The truth about civ2 squares

[Allard HS]

Just wanted to share something..

I was experimenting with Kobayashi's nice tips on uses for terrain2.gif, but found out that the conventional way of laying squares next to each other is not exactly correct. Normally, this is not very serious, as a few points more or less don't matter, but in these matters of fitting images next to each other in order to create a larger picture, it is of vital importance.

It turns out that the pink-purple lines in all of the gif files are not exactly right. The lowest line of pink points are NOT shown on the map, whatever it is (unit, terrain, etc..). In addition, one single (assymetrical) point on the right is also not shown (to be very perfectionist).

Here it is drawn in a "big" square, for units, but the same is also true for all other "small" squares.



In green is the line of points that are not shows.

Here it shows how it will appear on the map. The green single points clearly point out the single assymetric pixel.



This picture can be handy when creating such combined squares, so that you can copy it on top of it, and copy paste the parts to terrainx.gif

A big picture of something such as this:



should therefore be cut like this:



to make a perfect fit. (of course, the red part should still be replaced by pink, but that's just to make it clear)

This all may appear very perfectionistic, but it does explain why railroads never fitted perfectly, or why some parts of the feet of a units sometimes get removed.

So, the best you could do, is make the parts of the pink part purple in all of the gif files, so that there can be no more mistakes in the future.
[This message has been edited by Allard HS (edited April 10, 2001).]

[klesh]

Way to go Allard! I was thinking of this terrain2 "large terrain" thing just the other day, and I feared I'd have to search all over for it. I am thinking of using this in the scen. I am in the process of making, so this is indeed very helpful. Going to be hard to draw a big thing like that though. That one there is very nice, did you do it?

Thanks again,
FMK

[Kubla Khan]

OK, here's a semi-related question. Maybe I want to change all the terrain really drastically and the dither thing doesn't work (for example, if I change Arctic to, say, rainforest, I don't want it to put little white dots near it in other squares. So I get rid of the black parts of the little dither picture at the bottom of terrain1. This makes everything work fine, EXCEPT that every terrain square has a big black line going through it. Any way to solve this?

[Allard HS]

quote: Going to be hard to draw a big thing like that though. That one there is very nice, did you do it?

You mean the Knossos palace, right? No it's not really hard. I hardly drew anything of it myself anyway. Just took the city graphic and added some background, then pasted it on top of the draft to-be-cut thing.

quote: So I get rid of the black parts of the little dither picture at the bottom of terrain1. This makes everything work fine, EXCEPT that every terrain square has a big black line going through it. Any way to solve this?

oh, very easy. just make the whole dithering square purple, remove all the pink stuff. Apparently, at least here, pink isn't as transparent as it it supposed to be. It was used that way in MoOjr or something by MPS, that's how I found out.

[St Leo]

Well, a 2x2 tile will result in you using up the extremely common corner squares, so that all the other tiles of the type would have to border either one such tile, three such tiles, or four such tiles. I've used this effect in Roman Riots II and you could check out the terrain2.gif in it (Buildings are easier to differentiate then nebulae).

------------------
Leons Petrazickis (St. Leo)
http://aventine.cf-developer.net/minizigg/
petrazi@sprint.ca

[klesh]

DLing it now St. Leo...I'll give it a look.

I think that for my needs, being able to use the other tiles (regardless of awkward connections) will be just fine. The terrain I am using should sorta look like a maze anyway.


WOW! looking at your terrain2 now. Thats very impressive stuff my man. Job well done! I'm gonna load it up to see some of it in action.

[klesh]

Would anyone be interested in helping me do one of these 4-tile terrains? What I need to have is a large grassy hill, with perhaps a few trees(small). It will be a focal point for my upcomming scenario. I just started to experiment with drawing units and such, so this seems to be a little out of my (S)league .


Also, since this is only four squares, you have the rest (12) tiles of terrain (if using like mountains or forrest) to put back to 'normal' looking terrain, right? The only thing to be kept in mind would be the order for the tile connections, such that you only use the "special 4 tiles" and their particular unique connection pattern once in the desired spot. The remaining connection patterns for the leftover 12 squares can be done so they can resume a different terrain type. Is this the correct line of thinking?
[This message has been edited by Field Marshal Klesh (edited April 12, 2001).]

[PolarisGL]

So this is how they did in in X-COM.

Good job, Allard.

[Mercator]

In what way is that pixel "assymetrical", and supposedly not shown, when you yourself show that it is clearly visible?

Secondly, there is no need to stay within the boundaries of the central diamond (certainly not at the top end), so why would this really have any bearing on how people make multi-tile graphics? A little trial-and-error will show quickly enough whether the resulting graphic fits seemlessly or not.

Finally, with the standard graphics there is indeed an invisible line of graphics, and this does indeed explain the railroad and unit problems you describe. But this doesn't need to be the case!

I explain further in the following thread:
Tile Metrics: Improving Terrain Graphics and Road Connectivity

I added this information mainly for those who may wander into this thread in the future. To show that while this thread provides useful information, it is not definitive, and not quite the "truth" either.