I don't have any sort of official palette. Setting something like that up is on my long-term todo list, but it probably won't happen anytime soon.
However, 99% of my textures use indexed color, so the palette for each texture is available within it.
Honestly, I worry a little about people trying to match their mods to RPG16. It makes sense within the context of something like a game or server that uses my textures by default, but if people start RPG16-ifying their mods then everyone else will have to deal with the stylistic clash. I would honestly prefer to see official mod textures follow Minetest Game's lead, and have authors submit merge requests or something if they want to fit in with a particular texture pack. Either way, I'll see about writing some quick guidelines about how to match my art style, I'm no teacher but I can at least put the basic ideas down.
export.sh and stamp.sh are mostly there to simplify the process of 'shipping' the pack, though export.sh is also useful for development. Together, the scripts ensure that I can work comfortably on textures without having to manually update anything when producing releases.
- export.sh rsyncs all png textures to a specified location, and also converts gif source files into a format that Minetest expects (that is, it auto-generates spritesheets).
- stamp.sh is purely for making new releases, it 'stamps' versioning information into both screenshot.png and texture_pack.conf so that I never have to update them manually. In the future, I plan to procedurally generate screenshot.png from random terrain textures but we're not there yet.
If you're curious about any particular branch, just click 'build-textures' in this menu:
...and you'll get a fully playable snapshot of the texture pack. All commits on gitlab are exported into a playable version (this means any branch can be very easily tested), and tags are also stamped so I can upload the complete archive directly to ContentDB. If they add an API for pushing versions in the future, I'll probably see about adding a CD process to skip that step as well.
As for my workflow, it's pretty simple. I use AwesomeWM with 9 workspaces bound to my numpad, letting me very rapidly switch programs. I use 4 workspaces when producing textures:
- Fullscreen Firefox, for finding/examining references
- Fullscreen GrafX2, for producing textures
- Fullscreen Minetest, for testing
- Ranger (1 tab in rpg16, 1 tab in the folder of the mod I'm texturing) and urxvt split side-by-side, for file management and export
I also set up my environment to have export.sh export textures directly to my .minetest folder, so I only have to close and re-open the current world to see the changes. It may seem a little unconventional, but I assure you that this workflow is pretty efficient for me.
And now, back to texturing :D
