Unit Graphics 2

[yellowdaddy]

below is supposed to be the image of a ship in eight directions, it seems it mightn't appear, so you might have to go to my site address in my signiture - how annoying!

looking at the various monoremes, biremes and triremes, i've concluded that at this scale they're practically indiscernable from each other, so i've combined them as one type, whether in the game there'll be a nominal difference in speed, i don't know.
I'm not too sure about the name "galley" as, this name seems to apply to a later ship type or am i muddling up the "galleas"? . can anyone help?

ancient trade ships next.

the original one by Targon seems to be a Greek one. Mine a Roman one. I plan to do both, the Roman being the larger of the two.
The Greek one encopassing the Egyptian one on that russian ship site, as they seem fairly similar.

have a play with these units to make sure the angles ok. they can be tarted up later.

[LDiCesare]

I like the 8 directions triremes (or galleys or whatever we call them).
About the various types of units, this discussion would belong in either the military model or tech thread. Still, it's worth wondering. I also keep thinking about what units would have the aztecs evolved had they had access to iron or horses? As for the shape of the hull, I wonder how much comes from the sea (the Mediterranean is far easier to sail than any more open sea or ocean)? Gary can probably tell better.

[yellowdaddy]

from what i know (southampton univ. webpage), there are four basic boat types:

dugout, (self-descriptive!)
raft, (bindings)
skin-boat, (skeleton)
birchbark-boat (sewing)

from these are derived the techs needed to develop boats.

chinese (and egyptian initially!) boats developed on their rivers and lakes and canals.
western boats as you said, in the calm coasts of the med..

early ocean-going craft were developed by northern europeans: celts and nordics, - coracles, currachs, kayaks, umiaks, longships..., and the wooden ships of the veneti tribe are mentioned by Caesar.

aside from those, you get catamarans in the warmer oceans.

environment and climate seems to play a big part to begin with.

Chinese flatbottomed ships apparently sailed all over the place, allegedly to Mexico and France! Certainly to horn of Africa.
Malayo-Polynesians went all over the pacific and indian oceans.
Inuits all around the arctic... i don't think it seems to matter what the boats hull is like, they can still get about a bit.
Though you're right that mediterranean boats weren't geared up to the Atlantic until they acquired tech from northern europeans.
..............................................

i think it's fair enough to bring up these topics in this thread, so we know what units we are making, the reasons why are worth mentioning, perhaps there's a bit of overlap with the military model thread.
i'm only interested in finding out what they should look like really.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
will there be a fork in the road on the tech tree where you have to choose whether to make v-shaped (occidental) or u-shaped (oriental) hulls? will it be determined by resources? (egyptian's had reeds, but not much wood...).

any thoughts?

It's certainly doable to have a fork in the tech model. A parallel set of naval techs is clearly appropriate for scenarios. Whether we should do it for the main game depends on the tradeoff of realism vs complexity (and possible player confusion). I suspect we should try it both ways at some point, and see what players think.

[Gattsuden]

I wanna help

Im not quite sure what I'm supposed to work on. I had conflicting orders. Someone guide me! I need to work on something before I die! I still haven't contributed! Guidence please!

[Mark_Everson]

Gattsuden:

Have you played the demo yet like I requested? That is so you can see what is in there now. I have written the coders to see if they have suggestions on what you can work on. If you are so fired up that you need to do something now, just pick something from the things I and yellowdaddy have suggested.

[Gary Thomas]

Rivers.

We need rivers that run along the edges of the tiles. They will be displayed as an overlay. Bridges would also be nice.

A variety of villages, towns and cities would also add to the visual appeal of the map.

Another possibility is forested hills - this is a challenge, since you need to see both the trees and the hills.

In general, any better terrain would be pleasant, and extremely easy to implement.

Cheers

[Gattsuden]

alrighty, good clear intrustions. Ill start on that right away. Is there any palette limitations for the tiles and units?

