Map Graphics Thread, Part II

[sas]

Coast!

Well, here's another "update".

I've made the coast more realistic, but just the beach version so far. It seems it can be used as rivers for now as well. The transition from shallow water to deeper will have to be "blurred" some I think. And the curves has to be softer as well. The coast tiles are placed manually.

So what do you guys think? I will make a rocky coast later on, but its not on my top list of priorities for now.

Gary: What kind of "special" recourses will be used in the game? opaque said to me by mail that he would be willing to take a look at them.

Here's the pictures for comparison:

Original Picture:



Updated without coasts:



With coast:



As River:



Comments?

-Stian-

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Stian:

I think they look Really good! And the temp river is certainly useable as-is. I will get you the version of the code that lets you swap in files in a more natural way soon. We have an ugly bug in the version I was going to sent, that I'm hoping we can get cleared up first. I agree with your asessments.

Specials are actually my job. The reason I had you ask Gary before was to find when the graphics code could support them. I think a good start would be the ones we have in now: Gold, Tin, Salt, and Cloth. Beyond that other obvious ones we'll need fairly soon are Horses, Metalwares, Fish, Game, and Iron.

[axi]

The beaches are good and the "river" will do for now.

The only thing that's missing from the picture now is cities and roads as overlays. But I think stian should wait for the new version of the game, to make his life easy.

It is about time we get to an agreement (and post it!) on the specs of a certain tileset (a list with filenames etc), so that we can find out what's missing and complete at least one tileset.

The coast tiles, are they different from the normal grassland tiles on purpose?

I'd like to see such a map with some plains, desert, tundra, etc. Let's see how well the vegetations mix. Perhaps we han have such a map in the next (official) demo.

As for specials, I propose that all minerals should be marked with bullions bearing the chemical denomination of the substance: Au, Ag, Cu, Fe, Zn, NaCl, etc... Metalwares could be two crossed hammers. Horses, game and fish are obvious (I hope someone is skillfull enough for those).

YMMV of course...

[Gary Thomas]

Frankly that is nothing short of brilliant! I particularly like the way that the bright green has been cut back. That will actually allow a tile for cultivated land to be quite visible, and allows the units to stand out.

I think the the river will do for quite a while. How do the coast overlays handle corners? I need to know this for the code. Also, how does a branching river look?

What about mountains on the coast?

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

Stian, this looks very good.
axi, I don't think NaCl for specials will do. Most people would prefer to see "salt", which is as long.
I also think someone who is not a chemist will have trouble remembering Ag means silver and Fe iron. How do you distinguish C from Cu at first glance, for instance? I think giving a different color is more important, although you can put the symbols in addition. Also, salt should look different from copper.

[axi]

What I don't like to see is similar looking lumps of minerals or bullions of metal with a slightly different color and no denomination whatsoever. And yes, the colors should be different.

[sas]

The coast tiles, are they different from the normal grassland tiles on purpose?

Axi, that reminds me of something I have been meaning to ask.

How much are the tiles reduced in the game from the "original" ? I had to manually reduce the size of the tiles to make them "fit" into the game.

The tiles in the picture is a second version of grass (reduced in size). I've made grassland and plains, the same as in Civ 1+2+3.

The coasts with the other tiles is "almost" finished, but wanted the feedback first.

How do the coast overlays handle corners? I need to know this for the code. Also, how does a branching river look?

Gary: There are two ways we can handle this. What you see in the picture isn't overlays, just regular tiles with the coast. If the code supports that, we could go that way.
With the overlay option, they look the same , just placed on top of the land tile.

As for branching river, we could use the corner tiles. In that way the river can be divided or merged.

Is my way of thinking right here ?

-Stain-

[Gary Thomas]

I have been wondering where my 500th post would end up. Anyway, here it is.

What I don't like to see is similar looking lumps of minerals or bullions of metal with a slightly different color and no denomination whatsoever. And yes, the colors should be different.

You will be able to right click on a square to get a summary, or left click to see the full details in the details box.

How much are the tiles reduced in the game from the "original" ? I had to manually reduce the size of the tiles to make them "fit" into the game.

The tiles MUST be 120 wide by 60 high. For historical reasons which baffle me somewhat the code reduces them to 80x40. Rationalizing this seems to be a good idea.

What you see in the picture isn't overlays, just regular tiles with the coast. If the code supports that, we could go that way.

The code can go either way. The problem with non-overlays is that each terrain type needs 256 tiles. However they will look better, and there is no corner problem. If we assume that there will be, say 20 terrain types (we don't have to worry about sea types!) in the final game, we have 5012 tiles. This does seem to be a rather large number. If we can do it that way I would prefer it. Among other things, we don't get half trees as can happen with overlays.

As an explanation for the 256 tiles, the tile has 8 neighbours (including diagonals), each neighbour is potentially sea, so there are 2⁸ = 256 combinations.

