The Dink Network

Cliff

September 4th, 2009
v1.00
Score : 4.0 tolerable
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metatarasal
Bard He/Him Netherlands
I object 
Cliff, probably one of the least descriptive names for a development file. It basically contains the standard cliffs you see in the original game but this time they border a rocky surface instead of grass. I can really see use for this to make something like a high mountain area or something. Unfortunately I didn't really like the way it was done in this file.

Let's start with the good things though. This file is based on the original cliffs and the original rocky surface tiles. This means that you can easily make a cliff that has grass at the bottom and a rocky surface at the top, or the other way around. It also tiles well with the original rocky surface tiles, so you can easily extend the map. It all fits in perfectly with the other tiles.

These cliffs are downloaded directly as a usable bmp, so putting it in your own DMOD is really easy if you know how to put such a thing into your DMOD. If you don't you're out of luck, this file gives no description on how to use it. Putting that in the download description wouldn't have hurt.

There are a number of problems though, the first is the way these tiles look. They looks pixelated, as if these tiles were simply modified in MS paint. Especially the bottom of the cliffs are bad as it has no shadows and has mostly lost the small edge of green at the bottom that suggests the growth of some grass up the cliff. The effect of this is that the pavement looks more like it is water crawling up the cliff rather than a natural border. No, I don't think I would use the bottom of these cliffs in my DMOD.

Another major problem this file has is that it only contains the cliffs going straight from left to right, not the ones going slightly up or down. This means that you can only make cliffs going straight from left to right. This really hurts the usability of these cliffs, I can't imagine working with cliffs that can only go from left to right. It seems mostly useless unless you use a really tiny map.

So, I really have to give this file a low score. Despite it fitting in well with the other tiles it just looks too pixelated and it's use is severely limited by the lack of cliffs going up or down.