Terrain borders

[Mercator]

I think it has to do with not revealing the map in "no special view" in the cheat menu.

[Kull]

Originally posted by Mercator

It's not a separate terrain type, since it's encoded entirely differently and separately in savegames. It's probably more something like:

if (discovered) then display(terrain) else display(blank)

And then it's treated graphically the same as a land-type terrain (as can be seen from the coasts at map edges).

I'm sure that's true. Nevertheless, the game treats the unexplored graphic EXACTLY as if it were a piece of terrain. If you were a designer, would you create an entirely different set of code to emulate something you've already coded? In this case, apparently not. I'll try to be more specific, so lets step through your "code example":

1) if (discovered) - Checks to see if units have been near. Pretty basic, but I'm still curious to see if there's a way to "shut off" this unit effect (but I digress)

2) then display(terrain) - Replaces the "unexplored" graphic with the underlying terrain graphic. Again, this makes sense.

3) else display(blank) - Here's where it gets interesting. In a nutshell, what IS "blank"? Sure, we know it's the black tile at "X" location of the Terrain1.gif file. But where is the information that represents this graphic? In other words, it's treated like terrain, so why wouldn't it be coded the same? There ARE some clear differences. For example, normal terrain would refer to the Rules.txt for food, shield, and movement vales. We know that's not the case with "unexplored". Still, isn't it possible that those values exist, except they are hard coded?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure would be nice to know the BASE LOCATION where information pertaining to "(blank)" resides, and exactly what values are coded there.

[Mercator]

Er... Each map square is represented by 6 bytes in a savegame. The 1st byte saves the terrain info, the 5th byte the "visibility" info (for each square which of the 7 civs + barbs have explored it). See:

http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/reference/mapstruct.htm

So what I had in mind for if(discovered) is exactly this 5th byte...

A square can't be blank, but explored at the same time.

The blank image really is just an empty filler. Because it isn't only used for unexplored map squares, but also as a border around the map. You can see that clearly if you change the blank graphic to some conspicuous color and zoom out to the max.

(Never thought one silly finding could spawn such interesting discussions. )

[Kull]

Ahhhhhh. Now I see. Rats!

It's always fun to pull something new out of this creaky old game, but I guess a new terrain type isn't in the cards. Thanks for bearing with me!

[Boco]

I see what you mean. When I subbed Allard's River War dither pattern for the blank tile, it looked perfect. Until I moved the cursor around, that is. Didn't refresh properly.

Kull, a blank for your scenario?

[Elok]

It would be very limited, but perhaps you could have roads be Unexplored, and use the RR command to explore them, thereby accomodating the AI. It's lame and suffers from legion loopholes, but it's the best I can think of right now.

[GoPostal]

I can see making this in my Bocage battle, thanks.