ]

I've been thinking about this alot...

I'm so, so sorry for being off topic, but I just can't let this one go. I've also been thinking about this particular alot.

[Tynan]

I mostly just eyeballed it. But the basic rules were:

-Fields of color or simple gradients. No complex textures except special cases like terrain.
-Not too much detail (looks awful when zoomed out). Choose a few shape elements and go with those.
-Outline and use tonal (e.g. brightness) contrasts according to how important something is; how much it needs to "pop" out of the surroundings, how much it needs to be noticed because it effects gameplay. So characters have strong colors and outline, as do player-made buildings. Plants like saguaro which block people have a minimal outline that is close to the plant color. Grass has no outline.

[mrofa]

-Not too much detail (looks awful when zoomed out). Choose a few shape elements and go with those.

Zoom system dont really hurt detlied object that much. Just use 64x64 per square insted of 32x32 and ingame resizing will do wonders

[Kirid]

Yeah those are good rules. I've been able to get away with a couple complex designs but wow that table is awesome! As long as you keep the outline width near importance level, there is alot of artistic freedom in the game. Soft/Flat colors seem to work best, and a very low noise filter seems pretty standard.