[Gary Thomas]

Java runs off RGB, so there are no limitations at that end. However, the tile graphics are gifs, so limited to an arbitrary 256 maximum colour palette, but the palette can be a different one for each tile. Also, it is quite important that the actual image be a diamond shape with the rest transparent. Because the tiles are drawn from the top down, each should overlap the one above it by a pixel or two, to avoid the background showing. The best method is to have a look at the existing grassland tile and see what its characteristics are. Of course, hills, mountains and buildings will project higher, covering parts of the tile above.

Rivers will be a bit different, covering parts of two tiles (or four at the corners). They will not work the way the coastal overlays do. Too bloody complicated. However, we will need estuaries, and maybe deltas.

Cheers

[yellowdaddy]

gary said:

tile

tile

diamond shape

tiles

tiles

tile

&

tiles

I take that we are not required to draw a range of polygon-map friendly terrain bits? And that the D8 map is to renain 3d-isometric?


and...

A variety of villages, towns and cities would also add to the visual appeal of the map.

what about the ideas i've put forward on that front? areas of settlement/urbanisation as collections of little buildings which can form a range of city shapes, and
(with each little house representing say 10,000 people, and perhaps little factories/smithies and commercial edifices to represent the varying sizes of the industrial and commercial sectors - like a scaled-down and simplified Sim City) a graphical representaion which refects the size/density/distribution of settlement?

or can't you be arsed with that?

do you just want simple one-square standard size cities like in Civ?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
(snip) areas of settlement/urbanisation as collections of little buildings which can form a range of city shapes,

I think your cocept is intriguing. However, I found the examples currently on your web page to be hard to discern from the terrain. Since cities need to be easily-resolved when placed on a wide range of terrain tiles, that isn't a trivial problem. Also, the coding infrastructure to handle something like that does not yet exist. But we did plan to do similar things for tile graphics for forests, where deforestation would show nearly-continuous thinning of trees. So I expect that the code to handle such things will be there at some point. However it's not a priority at the moment. That is why I expect Gary is asking for the traditional whole-tile cities for the moment. We will be using them for a significant amount of time I expect.

[yellowdaddy]

The idea of having Flora, Fauna and Urban overlays growing, spreading, changing organically is truly an original and exciting game feature if implemented.
There'll be implications for the military model as well as the economic model I imagin.
Gone are the days where you move a 1 square-filling mobile unit onto a 1 square-filling static unit (city) with two dimensional results, Bring on the polygon map and organic settlements!

Fair enough it's for the future, but I'll squeeze in a little digression, just as a mental note, i can shift it to a city overlays thread when we've got something relevant to D8 to post on one:

{How would you attack a swathe of mountain villages or }
{scattered farmsteads! you'd need to really develop the Task }
{Force idea, so you could add mongol horde-style raids perhaps.}
{different strategies too for coastal and riparian linear }
{settlements. }
{I suppose you'd need to assign admin centres or city }
{centres, as you click and draw your internal administration }
{borders, so that there is some defined place for an enemy to }
{capture, or which could potentially revolt and set up as another}
{citystate or part of another nationstate. }
{ }
{I think this would be a fascinating break from Civ where you }
{have strategic wars instead of just one-on-one unit battles. }
{ }
{When campaigning against sparse settlements and straggly }
{areas of settlement, you could capture each building one by }
{one, and thus have a defined area of control on the map, and }
{even end up in a stalemate where a large city is divided }
{between enemies. }
{ }
{As for the issue of visibility of these tiny buildings, well , one }
{solution is to have an urban background overlay - it needn't be }
{solid either - a grey/brown tint. And for the houses use more }
{contrast and shadows - i'll amend them. }

[LDiCesare]

About evolution of images: Note that I've already coded a class that lets a unit use different images as techs evolve. This could be reused for terrain, but tying the evolution of graphics to a tech would not be what we want for forest, though it might for cities (city styles).

[yellowdaddy]

I meant evolution in terms of City size and shape ( the area of land it covers and the shape of it - whether it curls round a beach, along a river, or radiates from a point absorbing other cities adjacent to it)... you start off with a celtic village of London or Paris, and over time more an more little buildings are added and after 2000 years you have a sprawling monster of a city... (catchez-vous mon drift?)

[LDiCesare]

I got it. This has more or less been implemented in a CtP2 mod by the way (sprawling cities). I was just mentionning what's already coded and possible.