Boomtrapezoid Boom Trapezoid

as requested by Mark - this is just a ticket to formalise the sort of comments i've been making privately about the textures.

Disclaimer: these are aesthetic comments, so not by any means prescriptive - merely suggestions. I'll try to organise these into numerical order.

1: The background is wonderful - don't change a thing. I especially like the white sky. The foreground on the other hand really doesn't work, it looks like some sort of topiary gone wrong and is far too deep and contrasty, it just doesn't feel like terrain. Not sure what to suggest for this one, i'd recommend trying something a bit different for the FG.

2: This is really beautiful, the foreground and background work together extremely well in-game - the black outline and shadows emphasise the foreground tones perfectly. The wee figure in the background. The vein of lava at the bottom. Perfect. There's absolutely nothing to change about this one.

3: The background is really nice, especially the way it arches over the viewer - and the subtle figures i hadn't until today noticed in-game. Maybe tone down the greens in the background, especially at the right side. Also maybe add some points of interest in the left quarter - it gets a bit lost and mushy with the vague crossy-overy stuff in the middle distance, although the spires in the background are nice. Maybe make more of those. The foreground on 3 doesn't really suit it at all, it's far too blocky - perhaps the same sort of thing could work, scaled down by a factor of 4 or so though to give it a finer grained texture matching the rock.

4: It has a bit of an underwater feel, which could be made less of by de-emphasising the blue, or (imo a better idea) it could be made more of by de-emphasising the strong brown of the rock, so the whole lot looks a bit more behind-a-film-of-water. Maybe tone down the reds in the foreground, as it's a bit salmon-pink in places - would look better with more orange shades.

5: I initially had my doubts about the background, but looking at it in-game more, it works really well. It's just the blurry "foregroundy" bit of the background which feels a bit out of place and clashes with the actual foreground - i'd recommend getting rid of just the foregroundiest bit of that, making it all feel more distant. All the other backgrounds don't really feel like they're close at all, whereas this one does reach into the scene a bit - but only when you mine all the way down to the bottom of the screen. The foreground terrain is pretty abstract but works rather well with the background - although i'd perhaps tone down the yellows at the bottom, and the bright orange at the bottom left is a bit too bright. The yellows end up looking a bit toxic-waste glowy, rather than just hot and deserty.

6: Feels like a moonlit landscape in that it's very subtle, toned down, homogenous and sort of monochromey while still having some colour variety. Neither foreground or background stand out too much, but they work together quite well. They're probably the least visually striking of the lot, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

7: The background is lovely with the paler effect, there's nothing that needs to be said about that. The foreground really doesn't work sadly, although when looked at as its own image it looks good. But in-game, the folded 3D angle of it just doesn't look right - it looks like the tanks are balanced on top of a christmas card or pop-out book, and that they might fall into the gap in the middle at any moment. This also doesn't fit with the way all the other foregrounds look like clean cutaways, flat sections through the landscape - this one has its own depth, which is visually confusing. Also, in terms of palette, there is far too much purple in the foreground for it to look good in lighting terms connected with that background.

So my personal top recommendations for priorities of attention would be rethinking foregrounds 1 and 7, followed by at least a scaling-down of 3 - the other suggestions are just minor tweaks.