Here are some example screenshots, merged into one image:
Foldersize for topleft minimap (9x9 tiles) before: 160KB, after: 36KB
Download link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/mwjqhs
These go into (on win7): C:\Users\YourName\Salem\custom_res
This is the current upload. I am still tweaking these, as suggested:
iamah wrote:here's the same patch comparison
I'd experiment with darker colors or something to see if the map icons could show up more... they seem a bit too similar in texture now
The similar texture part will most likely not change - these do use identical "textures", the icons and the tiles are both flat, one color things. This was done so that the map tiles will be as small as possible - the more colors used, the larger the files.
What I am tweaking are colors. The current uploads colors were pulled out of the default tilesets so that they would match as closely as possible, however, for certain ones, they do need to be darker - particularly what I refer to as the "puke forest" biome - I think it might actually be called the autumnal forest or some such. The default colors are eye searing. Here are the current, somewhat darker colors:
Thoughts, feedback and suggestions are welcome. If you'd like a quickly tossed together preview of the tiles loading faster in an actual map, here is the small 350'ish tile area I mapped for size/speed/crash testing purposes (none of the biomes crashed the game, btw, swamp is missing from this, but one of my legion of mappers was near enough one to test that, too): http://vixyn.us/salem/map1.html
These also load into the Salem Map Tool pretty much instantly.