Hi I just want to see if anyone is working on a Dark Age Fantasy Tileset something like the pic’s below.
This is the look I would love to have for my module.
More grass and dirt then stone around city buildings
Buildings made of old wood and rock/stone instead of the brick and stucco look.
I would like a little more primitive/early dark age look.
Any way is there anyone working on a city/rural tileset like this?
You all are corrupting me. I started off just wanting to build something using NWN to DM some friends and family member with. But after being around all of you, seeing, hearing, everything you all are working on has opened my eyes and is making me want more. I’m starting to want certain things, a certain style, a certain look and feel. What have you all done to me, for I don’t know how to do any of this but I want what I want so bad that I am thinking of trying to do it myself. Which is crazy because I don’t know the first thing about making or reskinning a tileset. I really just wanted to make a module now I’m starting to feel like it won’t be what I want without the right tileset to give it the look I now feel it needs to be.
I don’t know if I should thank or curse you all for opening my eyes. 
I feel your pain. I've been SUPER picky about what I use in my own work. Half the time I'm finding that EVERYTHING made so far is either not what I want, or not EXACTLY what I need. I've ended up making quite a bit... especially lately.
Texture work is pretty easy outside of PLT's (which I'm learning to loathe). Tileset reskinning is sometimes very easy, sometimes very hard. Depends on the tileset. Most of the city tilesets have a lot of different textures. They're also used all over the place. Sometimes it can be very hard to get it perfect. You can retexture things to look like Skyrim-styled textures, but it's still not going to look the same in NWN that it does in a newer engine. However one 256x256 texture is the same as another 256x256 texture. You can detail those up to high heaven. Even the worst models out there can be made amazing with great textures, and the best models ever made will look like poo with a poor texture.
Just look at these two for minecraft. Which do you think is going to look more realistic? (not that minecraft is realistic anyway)
If you want to get into it the main hurdle, aside from learning how to make good textures, is the DDS file format. It can be a hassle. And those times when it flips the image... ARGH! I swear it happens sometimes, and doesn't others. It's a bloody conspiracy!
Ok so how do you get your textures? I think some of these pictures look GREAT. Does that mean I would just cut the textures out of the pic's and put them in the game?
I think about half of the textures I get I usually pull from existing images. Google Image search is helpful.
https://www.google.c...zw:512,iszh:512
With that said the other half I make. Either through photography, image manipulation, or photoshop brushes. EG:
The floor texture for the carpet is a generic carpet texture I found on Home Depot's website that was heavily edited. Home Improvement stores are a good place to find some interesting textures. The wood on the floor is image manipulation of an existing wood texture I found online. The walls were found from the wallpaper on photography from the victorian period that I cut, reshaped, and colored. Drakynoch did the wood walls by cutting various wood textures and coloring them to all match. The ceiling was just another piece of that.
Textures are everywhere. Just gotta have a keen eye. For my next tileset project, that I'm keeping secret for now, I actually went on site to a location and photographed all sorts of stuff. Those will be manipulated to make the textures for the tileset.
Very nice.
I'm going to look into re-skinning textures for tilesets for now. Is it easier to do a copy of the tileset and just go in and change the textures or is it easier to do a hak override to re-skin the textures?
Easier to hak override in my opinion. At least to test and get it working. Once you are finished best to pack it all up in one hak if you plan to release it. Otherwise add it to your haks as normal.
However that is for reskinning. If you want to make a *New* tileset based off of an old one it is best to make a copy of that tileset. I think this tool does the job.
Well there are some older tilesets that you can raise and lower, has hills, and some buildings that would work for a nice starting base.
I was thinking of starting with something like this and re-skin buildings walls and the like. Then add some buildings to the tileset.
How does this sound?
Sounds like a plan.
Its asking for
Old Tileset Prefix _________
New Tileset Prefix _________
I'm a true newbie so what do I put here?
It's the three letter prefix show what the tileset is.
EG: City Exterior is TCN. So put TCN in old tileset prefix, and say you want to make it TNC (tileset new city), then put TNC in the new tileset prefix.
Thanks
I was opening up the haks in NWN Explorer and that was what I was thinking after checking out some haks. However some haks everything follows the same prefix while others will have all kinds of different prefix in them.