I would actually arrange each set of 256 as a single gif and extract the individual tiles as needed. A single gif that is 1280x640 (assuming we make them all 80x40) seems a bit more manageable than 256 tiles. And we would only have 20 such gifs.

In that way the river can be divided or merged.

The river will only split at a corner, so, from a particular corner there will be rivers along more than two edges.

Cheers

[axi]

I think that your computations are all wrong Gary and I explained why before:

Assuming that they are inside the land tile, we only need 4 overlays for the sides (1 for each) plus 8 overlays for the corners (2 for each).

However this assumption means that we can't have the tile graphics extend outside the boundaries of the tiles.



I checked civ2 out and it uses a table with 32 tiles, but they are covering all possible 3-tile combinations: 0.5*8^2
(8 combinations for each of the 2nd and 3rd tiles, divide by 2 for symmetry)

Which reminds me that there is still the strait vs. isthmus issue to be resolved.

[Gary Thomas]

plus 8 overlays for the corners (2 for each).

By my count it is 3 for each of the corners. Considering the top corner: water/land, land/water and water/water.

4 sides + 12 corners = 20 overlays in all.

I checked civ2 out and it uses a table with 32 tiles, but they are covering all possible 3-tile combinations: 0.5*8^2

What on earth is a "3-tile combination".

We are only talking about a single tile here. A single tile has interactions with eight other tiles. Each of these 8 interactions may have water, or not, that is, 2 choices each, repeated 8 times. This leads to 2⁸ = 256 combinations as I said.

I can't see where any other tiles come into the calculation.

At a corner (with coast on both sides of the corner), if it is a strait, we tell the square that the diagonally adjacent square is water, even if it is land. If it is an isthmus, we tell the square that the diagonally adjacent square is land (which it is). No extra combinations are needed.

Cheers

[axi]

At a corner (with coast on both sides of the corner), if it is a strait, we tell the square that the diagonally adjacent square is water, even if it is land. If it is an isthmus, we tell the square that the diagonally adjacent square is land (which it is). No extra combinations are needed.

However we have to put some graphic overlay on the connection point (covering a small part of all 4 adjacent tiles) if we want to have an isthmus instead of a default strait (if we had coasts in the outside of tiles like in civ2, then we would have to do the reverse). This is needed for the map to look the same way it functions.

What on earth is a "3-tile combination".

As for the way civ2 handles it, just open the tiles.gif file and see what I mean.

By my count it is 3 for each of the corners. Considering the top corner: water/land, land/water and water/water.

Not if the side overlays extend to the corner of the square. Then the water/land and land/water combinations are covered de facto while the two overlays are needed for the land/land (to depict the inner part of a gulf) and the water/water (to depict a cape) combinations.

[Gary Thomas]

However we have to put some graphic overlay on the connection point (covering a small part of all 4 adjacent tiles) if we want to have an isthmus instead of a default strait (if we had coasts in the outside of tiles like in civ2, then we would have to do the reverse). This is needed for the map to look the same way it functions.

You are quite right. However I was talking about the non-overlay case, so we would wind up with sea squares with a little bit of land on them

For this reason I am inclined to dispense with the isthmus idea. It is not an essential or even important factor of the game. Perhaps at some later stage it can be added as a special case, but not in the immediate future.

just open the tiles.gif file

What tiles.gif file?

Not if the side overlays extend to the corner of the square. Then the water/land and land/water combinations are covered de facto while the two overlays are needed for the land/land (to depict the inner part of a gulf) and the water/water (to depict a cape) combinations

I got that wrong too. You have convinced me. I was still thinking of coping with the isthmus situation.

However, I stick with the 256 combinations.

Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

However, I stick with the 256 combinations.

No I don't.

The above reasoning means that we do not have to worry about the diagonally adjacent squares, except as described below. So there are only four adjacent squares to worry about, giving ony 2⁴ = 16 combinations. The combinations become:

1 of no sea
4 with a single side of sea
2 with opposite sides sea
4 with two adjacent sides sea
4 with three sides sea
1 with sea all around

The situation in which we need to worry about the diagonally adjacent square is if the other two adjoining squares are land, and the diagonal one is sea. In this case we need a little corner of sea.

Any square with two adjacent land sides might get that in between.

The no adjacent sea can have 16 combinations (including the no diagonal sea one) = 16
Each single side of sea can have 4 = 16
The opposite sides of sea are not affected = 2
Each of the two adjacent sides of sea has 2 = 8
The three sides of sea is not affected = 4
The sea all around is not affected = 1

For a total of 47. Now tell me what is wrong with this reasoning.

Thanks for your perseverance!

Cheers

[axi]

What tiles.gif file?

sorry, I meant terrain.gif

Thanks for your perseverance!

You're welcome.

[Gary Thomas]

sorry, I meant terrain.gif

Is that part of CivII? If so, I don't have it.

Did you see my latest edited version with the corners added?

Cheers