Map Graphics

[Lord God Jinnai]

I want to know if we plan of changing the views of the icons depending on how they move like in civ2?

[Mark_Everson]

Fiera, the next steps you outline sound good to me. I think doing a chariot first, as an example of a large unit is good. Then you can use it as an acid test to see if we can fit two TF icons in a square when needed. We may just need to give up on two TFs in the same square if they're both large icons. Any ideas you can come up with would be welcome .

LGJ: I don't know exactly what you mean, so can't comment...

[Lord God Jinnai]

Remember how you want to have 8 directions the player can move? Are we going to make it so that the icon looks different depending upon which direction the unit went last?

[Mark_Everson]

Ah, thanks for elaborating. My guess at this point is probably not, at least with the unit graphic itself. We might do left/right facing because its easy. But that means each facing needs to represent 4 of the 8 possible directions.

Movement direction would be a good thing to show... maybe with a little arrow on the power circle? Anybody got any good ideas?

[Fiera]

Uff, the chariot has been one of the toughest to draw units I've ever made. It's not yet a definitive graphic, but I've already got something to show you.
www.geocities.com/fiera_com/graphics.html
(pic #10)

The size and position of the icon is the best I could come up with, I think it still lets the player see the Power Circle, but it will be very difficult to fit two of those in just one tile.

I have a few ideas to deal with that problem. First, changing the view automatically when ever two TFs enter the same square, from a 80x40 tile, to a 120x60 tile (or maybe bigger), which will allow the player to have a better view of the "battle". Second would be changing automatically the unit icons from the graphics we are working with to the small icons that I proposed earlier. Richard has posted some ideas regarding those in his website.

I don't know if I made myself clear enough... I hope so!

[Fiera]

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 03-27-2001 12:15 PM I think the preliminary chariot looks pretty good! IMO its just a bit too big, but it sounds like you've already looked into the size issues and thought what you have is the best compromise between being able to make out the figures, and filling as little as possible of the tile.

That's right. I don't like how anything smaller than this looks like, 'cause it makes an strange effect when compared to an infantry unit, such as the Horde. Now it doesn't look really bad.

I think I can even extract some kind of conclusion from my tests: whenever there are human figures in the units, those must have a consistent size. We can (as we did) make the tank smaller, since you can't see a human figure there and thus can't establish a comparison. What do you think of my little theory?

quote: One suggestion I have is to seriously reduce the shadow underneath. That will make the horse figures easier to recognize, and give more space for the PC to show through.

Yes, I did it and I think it looks better now. Check it out: www.geocities.com/fiera_com/graphics.html

quote: On two TFs fighing in one tile, I like your idea about just reducing the TF image size if its needed. The program will know about the size of each image, and it can decide on the fly if it needs to reduce them so they won't overlap or not. BTW I don't think changing tile size to make it larger as needed is a really good idea, because it could be maddening for the player. At least I'm sure I'd be bothered by it... I'm sure the examples will help to show if the size reduction idea will work. My guess is the PCs should remain the same size as normal, and only the actual TF images should shrink. Is that what you were thinking also?

Yes, the PCs should reamain the same, otherwise it would be too confusing. Rather than tiny icons, like the ones I used on my first example, I was thinking of reducing and simplifying the current unit graphics, maybe showing them only in black. Something like the old Civ1 icons would be neat too. Shall I try to put together some examples of this?

[Mark_Everson]

quote: Originally posted by Fiera on 03-27-2001 04:26 PMWhat do you think of my little theory?

Sounds reasonable! And I think we can live with it, since the most human figures we'll likely ever show for a single image is two. With luck the chariot will be the worst case.

quote: Rather than tiny icons, like the ones I used on my first example, I was thinking of reducing and simplifying the current unit graphics, maybe showing them only in black. Something like the old Civ1 icons would be neat too. Shall I try to put together some examples of this?

Love to see them

I do like the new chariot better also! I'd vote for even less shadow if you care to try it the next time you happen to work on it... FE I think it would look better if the white horse's one leg wasn't shadowed. But I am artistically challenged, so don't trust what I say .

[Lord God Jinnai]

I have an idea that might solve the problem with the rings being hard to see sometimes. This first of all depends on whether or not we want to make certain parts of the units match a color of the originating nation and then we could simply have 1 ring of 1 size and change its colors to match the power level.

Do you think you can work on some ships now? We have enought units for the next demo for land units. The one i'm concerned about is the large battleships (which dwarfed any land item in size) as to how much detail they could have with the current resolution. But mainly we can concentrate on the wooden ones from ancient times.

Also can you work on some of the land tiles, esp. the forest and make them more scale-oriented with the cities and more descent looking, maybe if you feel like it add a few types.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited March 27, 2001).]

[Fiera]

OK, here's what a "battle" depicted with small icons would look like:
www.geocities.com/fiera_com/graphics.html

The blue Horde, as attackers, have their PC over the red chariot's one.

If you look at the chariot carefully, you'll see that I've made the white horse leg clearer, thus making it look so much better. Which means that Mark is not artistically challenged after all.

I haven't touched the chariot shadow for the moment. But there's no doubt that there is a lot of tiny details that I will have to re-touch before the graphic is definitive. Would you like this chariot graphic to appear in demo5?

