The Dink Network

Snow to Grass Tiles

Demonstration of snow to grass transition. Concrete path in snow. Yipee!
June 22nd, 2012
v2.00
Score : 6.5 fair
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metatarasal
Bard He/Him Netherlands
I object 
A snowy winter landscape or a sandy desert have been traditionally the two most important terrain varieties for people looking for something besides the traditional grass landscape. There are already quite a few snowy varieties to tiles in the original game but one very important one is still missing: Transition tiles between snow and grass. Having these tiles can make it easier to have both snowy and non snowy parts in your DMOD, and that is where this file kicks in.

When you open this file you get a readme file and two tile graphic files, one with snow to grass tiles and one with snowy road tiles. The readme file is something way too many files like this miss, but luckily this file has one. It describes how you can use these files in your own project. I used the instructions in the readme and got it to work fine.

The road tiles in this pack are simply the same as the grassy ones, but edited with snow around them instead of grass. They aren't too complicated but they blend in with the landscape pretty good. The only thing I didn't like was the absence of transition tiles between snowy roads and normal roads, for a pack named 'Snow to Grass Tiles' this feels like a strange omission. Also the white speckle on the road doesn't really look like snow and could better have been left out. However in spite of these two points the road tiles look pretty good. They also work the same way as normal roads, so with this file you can make exactly the same types of roads in snow as you can in grass.

The actual snow to grass tiles aren't so good unfortunately. This isn't because of the way they look, but because the way they match to each other. Or rather, the way they don't match. You can only use horizontal or vertical transition pieces that are four by two tile units in size, which is different from most tiles in the original game which uses basic building blocks of two by two in size. Using only a part of these horizontal or vertical segments makes the next part not fully line up with the segments, the effect is reasonable in many cases but it is almost always noticeable and you wonder if the parts wouldn't have lined up better if the amount of them would have been reduced. And the same effect happens with the corner pieces, the inward and outward curving corner pieces do not match really well to one another. So if you decide on a snow to grass border that first goes east a little bit, then bends south before immediately bending back east again you make these corner pieces touch, and they simply aren't good friends. It isn't bad enough to make you pull out your hair in anger, but it could definitely be improved.

Now I realize that many different combinations are possible and that it is very difficult to make them such that they all line up. However I still feel that the tiles mismatch too much too often. If you're looking for transition tiles between snow and grass I'd recommend you also look at the tiles in Pilgrim's quest. While those tiles don't look as good as these, they line up much better.

So, I think the name of this file is somewhat of a misnomer: Yes it actually contains snow to grass tiles, but I'd recommend it more for its road tiles than for its snow to grass tiles. Making proper transition tiles is a difficult thing, but unfortunately this file has too many mismatches for my taste. If however you can put yourself past these problems (for example by a smart use of sprites) this file could definitely have some potential for your project too.

6.5