Minor rework of shops

[wlindley]

As previously noted in the Goods Quick Reference thread, I have written a short Perl script that edits the colours in a pngfile, replacing a range of hues with a new hue, or with player (or alternate player) colours.
Using this, I propose to make a consistency pass among all the shops from various eras, revising their awning and sign colours for consistency and bringing buildings from all the different eras to each type of shop.
In general, the drawing process will be: Create a single prototype shop with decoration in a known hue (e.g., the China Shop has awnings in hue 165 with threshold 20) and then recolor using the MapColor of each output shop.  That way the awning always matches the MapColor.  Ideally the MapColor of a shop will be a brighter color of the same MapColor series as its producing factory.  (And the factory will have signs or flags in the same color series).

Here is an example of two shops, formerly missing in their time periods: a 1750-1859 Apothecary (prior to the Pharmaceuticals chain) and a Printshop from the same era (before the Printworks).

with compiled paks here and here.
Thoughts?

[Vladki]

As someone noted in the other thread, it would be nice to see the color from other rotations too. In online games it is almost impossible to find the shop among similar buildings.

But yes consistency between map colors and in game decorations on shops and factories would be nice.

[Matthew]

This seems like a really good idea for the vast majority of shops.

A few of the shops already have unique graphics, e.g. the chemist's has a pharmacist's green cross sign. Perhaps it might be sensible to keep those?

[Elemental]

Good idea. But you propose to recoulour the shops to match the good colours. Does anybody know how the colours are assigned to the goods? It seems to me they use the same series that are also available as player colours, starting with the fourth (yellow/cars). This leads to some rather strange assignments: steel: bright green, bricks: bright yellow, stone: blue... On the other hand, assigning fitting colours probably wouldn't use the colour space that well and might be difficult to distinguish.

I guess your script could also be used to create a player colour livery for all the vehicles? That would be really nice!

[jamespetts]

This is an interesting idea; but would print-shops have had awnings; and would the word "apothecary" still have been used for chemists as late as 1750? I had the impression that that would have been more of a renaissance (or earlier) era name; have you any research material on the point?

As to player livery colours, this script is unlikely to be able to assist with this: these awnings are carefully designed so that they are all in exactly the same direction and shading. Vehicles have to have the same base colour in Blender rendered to lots of different shadings to give a 3d appearance, which is why this pakset has never been able to have player colour vehicles, as this is incompatible with the Blender workflow (I did look into this once, but there was no workable solution).

[wlindley]

Good points, James.  Mr Perry in Jane Austen's "Emma" (1816) was described as an "Apothecary" among other references; the term seems to have been current at least through the mid 1850s.

In any case, until a better solution which includes the Blender workflow can be devised, I shall set this aside for awhile, though I remain open to further thoughts.

Side note: My great-grandfather in Chicago had his signs describe him as a "druggist" at least through the 1930s; not a term we would likely use today.  Here he and my great-grandmother are at their store on Crawford Avenue circa 1925:


The shop still stands but is is Paddy Mac's Irish pub today.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for that - that is an interesting reference. It does seem as though "apothecary" might be an appropriate reference for the earliest of the chemist's shops.

To be clear, I did not suggest that your workflow was not workable for shops; because of the way that the awnings all face one way, you only need to undertake two possible colour replacements: one for the bright sunshine colour and one for the shaded colour of each shop awning, so this should be workable in the Gimp.