16 replies to this topic

[Koh]

Ok, I noticed a lot of people are trying to use Transparent Water to do some stuff with being able to see under the water and etc. because most of you think it's sexy, which it is in most cases, but if it's not done right, then it fails, right? Well I know it'd be a pain to do, but if you do this, then you can actually have True Transparent Water:




I know the Animation there is abit choppy, but you know what I was going for. Wasn't looking for detail, but notice how part of tile gets pushed in one direction, and the other part of the tile pushed in another to create that "Wave" effect. If you TRULY want transparent water, this is a must to do for your tiles underneath, because then it' look like it actually belongs there, and not some jello or something overlaid. The reason you see the black there on the tiles is just to show how you could do your pushing in the tiles, but you would have to fill that in with the other part of the tile that got pushed, otherwise it'd look crazy. Any of you agree with me on this though?

And if you put them on top of each other, it'd look neat:

[MoscowModder]

Nice... that's sea grass, right?

In my quest, I am making sections of dungeons that are completely underwater, and you get an item beforehand that supposedly allows you to breathe underwater. Its really just a slow walk floor and water tiles on transparent layer 5.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

Sure, it's a nice idea... but to call it new would be pushing it. It has already been done more than once, and most known is probably NoeL's attempt. And yeah, it looks fantastic. It does use up way too many tiles to be something I'd like to do myself though... my tileset is already full enough as it is.

[Alestance]

I would kill if I could pull the effect off myself.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

I would kill if I could pull the effect off myself.

You would kill IF you could do it? XD

Anyways, it's not really that hard... just tedious. To do it, you don't need anything else than paint actually, but I prefer GraphicsGale.

First, remember to always have a "clean" copy of the tile you want to "underwaterize"... copy it and paste it into the animation line you're going to create. Now, use the selector tool to select 16 pixels in width and 1, 2 or 3, depending on your wants, in height. Now, pull this line one pixel to the right. Do the same to the line under this, but pull it the other way now. (of course, while filling in the open blanks while you do it) Do this to every single line of pixels in the tile. But only move the lines by one pixel each. Now, copy this tile and paste it into the next line of animation. Do the exact same with this tile, moving the lines another pixel. (The exact same way as last time though.)

Now, you want to do this, but in reverse. Move the lines the oposite way, two times. (Or more, if you want a longer and smoother animation)

It's not really hard... just a lot of work You have to do this with ALL tiles that'll show under water.... now, that's a lot. You might aswell just animate the water itself.. however, it won't leave the same effect.

[Twilight Knight]

You can quite easily do this even in Zquest, just take the top half and bottom half apart, then animate both in different directions and layer them over eachother ('O' shortkey). So quite clever Dlbrooks, even though it's done before, but seemingly you didn't know that, so: clever.
But I'm afraid Migokalle is right: it takes up too much space... But it would be possible for a small quest.

[Koh]

Maybe it'd be a great combotype: waveoverlay; then when yu put it on a different layer, whatever is under does that thing. Would be awesome if it was done.

[Radien]

Though it might be cool, this is just yet one other way to do it. It's not necessarily the "true" way. Considering it's fairly inefficient, I'd go with another method.

Personally, I think the proper way to make transparent-looking water is to take the waterless tiles, put them in a high-color blue gradient CSet, and recolor everything into blues. Then darken the areas that are supposed to show the ripples on the surface.

This doesn't look good with LTTP water. LTTP water is made to be opaque. If I had to suggest something offhand, I'd say that people should be trying to do it with PrinceMSC's Wind Waker-style water, whether they use my suggested method or the old method with trans layers.

[Alestance]

An alternative method is with C-Set cycling, but that could be very difficult to set up.

[Xiion]

Personally, I think the proper way to make transparent-looking water is to take the waterless tiles, put them in a high-color blue gradient CSet, and recolor everything into blues. Then darken the areas that are supposed to show the ripples on the surface.

While that does work, it still takes up additional tiles&combos and/or, more importantly, valuable color slots. However, it does make getting the transparency to look good easy.

And you're right, PrinceMSC's water does transparent water really well. Mainly because his water has a nice texture to it. An animated texture with the right colors can make the wavy effect just as easily. However, you need to pick the colors very carefully, so that each one stands out enough, which is tricky.

Coincidentally, I had spent a couple months trying the first method, before giving up and using the second, which is working out pretty good so far.

[Koh]

Well what if they were to change the tile page limit from a byte to s short, meaning instead of 255 tile pages, it'd be 65535 pages; would ya do it then? =)

[Radien]

While that does work, it still takes up additional tiles&combos and/or, more importantly, valuable color slots. However, it does make getting the transparency to look good easy.

I guess it varies with the quest, but I think water is a very good use of a CSet. Even if you removed DoR's secondary gradient in one of the overworld CSets (such as the greys in DoR CSet 3) and instead dedicated them to extra blues, it would make quite a difference.

And you're right, PrinceMSC's water does transparent water really well. Mainly because his water has a nice texture to it. An animated texture with the right colors can make the wavy effect just as easily. However, you need to pick the colors very carefully, so that each one stands out enough, which is tricky.

I think PrinceMSC's works well largely because it only really shows the ripples on the surface of the water. He doesn't try to show the shadows below the water, and additionally, the ripples don't use very many colors (since he was imitating Wind Waker's cel shading).

Someday I should do a brief tutorial to show what I'm talking about. I believe I included a slapdash tile page pseudo-tutorial in one of my tilesets.

Well what if they were to change the tile page limit from a byte to s short, meaning instead of 255 tile pages, it'd be 65535 pages; would ya do it then? =)

I'd be happy if they did this. I am out of tile space. I keep having to find stuff I can afford to delete. Sucks because a lot of it is supposed to go in the public tileset eventually.

[Joe123]

Well what if they were to change the tile page limit from a byte to s short, meaning instead of 255 tile pages, it'd be 65535 pages; would ya do it then? =)

If you think doing that would be as simple as changing the declaration of one variable from a byte to a short you're wrong.

[Koh]

Well of course it'd involve mods of the other codes, but you know, just saying it can store more . And I do agree with Radien that if you use the blues correctly, you could also pull off decent looking transparent water, but you know, true water distorts images.

[AgentLym]

Um... I don't know if anyone has suggested this yet, but couldn't one just check the 'Underwater Wave Effect' DMap flag? It's a little choppy, but it offers basically the same effect without taking up a bunch of tiles.