Terrain

[alms66]

Just in case there could be any confusion from the previous list, I'll post here a complete list of every individual tile set* that will be drawn. This list doesn't include 'overlays' such as roads, rivers or such, just the base 'natural' terrain layer.

*Tile set includes the base tile, 8 extending transitions, 4 'V' transitions, 4 'U' transitions, 1 "surrounded" transition, 1 "coastal transition", and (if no one objects) 1 "feature" tile. The "feature" tile will be similar to 'bonus grassland' in civ, but will be only a graphical property of the tile. Example feature tiles for a Flat tile would be a pond, some trees, an animal or a boulder. Only one variety of each tile set will be drawn for now, however, I will do more varieties later, so the code still needs to be set up to randomly use these varieties based on the number available.

Also note that in my previous count of 43, I missed two, so the actual number is 45. The list is in alphabetical order:

Arctic Volcano
Arctic Volcano, Forest
Coastal
Desert (typical dry, rocky desert)
Dunes (sandy desert)
Flat
Flat, Forest
Flat, Jungle
Glacier (perhaps 'Icecap' is a better term for this?)
Lake (freshwater)
Ocean
Plain (drier flat - I assume)
Plain, Forest
Plain, Jungle (If this is drier flat - probably should drop this)
Rolling Arctic Hills
Rolling Arctic Hills, Forest
Rolling Arctic Mountain
Rolling Arctic Mountain, Forest
Rolling Desert Hills
Rolling Desert Mountain
Rolling Hills
Rolling Hills, Forest
Rolling Hills, Jungle
Rolling Mountain
Rolling Mountain, Forest
Rolling Mountain, Jungle
Rugged Arctic Hills
Rugged Arctic Hills, Forest
Rugged Arctic Mountain
Rugged Arctic Mountain, Forest
Rugged Desert Hills
Rugged Desert Mountain
Rugged Hills
Rugged Hills, Forest
Rugged Hills, Jungle
Rugged Mountain
Rugged Mountain, Forest
Rugged Mountain, Jungle
Sea
Swamp
Tundra
Tundra, Forest
Volcano
Volcano, Forest
Volcano, Jungle

[LDiCesare]

I would rather have a flat sand desert and dunes as sandy desert hills. I don't know for big scale if flat sand makes much sense, but for small maps it certainly does.

[alms66]

Since all we're doing currently is small scale scenarios, I may as well go ahead and make one, however, I don't believe it is needed for a full-world scenario.

[alms66]

In my brilliance, I decided to work on the rolling hill set first since the flat tiles are so much easier to do. It turned out to be much more difficult to draw than I could have ever imagined. However, I finally got something which, I believe, is a good look for the tile.

It's obviously not complete. The colors aren't quite right and the edges aren't seamless for example. But, it's a start, and a good one at that IMO. I thought I'd go ahead and put it up for everyone to see, as well as to get opinions on whether this appears to be the right path to travel or not.

Be critical, be harsh, but be honest with your comments.

[alms66]

And also, the tile template has been updated, for anyone who might be interested. There were some missing variations (12 of them) which, when added in, brought the total to 30 tiles in the set. I've attatched an example of the template (extra space for variations was removed), which should have all the transitions we need (I've checked this against other games that use these types of transitions), but if you happen to see one missing, let me know.

[alms66]

And the example template:

[Mark_Everson]

Hi alms:

I like the texture and color on the rolling hills. I'd have to see it with other tiles to gauge fit and finish . It looks like it'd be tough to match your concept with any flat tile. . . am I missing something?

[alms66]

Yes, I know it's hard to judge by just looking at the base tile, and especially such a rough version as this is. It's even harder to draw though, if that's any consolation.

The transition tiles would make the match to flat tiles (by bringing the hill down to the flat level). See here for an example... not a very good one for this hill situation, but an example nonetheless. I would imagine our tile transition order looking something like this:

Mountains-->Hills-->Flat-->Water
Note that we don't need to worry about jungle or forest transitions, since we're doing special "forested" and "jungle-covered" tiles anyhow, rather than working forests as an overlay.

[alms66]

Here's an in-game shot of several terrain tiles. From top to bottom they are:

Glacier
Tundra
Ocean
Flat (with a few Lake tiles)
Plain
Desert
Sand (is this what you had in mind for sandy desert Laurent?)
Swamp
Sea

The old coast tiles are still in, and they are waaay off color-wise compared to the new tiles, so the whole image looks a bit screwy, but it's clear enough. I haven't gotten the tiles perfectly seamless yet either. The swamp is really noticeable. Unlike the existing tiles, these are perfect-fitting, meaning there is a sudden stop where the tile ends. Later, we'll add in transition overlays to smooth this out.

