[GRAPHICS] Animating terrain

[SMIFFGIG]

Well i was thinking, now with the source code (need i even say it) and the fact that resources are animated (probably unreleated) is it possible to have general terrain to animate. Just think of how great it would be to have this

Of course not every terrain tile would have to animate but simply having the option would be good, for example if we where to add deep sea geysers, it would be good to have them animate, or even basic wave animation for the sea, just to make it all look that more ALIVE

or even animated snowfall perodically (just for eye candy) in snowy areas
It would allow scope for a whole host of ideas for the future too

just an idea

-SMIFFGIG

[Maquiladora]

I expect its more work than its worth. But when you mentioned the water movement thing i immediately thought of Transport Tycoon or later Rollercoaster Tycoon those little sparkles in the water.

Coastal areas you could have little fish jumping, plains maybe some buffalo running and grassland lots of little cows wandering about. We can dream

[Ekmek]

Would it be possible to make city sprites animated?

If it is possible than perhaps a non-capturable "city" could be used but make it automatically change ownership/captured whenever someone else enters the square?

Or terrain aspects could be animated by making a no-shield unit that is animated movement on the terrain. It would have to have an IMMOBILE flag like in civ3 where it cant move squares but does have move(action) points.

I guess you could make a GAEA player (a barbarian player that cant be attacked?)

These are all guess since the only programming experience I have is crappy turbopascal.

[Gilgamensch]

Not that I wouldn't like to have the screen a bit more alive, but I think this would bring my good ooooooooooold PC down completly.

I only have a 300MHz PC and in the moment it is 'just' playable.

So I would rather see it as an option, which you could turn on/off.

[The Big Mc]

the implementation is not the problem here ( just make a non tradable useless good )
It's the graphics and to be honest there is a lake of people doing graphics so I think this one will probably be overlooked as its a lot of work

[SMIFFGIG]

shame it would be nice
and it could be an option in the graphics settings so that people like Gilgamensch will have no probs

[child of Thor]

I wasn't realy serious when i mentioned this before

BUT i'm thinking just little stuff, like a few little movements of white to blue pixels on the sea shore tiles?(kinda like in Pirates by sid) and the same kinda thing for trees/grass tiles. Maybe something that doesn't always happen, just a few random pixel movements from time to time?

Not that this is very important, but it might make it visualy more interesting?

[MrBaggins]

I think a few random 'non-tradable' trade goods will work well for this... the system for animation is already in place... thus there is nothing needed handle it... except excluding a good from trading, through a flag, right?

[The Big Mc]

yes you are right. there’s also a small txt change to change the good from unchangeable to NONE for the GUI

[child of Thor]

how would you program it to appear or act in a slightly randon fashion, or just in a certain locations - the problem being that if it was a uniform animation(like in the trade goods moving around) - it would look weird, the sea shore i guess would be fine(as it moves all the time), but land based ones would have to have some kinda way to work out animation on/off, if it just played all the time it would just look weird over the whole screen....

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by child of Thor
how would you program it to appear or act in a slightly randon fashion, or just in a certain locations - the problem being that if it was a uniform animation(like in the trade goods moving around) - it would look weird, the sea shore i guess would be fine(as it moves all the time), but land based ones would have to have some kinda way to work out animation on/off, if it just played all the time it would just look weird over the whole screen....

Having the base graphic tile animate possibly, where currently it isn't animating, would be a pretty tough programming task.

You'd approach it by having an element which overlayed the base element, like goods do now.

Having an extra random graphic element appear could be done, but isn't worth the effort, IMO, especially since, as has been mentioned, this can already be achieved by a game component we already have.

[SMIFFGIG]

i know what you mean Big MC

a random loop delay value is needed

i really think this (if programmed) should be added to trade goods too, cause it looks kinda dumb how all the goods animate simultaneously every so often :s

[The Big Mc]

don't try to change the program just change the pic. add a few blank images to the start of the animation that way you build in a delay.

[Pedrunn]

I liked the idea of non-traded goods for this. Which means a new sprite class for CTP2 that will help a lot the modders. We will have cities, units, goods, effects and this new one (find a name). It could not only be used as eye-candy graphics but also as a tool for modders like when i wanted to make the city expansions with goods and not TIs to prevent constant pillaging bug of the AI.
Not to mention that wont need any change in the terrain files so will be much easier to add it and wont make mods incompatible.

[The Big Mc]

The only thing we may have to do it edit the editor to all mapmakers to make more then 4 goods per tile