Attempting to recreate Don't Starve terrain.

[mmik]

This is the best place I can think to put this...

 

I'm attempting to recreate the grass textures from Don't Starve for use in a project, but extracting the grass tiles from the files gives a bunch of chopped up mess. Can anyone guide me on how to put this back together and make it look like the ground in-game? I'm sure it's easy to do, I just don't really know where to begin.

 

I'm looking to end up with several 4"x4" grass tiles that vary from each other, but can be placed seamlessly together. If that's possible.

 

Thanks!

[mmik]

Ok so, if I overlay the grass tile (dont_starve\data\levels\tiles) on top of a 4x4 template, most of the tiling fits inside of it. It's tiny. Of course.

 

So, I'm going to run into a lot of problems trying to clone the different bits and make it look right. Plus, some of the etchings on the grass are missing, like the black lines and dots, and I can't find them in the files. I'm worried they may be drawn by an algorithm, meaning I won't be able to actually grab them from the files.

 

I could always run around the game and do screengrabs, but I'm worried that the slight view angle will make it look weird on a printed sheet, and that the visuals in game may distort the image's color. but is this actually my best option right now? Maybe someone has some ideas on how to get better images in game to go about this method? Such as turning off bloom or other effects that can be disabled further in game files. (like the shadowing at the edges of the game screen)

[Mobbstar]

Did you use the correct texture? It should be [installation_folder]/data/levels/textures/ground_noise_grass_detail for the yellow grass textures. All other ground textures are also found in that path.

[mmik]

That gives something that looks like the grass biome ground. I'm looking for standard dark green areas, like forest biome.

[Mobbstar]

That gives something that looks like the grass biome ground. I'm looking for standard dark green areas, like forest biome.

 

The forest grass is literally normal grass but coloured differently. I hope you have photo-shop *witch laugh*

[mmik]

Ok I figured out how to upload it. This is what I'm looking at, haha.

See how it's missing some details, and the edges of the square areas are blurry / distorted(or stretched)?

It might be hard to see with how small it appears here. but if I'm going to use it to fill a 4x4 inch area, it's going to be really difficult I think. also, aside from the edges of the grass, The black line details are missing.

 

[Mobbstar]

That's the wrong texture. You are grabbing it from "data/levels/tiles", right? Try "data/levels/textures/" instead.

[mmik]

Ok I found this in that other folder, which has some of what I need, but it looks like it's only part of the picture. Is this overlayed with the first one I posted to make the ground? Some of the details are there of course, but by itself it doesn't look quite right.

[Mobbstar]

Ok I found this in that other folder, which has some of what I need, but it looks like it's only part of the picture. Is this overlayed with the first one I posted to make the ground? Some of the details are there of course, but by itself it doesn't look quite right.

 

I think so. The idea is that the noise (the texture you just found) makes the base tile look fancy. I think. Ideally you want to just try it!

[mmik]

Ok so I took a minute to experiment. All I did was take the grass noise and set its opacity to 25%, and overlay it with the grass tile.

Doesn't look awful, but it's obvious at a glance that it doesn't look quite right. I think my best bet would be if a programmer or somebody who had access to the data could tell me what the game actually does to the ground. Like if it overlays at X opacity or changes the hue or something.

 

Honestly it'd almost work, aside from sizing issues. It's not quite the right color, though. 

[Mobbstar]

I think my best bet would be if a programmer or somebody who had access to the data could tell me what the game actually does to the ground. Like if it overlays at X opacity or changes the hue or something.

 

The game takes all white as transparency (as far as I can tell). Don't ask me how to do it in photoshop.

 

EDIT: Here, I did you a little favour and played with some options:

Needless to say, it's probably not quite accurate, maybe a bit too loud.

Edited August 25, 2015 by Mobbstar

[mmik]

Hey that's pretty good. I might just end up using that if I can't figure out anything better. What'd you have to do to it?