Anyhow, any and all comments are welcome.

-Edit-
Fixed spelling error.

[alms66]

I'm working on the coastlines now, and it has made me realize that we really need to code tile varieties sometime soon (by soon I mean soon after demo 8 is out). I'm drawing some extremely detailed coastlines that look great, but they are far too repetitive because of that detail. If varieties were in, I could probably crank out a new variety of coastline every three days or so, which means that if it were to take two weeks (just pulling numbers from thin air here) to code the change, I could have 4-5 varieties of coastline ready to go at that point.

So I don't have to go find the post (and since I can relate this directly to Clash a bit more than last time), I'll explain the tile varieties idea here again. Basically it requires adding one variable to the mapTile class called 'variety'. This variable tells you which image to display, for example is it flat variety 1, variety 2 or variety 3? In 'terrain.xml' (I assume this is the best place for it) we could (*) define the number of varieties for each tiletype present in the tile folder. For example, let's say I had 5 varieties of desert tiles. I would then have these images:

desert1
desert2
desert3
desert4
desert5
...etc., etc.

In fact, planning for the eventual use of transition overlays, we have here a naming convention that would eliminate the need to have terrain images defined in 'images.xml' and ‘terrain.xml’ entirely. For example let's break down what ‘desert1’ means. Well, desert is obviously the tiletype. The number 1 indicates the variety. Now we add a second number 1 to indicate the transition number (actually the remaining numbers because this will go to two digits). So desert11 indicates the desert image-variety 1-transition 1, desert420 indicates the desert image-variety 4-transition 20, and flat20 indicates the flat image-variety 2-transition 0 (transition 0 is the full tile).

Varieties could be randomly determined by the computer, or, if we want to give ultimate graphical control to scenario designers, we could add a new array in the ‘scenario.xml’ file so the designer can choose exactly which variety he wants displayed at any given tile.

*I want to stress could here, because we could also just read the tiles and determine the number of varieties rather than leaving it up to the scenario designer, which is probably the better way to do it in the long run.

And finally, an example of transition numbers:

[alms66]

I've made some changes to the images.xml file. I've organized it (in preperation for some new images I'll be adding for the technology scenario) a bit and renamed some images to match their terrain type (for example, hills.gif was renamed to rollinghills.gif and the xml file now matches). I'd like to upload this to the server, but, I don't use the standard graphics, I've overwritten mine with some tweaked graphics. I've made the roads and coastlines thinner (and more detailed coasts), lightened most of the other tiles, taken out that white spot in the broken tile, and completely redone the tundra.
So, could anyone that has on opinion on the matter vote yay or nay to the terrain tiles in the following images being uploaded into the repository (they would overwrite the existing ones, as I have done in my local version)?

If the vote is nay, I'll just adjust the terrain.xml file to work with the standard graphics, but maintain the organization before uploading it.

[alms66]

And the roads (which need a little thinning at the center)...

[vovan]

Alms, as far as the images are concerned, I like what I see, so I personally, don't particularly mind if you overwrite the existing images with your updates.

However, I want to point out that you don't necessarily have to overwrite the whole images directory in the repository. You can update files one-by-one, and pick which files to update and which to leave as they are. For example, in order to rename the file hills.gif into rollinghills.gif, rightclick the original file, and pick TortoisSVN -> Rename... (assuming you are using tortoise; then type in the new name, click OK, and then rightclick the renamed file, and hit Commit... That will commit only that one file, and the rest of your changes that you don't really want committed will remain local.

Also, you could right-click the tiles folder, and click Commit. In the dialog that asks you for an explanation of your changes, you can also uncheck those files that you don't want to commit to the repository.

Vovan

[alms66]

Thanks Vovan. I am using tortoise. It's an extremely excellent piece of software for being free.

I have yet to commit anything thus far, so that pretty much confirms that I know how - and I was planning on only commiting the changed files, it's just that what I've changed requires an overwrite of existing files.

-Edit-

Also, would you guys like me to add a "grid" to the tiles so that players can see a grid like in civ? This would be a temporary hack until we do a proper grid.

[LDiCesare]

The tiles look ok to me.
What do you propose for the grid? I certainly don't want it on all the time.