I was thinking about some new ways to combine the sets I own, and I thought about combining the Lair of the Dragon God lava tiles with Hinterland river/waterfall tiles and walls. Here's what I quickly came up with:



I need to work on the execution a bit... This was just a quick proof of concept... I had to do some adjustments to the river tiles to make them less bendy (and I probably will do even more...) since most lava flow pictures I could find did NOT look like the lava went all zig-zaggy... I added a layer to darken the stuff around the lava flow so it looks more charred. I need to soften the boundaries between the charred and uncharred areas, but that's not hard. I might go and erase some of the grass overhanging the river part, or else set the stuff on fire.

I think it'd be neat to kitbash the Deadman's Canyon set so that it uses Hinterland Cliffs textures for the rock face, and grass/dirt textures for the flat parts. Then I could make a volcano texture to let lava flow down. Alternatively, I'll just use Hinterland Cliff tiles, and invent a 'cauldron' tile out of available Hinterland tiles.

For a 'set' it might be fun to kitbash the Hinterland trees to turn them into burnt trees, though I'm not sure I want to try to make burnt grass tiles...

Really great idea !

Now you have to convert Hinterlands into burnt Hinterlands (I don't think lava will flow among greeny grass)

Yeah, open lava like that will scorch the ground for a number of feet around. Really, you'll want a 'scorched ground' set of a tiles, and have transition tiles for THOSE which run into the grass. More work, I know...

I'll have a go at taking one of the Hinterland path tiles (the one with the large dirt circle) and using that as the base terrain. It's a tough patch of area to clone from and not look blatantly copied, but I'll keep trying. I might be able to combine dirt from multiple tiles, if there is enough variety. After that, kicking the saturation down blackens the are pretty nicely.

This might make some good texture on its own. I might also take some of the larger rocks available on the original tiles and make the lava flow around them...

I guess this is a larger project I'll queue up with the others.

I really don't like the harsh edge between the lava and the torched ground, and I don't think feathering the edge will make me happier. I'll have to continue to experiment. I don't have the kind of skills I would like to make the edges of the lava look more rounded (like globs of the stuff moving).

I took one of the Hinterland Forest tiles that had open dirt. I cloned out all the grass as best I could, then I desaturated it to make it less bright brown. Then I layered the stream tile's grass with my torched earth, a layer of extra dark scorching, and then the lava. I'll continue to tweak it to see if I can get it to something I like looking at...

I haven't tried making the grass look dried/burnt. I suspect I'll want to start with a full grass tile and fiddle a little with the hue and saturation until it looks kinda brown/yellow...

Another suggestion: Add environmental noise, bits of embers to each side, some charred pieces of vegetation.. add dried out grass along the edges of the 'not burnt' grass, etc.

*cough*cough* Hellworks *cough*cough*

I can't imagine it would be that difficult, just lots of work. I haven't done it myself because it's kinda old, so image quality might be an issue.

This one is way intriguing!

Excellent idea. Keep at it mproteau - the results will be worth it.

How could I have forgot about Hellworks !
If I remember correctly, Hellworks was 200 dpi, so there will be a loss in quality to move to TLX tiles, but then, you'll only need to create some transition tile from Hellworks scorched earth to Hinterland grass and/or dirt...

Plus, of course, some burnt trees...

Plus a volcano, with some way to raise lava inside it
Do you have a year of free tilme ?

You'll have to add a lot of scorched veg - it doesn't go away after the lava goes through, it lays there all along the hot area. If it has rained, some may be washed away, but you'll have drifts where the burnt sticks piled up...

Alexio
(I live in Hawaii, where this happens)