Lord of WoRms' Tilesets

[Major Tom]

Fairly certain there's been other threads talking of WoRm's things in the past, but hey, more food for the fire if that happens to be the case. WoRms is, of course, perhaps one of the best tileset creators for NWN out there, which is why I feel the urge to suggest including and utilizing some of his work in future endeavors for Ravenloft. Numerous tilesets, such as his Fantasy Interior, Mirkwood swamplands, and Seasonal Forest ones, are pure gold and contain many of the aspects that would make for interesting and immersive areas around the server. The Fantasy Interior tileset alone contains at least four pieces in one set for dungeons, castles, inns and haunted houses, making for creepy and intimidating settings. Similarly, the Mirkwood tileset takes the idea of a dark, dank and gloomy swamp and pretty much makes you want to turn around and run back home rather than risk going deeper in.

These tilesets are neither too heavy on the filesize (with the exception of the Mirkwood and Seasonal ones), nor do they cause conflict with pre-existing Ravenloft haks, as they work on their own. As stated at the beginning, this is merely a suggestion, but one that I feel has the potential to greatly increase the feeling of dread in some locations, whilst simply begetting a very immersive, creative approach to others - especially since WoRm has a knack for making tilesets that have a more natural 'feel' to them than flat grasslands. If anything, some of these could be used to create Mordent-based areas, given the gloom that they have about them.

But enough of my talking the tilesets up. How about you all go ahead and check them out yourselves:
WoRm's Tilesets

[Soren / Zarathustra217]

The issue is that we would have to add it to our download package (or refer people to it), increasing the total download needed to play on the server. We prefer if we could keep it somewhat at a minimal to not let that be a discouraging factor to try us out. Also, some of WoRms' tilesets, while being very nice, have a rather different style than the usual NWN, making for a confused aestethic impression. And finally, to really benefit from it, we would need to remake existing areas from the ground...

That mirkwood tileset do seem awfully suiting for us though... Hmm... 

[Major Tom]

Perfectly understandable. I wasn't trying to make it out to be a 'must have!!' thing, merely that there would be possibilities that could be utilized with it, as I mentioned, for newer areas and regions. I wasn't implying 'hey, let's build Ravenloft from scratch all over again', but moreso something along the lines of 'this could be an extension of the swamplands' or possibly a future basis for Mordent. Mordent seems like the place to focus more on gloom and damp terrain, and there's a lot of ghost stories with things like haunted mansions and such - things that would benefit from a tileset like the Fantasy Interior one.

To be perfectly fair, if it's a question of confused aesthetics, for the most part it's a question of lighting. The inn, castle and dungeon portions in Fantasy Interior are, for example, very similar to the Barrows, City Interior 2 and Fort Interior tilesets, simply with a few new features like cracks in the walls to 'crawl through', higher ceilings (perfect for areas that might be more intimidating) and big holes in the ground where water leaks through, and a few other features that elude my memory at the time. With the exception of these features, they look very similar to those aforementioned tilesets that Ravenloft already uses for areas like Krofberg and Blaustein.

Again, if I'm coming across as pushy then I should apologize in advance. I get carried away when I see something that has potential for use, and my mind already starts coming up with locations and ideas for how to implement those things, and so I get enthusiastic and all "Hey, this would go great for this! And this could go here!". So yeah, this is still just a suggestion and me more or less attempting to rationalize with your, perfectly valid might I add, reasons for why you might be unlikely to implement the tilesets.

[Soren / Zarathustra217]

Again, if I'm coming across as pushy then I should apologize in advance.

Not at all

Concerning the aesthetics, I admittedly mainly referred to the seasonal forest tileset, that has a much more crisp look (actually, it's only really the trees, but naturally, it dominates the tileset.)

It might be that we need to check the other things out in the game to get a better impression. As a general rule though, for things of this size to be added, it has to provide something fundamentally new that we can't achieve with other tilesets - by reasoning of the above mentioned.

We are in the process of updating our haks at the moment, so it's nonetheless something I imagine we will be considering.

[Major Tom]

Oh, well, I can definitely agree on the Seasonal tileset. It has a bit more of a bright appearance to it when compared to the other haks mentioned. And I was made aware of your hak renovation by another DM, yeah, hence sorta why I figured I'd put this out there and see whether it'd catch any interest. As long as it's being discussed, I'm happy, in any case. The tilesets don't cause any conflict in appearance, as I made mention of, as they have the right tone for the server, so from that point onward it's entirely up to you guys, really.