[Fiera]

quote: Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai on 03-27-2001 05:59 PM Do you think you can work on some ships now? We have enought units for the next demo for land units. The one i'm concerned about is the large battleships (which dwarfed any land item in size) as to how much detail they could have with the current resolution.

Well, I've made only a few ships for Civ2 scns, and I must reckon they're not my most brilliant unit graphics. However, I know that certain quality can be reach with the average resolution allowed by Civ2.

Take a look at this link. The author is Bernd Brossing, a German Civ2 scn designer and artist. http://civ2000.civ2.gamesweb.de/webs...ics/Units3.gif

I think we should use an isomteric view for Clash ships, similar to the one used by Bernd here (the one Civ2 generally uses too). However, we can take advantage of the bigger tile size and of a better color depth.

quote: But mainly we can concentrate on the wooden ones from ancient times.

Shall I get a trireme type unit graphic for Demo5 then?

quote: Also can you work on some of the land tiles, esp. the forest and make them more scale-oriented with the cities and more descent looking, maybe if you feel like it add a few types.

Well, once we finally reach an agreement on which tile size to use, I think I can start working on the terrain.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi all, wow, lots of progress! I don't have much time, but I'll try to get the important stuff said vaguely coherently.

First of all about the big directions to go in... Personally I think Fiera's stuff is really good, and am not worried about trying to do refinements yet. We really only need 4 units for demo 5, and we basically have them now, at least close to the level we'll need them at. (I hope that's ok with you Fiera ) What I see as the most pressing need is to work out specs (some of which we have just formulated) that will work through the whole game. I don't think they need to be all your (Fiera) work at this point, so long as they test out things that might occur in the game.

So, there is now something that seems to work fairly well for a battle. I'm not sure the blackend icons completely work, but at least they are close. As LGJ suggested, seeing how ships look when combined with the land units is important. Another thing to try is a massed battle with a front as occurred in WWII. This will put lots of TFs from each side together, and we need to be sure our overall spec can handle that situation. Testing of PCs with ships and airplanes is another thing...

So my proposal for next steps is to see how all these things look using the rules of thumb we have so far. We don't IMO need final images for them, but rather just to be sure that things won't look really odd. Then when we think all the unit combinations look ok, testing of how units look on city icons and in conjunction with roads etc. seems the right thing to do next.

I think by the time we discover the new rules of thumb that would get us (well really you Fiera ) through all the crude tests, and that everything works together, is it time to start on a set of 'final' units.

What does everyone think about this proposal for how to proceed? I'm sure I've missed some things, but I think its the right general direction to go in...


Fiera:

I think the chariot is continually improving, but unfortunately we don't have chariot specs yet for demo 5. He will probably need to wait for demo 6 to take the field . But he is useful now as part of the tests!

Like I said above, I think the battle with reduced/silouette units basically works. But IMO its not quite exciting enough. Maybe something as simple as showing the TFs each in the respective player's colors would work. I just have the general feeling that guys in potential combat should be more exciting than what you have now. But I give you credit that the basic idea works! And I think with some refinement it will do quite well.

BTW those ships are great. I think our ships may need to be a little smaller compared to our tile size because of the need to show the power circle. Perhaps we could use that guy's ships directly if he doesn't mind and if they look ok next to your TFs... What do you think?

LGJ:

If PCs are color coded for size I think we'd lose something. I think its important for the player to see the map colored in their color. Lets see what others think...

[Mark_Everson]

I think the preliminary chariot looks pretty good! IMO its just a bit too big, but it sounds like you've already looked into the size issues and thought what you have is the best compromise between being able to make out the figures, and filling as little as possible of the tile. One suggestion I have is to seriously reduce the shadow underneath. That will make the horse figures easier to recognize, and give more space for the PC to show through.

On two TFs fighing in one tile, I like your idea about just reducing the TF image size if its needed. The program will know about the size of each image, and it can decide on the fly if it needs to reduce them so they won't overlap or not. BTW I don't think changing tile size to make it larger as needed is a really good idea, because it could be maddening for the player. At least I'm sure I'd be bothered by it... I'm sure the examples will help to show if the size reduction idea will work. My guess is the PCs should remain the same size as normal, and only the actual TF images should shrink. Is that what you were thinking also?

-Mark

[Lord God Jinnai]

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 03-27-2001 10:42 PM LGJ: If PCs are color coded for size I think we'd lose something. I think its important for the player to see the map colored in their color. Lets see what others think...

Well the rings are alright until we get into the age of flight.

[LEN77]

hi everybody!

first of all: i'm new!

so excuse me for eventual amde mistakes (like not knowing the latest news...)

i have a (maybe) new suggestion for the terrain in clash.
is it possible to use hex fields instead of quarter fields?

if you think this could work i'll explain you how i mean that.

cya for now,

LEN77

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[Mark_Everson]

Hi LEN77, welcome to Clash!

Sorry, but we've already been over hexes vs. squares 32.5 times, and we're sticking with squares at least for the forseeable future. But diagonal movement on our squares in Clash will cost 1.4 or 1.5x movement across square sides, which mitigates what to my mind is the biggest reason normally expressed for using hexes.