I'll explain: doing a seamless terrain style would require a re-design of the basic assumptions of the set, or a ton of additional asset requirements (by a factor of more than 2, at the very minimum). To avoid that, I could draw all basic land as the same biome - but that's contradictory to having all the deserts, marshes, snow, etc, or I would have to create transition edge sprites for *all* basic terrain types (and there are an awful lot), ...or I'd have to redraw all terrain types as seamless textures (plus variations?) while unloading transition effects onto the graphics coding side as some kind of shader (then I'd still have to draw edge transition masks, probably).
Basically, in starting these sets, I made the decision that they had to be tiles that could be slotted together easily as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of system (and the coasts/rivers complicate this greatly, exposing the dangerous limits of trying to add very specific effects to a very generally-oriented tile system). To do something seamless would require starting from the beginning while prioritizing a different design goal.
As for your questions: that is, ah, non-trivial to make work between different biome types. It's like, how do you transition from grass to dirt, from dirt to mountain? You could just do an alpha fade, but that looks bad. So some kind of painted alpha mask might be needed, or unique borders per biome, maybe. I have suggested people use "patches" that cover just the edges, and that kinda works, but it's a bit of a crude solution.
Anyway, seamless terrain across multiple biomes is a problem that requires a bit of thought because there are multiple ways to handle it AND I'd have to redraw a version of all the tiles, AND, worse, I'd have to figure out how to split these new assets into assets - do I do new packages? Add them to old ones? I'm not sure.
Also, would making a bunch of assets which are incompatible with the old ones, or supersede them, be worth the time required? It's not clear.
So, TLDR: I have been thinking about it, but there's no easy and obvious approach.
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is there a version where the tiles are creating seemless surface? (the tile borders are not visible at least not obvious)
Unfortunately, no.
I'll explain: doing a seamless terrain style would require a re-design of the basic assumptions of the set, or a ton of additional asset requirements (by a factor of more than 2, at the very minimum). To avoid that, I could draw all basic land as the same biome - but that's contradictory to having all the deserts, marshes, snow, etc, or I would have to create transition edge sprites for *all* basic terrain types (and there are an awful lot), ...or I'd have to redraw all terrain types as seamless textures (plus variations?) while unloading transition effects onto the graphics coding side as some kind of shader (then I'd still have to draw edge transition masks, probably).
Basically, in starting these sets, I made the decision that they had to be tiles that could be slotted together easily as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of system (and the coasts/rivers complicate this greatly, exposing the dangerous limits of trying to add very specific effects to a very generally-oriented tile system). To do something seamless would require starting from the beginning while prioritizing a different design goal.
Sorry!
These look fantastic for like a world map or something.
Any plans to make them connect seamlessly?
Thank you!
As for your questions: that is, ah, non-trivial to make work between different biome types. It's like, how do you transition from grass to dirt, from dirt to mountain? You could just do an alpha fade, but that looks bad. So some kind of painted alpha mask might be needed, or unique borders per biome, maybe. I have suggested people use "patches" that cover just the edges, and that kinda works, but it's a bit of a crude solution.
Anyway, seamless terrain across multiple biomes is a problem that requires a bit of thought because there are multiple ways to handle it AND I'd have to redraw a version of all the tiles, AND, worse, I'd have to figure out how to split these new assets into assets - do I do new packages? Add them to old ones? I'm not sure.
Also, would making a bunch of assets which are incompatible with the old ones, or supersede them, be worth the time required? It's not clear.
So, TLDR: I have been thinking about it, but there's no easy and obvious approach.