That said I put the old and new prefix in and hit Rename Entire Set. Who ever another window popped up " Duplicate NWN Tileset "
* search and Replace
* Search Only (No Replacements)
Search Files
SET;WOK;2DA;INI;MDL;ITP;DWK
* Include map images
* Include short prefix (doors)
Cancel Begin
not sure what all I should be picking
But so far its not working for me.
Never mind I think I have to export all the files out of a hak and into a folder. Then open that folder with this program. I was just trying to pick the hak. Well I think that is what I need to do any way.
As I've mentioned before, unless you know your way around tileset creation like Six or Zwerkules, your best bet is going the way Pstemarie, Toro and I did: Simple reskins. There's A TON of hi-res files in hak paks alone. The 1.69 textures alone have been reworked so many times into so many different variations to sate your Skyrim lhirsts. Even if those don't suffice, there's a plethora of games out there with great-looking textures. The only trick here is you need A LOT of time to sort through it all, mix and match, make small image editions here and there to bring it all together. Unfortunately, there is no easy, plug and play option for this.
Retexturing is something I will look into doing. That said I wouldn't think it would be too hard to pull something from one tileset and put it in another. Wouldn't this be a just a little more work then retexturing?
We will never get the same look as those games.... It´s because of lighting and shadows! But texture work is like magic for everything 
And the tno buildings or the one from zwerkules are pretty similar to what you showed there. You always have to make a compromise with nwn. It´s old, very old but nevertheless the best modable game outthere RPG wise 
I suggest you only take these games as an inspiration for future work and not more.
The buildings there are very blocky too and only the lighting and textures do the magic imo. I have used more polys for buidlings as the ones from these images but the result is less fancy anyway. Also these buldings are placeables and the terrain.. forget that.
Ok I think that if I want to change the looks of a rural building, I would need to find the DDS file and replace it with the look I want.
Is it really that easy or do I need to change some other things as well?
Downloading and installing Paint.Net so I will find out soon.
Ok I was able to take a .dds file from one hak and put it in another and it worked. I know this is small for all of you but hey I have to start somewhere and I'm just happy it worked.
I can see this will take some time to re-skin but hey it looks like I might be able to do something after all 
Ok question some haks use more .dds files while does don't
Now correct me if I'm wrong but I think the .dds files are more like HD while the .tga lower quality.
So which would be easier to do?
Change a .dds file (the new look I want) to a .tga file and replace the old .tga file (the old look I don't want)?
Or if I delete the .tga file but add a .dds file with the same name as the old .tga file would the hak use the .dds file, or would it be looking for a .tga file?
The major trick with DDS is the fact that it always overwrites TGA if it is available. So usually its just best to convert to DDS when making a hak.
Wait I can't find everything in this hak I was going to use as my base. I know think this is because it uses a lot of the same looks as the standard tileset. So if I'm thinking right they didn't need to put every .dds file in the hak if they used some from the standard tileset.
If this is how it works it would seam to me that it would be easier for a newbie like myself to start with a tileset hak that uses all its own .dds files. I only say this because I was able to swap out .dds files without changing anything else. I didn't need to mess with the .set file or andy 2da files or anything and it worked fine so far. However I'm guessing that if I want to change the looks of something that is not in the tileset hak I would need to make some changes to these other files.
Ok " The Mad Poet " so what if I want to overright a window on a house. However the hak I was going to use does not have that window in the hak. So I am guessing it is using the standard tileset window and if it is could I just through in a .dds window with the same name and the game would use it with out changing any other files?
If you have created a new tileset with tileset duplicator the window must be there... at least if all files of the tileset were in the folder you used for the duplication. If not create a new window texture with the same name as the ones that is in use and convert to dds. Put in your hak and that should be it!
Well I'm just trying some things to try and find out how to do this. I was able to change the looks my just swapping out .dds files. So I found this to be very easy to do. That said all the dds files for the tiles doesn't seem to be in the hak.
I can't seem to find the trim, windows, or roof in the hak. I will keep looking.
Oh and this doesn't look like what I want but I am just learning how to retexture atm.
It's likely in the standard nwn files. Using NW explorer look under NWN Main Data at the aurora_ttr.bif. I'm assuming that's a redo of the rural tileset?
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