Gemstone Themes

[Jeck]

Hey all

I wanted to start this thread to share something cool. After finishing the Jade backdrop (which goes so well with both my monocolor green deck and my green/white), I decided to start working on a couple other ideas... and, well, it turns out Jade isn't really an only child...

Enter Jasper, Lapis, Jet, and Moonstone. With Jade, they make a complete set of Wagic themes, each devoted to a different color. Each theme's backdrop texture is built from scratch into an image that felt close to the associated gemstone, but was also fun to play on. They're not 100% accurate representations... but I think they look pretty good. I've made certain to follow the same kind of "lighting" found in the default theme's KDE backdrop... the main play area is naturally lighter, and so draws the eye.

As with Jade, none of these themes change the shop background... nor do they modify the phasebar beyond some simple hue adjustments. Because of that, I'd like to take this space to thank Jhotun for his kickass work on those files. His art is part of the process which is greatly improving Wagic, and I really can't praise him enough .

This is Lapis, the blue theme. I think that, after Jade, this one is my favorite. It's based on lapis lazuli, a beautiful rock occasionally found in limestone.

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Here's Jasper, the red theme. It's a very different mood from Jade, isn't it? This is based on red jasper.

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[Jeck]

Here's Jet, the black theme. Anyways, the texture is modeled after Jet, a form of lignite. I think that it's very appropriate for a black theme- polished Jet was once highly prized for its use in mourning jewelry. Even better, Jet itself is (as Wikipedia puts it) "derived from decaying wood under extreme pressure". You don't get much more "black" than that, do you?

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And here's Moonstone, the white theme. I think moonstone is such a neat stone. It's near transparent, but in the right light it seems like it's glowing from within. Very "white".

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So yeah, I'd love to hear people's opinions on any of these. I'm very worried about how Jet and Moonstone look on PSP, and would love to hear comments / criticism .

[Psyringe]

Anyways, I'd appreciate hearing people's opinions on this and Jasper. I'm considering desaturated Jasper a bit, so it fits better with Jade; I think the colors might be a little "overcooked".

Bit of feedback: The Most Important Person on Earth (i.e. girlfriend/partner) definitely likes Jasper as it is. The color *is* very vibrant, but what other magic school in the game lends itself better to vibrance than red, the color of chaos, fire, and fury?

Regarding Jet, we like it too, but the red combat overlay looks a bit out of place on it, imho. Is there a way to turn that into grey, to keep it more in line with the general look and feel of the theme, perhaps?

[Jeck]

I'm glad you and your most important person like the themes . They do take a lot of work, even if they don't necessarily look it. As far as the red combat overlay goes... unfortunately, there's no way to change that color in the 0.9.1 release... but I'll be certain to keep that in mind for the theme enhancements in next release .

[Jeck]

Just added the moonstone theme One left to go! I've enjoyed this, but the quality is definitely going downhill as my attention wanes. I'll have to come back to this project later and clean things up a bit, but probably not anytime this month. Heh. There's really only so much I can do at once ^_^;

[Jeck]

I've uploaded the final theme of the set, Lapis. I've really enjoyed doing this, though none of the images turned out quite as good as Jade. Someday I'll revisit these, but for now I'm very satisfied.

One thing I've learned from all this is exactly how difficult it is to reproduce dark/bright colors correctly on both PC and PSP. A lot of compromises had to be made, especially concerning the Jet theme (I'd tried it both as a highly polished version, and as a version with bright pyrite inclusions, but neither rendered well on PSP. That's a shame, as I liked both better than the current end result...)

So yeah. Download away! If you've got questions, comments, suggestions, etc, I'd love to hear them. And if you need help with a theme of your own, please send me a private message (after reading the Theme Guide & FAQ, of course). I'm always happy to help

[wololo]

The download link to Lapis incorrectly leads to Jasper.
I love these themes They should be part of a "dynamic" theme in next release, as we discussed recently

[Jeck]

Fixed, and as you said, yes! That's kinda half what I had in mind while working on them

[John Rohan]

Here's Jasper, the red theme. It's a very different mood from Jade, isn't it? This is based on red jasper.

I know that jasper is a stone, but it also looks like a beautiful polished wood tabletop. This is probably my favorite playing surface. Thanks!

[abrasax]

Great Work,

Would be nice if the game was automatically picking one of them (e.g. in random deck mode) according to the color most present in the decks...

Anyway great work... did not test lapis yet but really enjoyed the other one.

Thanks again.

L.