Land <-> Water transitions

[pekka]

I made the transitions for the ice and ice to water. Water transitions are split into 2 layers. Is it good enough? There are the same kind of water ripples and exactly the same color adjustment layers used as in the sunken castle tiles.

If these water transitions are good enough, I'll apply same kind of water transitions to every possible terrain = Trying to achieve uniform style.

[mog]

Nice, though I think that the new ice-transitions look a bit strange on ice-grassland/ice-dirt (I planned to use them only for ice<->water). At the moment the ice looks more like a glacier, not like a frozen river/lake.

[pekka]

This particular project was almost forgotten by me, which is shame. However, here are the finished transition tiles now. There are two versions of water transitions included: dual layered and merged versions. No WML included...

Mog, the partner in crime, what do you think?

[mog]

Looks good! Though I would change the ice<->castle transition, so that the top of the cliff is visible. I can do that if you post the WML.

Another thing: how does the ice<->grassland transition look like? It has always bugged me that ice surrounded by grass (or dirt or...) doesn't look like a frozen lake/river/whatever but like a sheet of ice on top of the land. I might try to do something about that...

[Jetrel]

These are ... awesome.

Looks good! Though I would change the ice<->castle transition, so that the top of the cliff is visible. I can do that if you post the WML.

Agreed.

Another thing: how does the ice<->grassland transition look like? It has always bugged me that ice surrounded by grass (or dirt or...) doesn't look like a frozen lake/river/whatever but like a sheet of ice on top of the land. I might try to do something about that...

Agreed - that bugs me as well - I'd like it to look more like a frozen stream would next to mud. The crux of this is that any situation where ice forms, would result in dead plants.

I think that one major thing we should work on, and which could use a sloppy alpha-transition with the current tile, would be an alias of grass intended to be withered, november/march grass. Not fully dead, just mostly dead; only 1 in 10 blades of grass being alive. Most existing grass-whatever transitions could be used with this as they are, if we did it right.

[pekka]

Looks good! Though I would change the ice<->castle transition, so that the top of the cliff is visible. I can do that if you post the WML.

I haven't done any modifications to wml. I'm not able.

Another thing: how does the ice<->grassland transition look like? It has always bugged me that ice surrounded by grass (or dirt or...) doesn't look like a frozen lake/river/whatever but like a sheet of ice on top of the land. I might try to do something about that...

Ice<->grassland is the same, without water effects ATM. Maybe you can give a try for better ones. I'm going to stay in the solidearth<->water transitions, because in the long run I'm trying to make uniform water transition style.

[mog]

First attempt to get the transitions right:



I had to split the castle-water transitions into top and bottom parts, but castle/water/ice transitions work quite well.

I started to implement Jetryl suggestion, but I'm not happy with it. Maybe I should restrict the dead plants to a smaller strip along the ice? But this wouldn't change the fact that it just doesn't look right. Somehow it's too smooth. Maybe adding cracks/holes/bumps in the ice or something...

[Darth Fool]

How about something more like this:


Have the grass be green, but poking out from under the ice in splotches...

[pekka]

First attempt to get the transitions right:



I had to split the castle-water transitions into top and bottom parts, but castle/water/ice transitions work quite well.

I started to implement Jetryl suggestion, but I'm not happy with it. Maybe I should restrict the dead plants to a smaller strip along the ice? But this wouldn't change the fact that it just doesn't look right. Somehow it's too smooth. Maybe adding cracks/holes/bumps in the ice or something...

These are already better transitions than the glacier-ish version you/we did.

[freim]

This particular project was almost forgotten by me, which is shame. However, here are the finished transition tiles now. There are two versions of water transitions included: dual layered and merged versions. No WML included...

Mog, the partner in crime, what do you think?

Finally got around to commiting these. Great work.

I commited the 2 layer version with the seperate submerged part for better transition stacking.

These transitions however make my snow to water trans look like crap so I propose making a new version of them which is a mix of the snow trans and these new great ice transitions. We could possibly make a 3 layered trans with a special snow trans on top of the two ice trans, dunno if we will get into performance trouble with excessive stacking though. Something should also be done with the interaction between ice to water and the cliff trans.

[mog]

Something should also be done with the interaction between ice to water and the cliff trans.

I already did this and just uploaded it:
http://yavin.mogsoft.de/~mog/wesnoth/ice-castle.tar.gz

I had to split the cliff-transition into two parts, but it works quite well (See screenshot above).

Couldn't work much on better ice-grass transitions due to lack of time, but I did some tests, and using patches of snow at the transition looks the most promising (Sorry, no screens atm). If someone wants to do it, he's welcome - it's not difficult, just tedious .

[freim]

Something should also be done with the interaction between ice to water and the cliff trans.

I already did this and just uploaded it:
http://yavin.mogsoft.de/~mog/wesnoth/ice-castle.tar.gz

I had to split the cliff-transition into two parts, but it works quite well (See screenshot above).

Couldn't work much on better ice-grass transitions due to lack of time, but I did some tests, and using patches of snow at the transition looks the most promising (Sorry, no screens atm). If someone wants to do it, he's welcome - it's not difficult, just tedious .

Ok, I'll have a look at it.

I've started on a new snow transition which will be drawn on top of the ice trans. I think it will turn out quite well.

[pekka]

I made new hills to water transitions. They are 2 layered. The submerged layer fits for every hill type. Whee..

[Eleazar]

The ripples are nice, and the layering process is, i think, sound.
But the hills going into the water make it darker, while the opposite should be happening. the shallows where the hills are barely under the water would be lighter than the surrounding deeper water where the bottom cannot be seen. Notice how the sand hills fade into the depts very differently than the basic desert sand does.

The very dark cave hills as is, might have the opposite effect. However, it's probably best to ignore that for now. Once OpenGL gets implemented, i expect the darkeness of cave terrains won't be created by using artificially dark cave tiles, but an over-all darkening of non-illuminated terrain. This should provide an over-all more convincing look, since non-cave tiles, like dirt won't be artificially bright.

... actually there's no reason to wait for WesnothGL to do that...

[pekka]

The ripples are nice, and the layering process is, i think, sound.
But the hills going into the water make it darker, while the opposite should be happening. the shallows where the hills are barely under the water would be lighter than the surrounding deeper water where the bottom cannot be seen. Notice how the sand hills fade into the depts very differently than the basic desert sand does.

The very dark cave hills as is, might have the opposite effect. However, it's probably best to ignore that for now.

Yeah, I can see the problem in the submerged parts. I still wanted to try to fit the same submerged layer for every hill variation and therefore it has some compromises. Hmm.. maybe I should make two different submerged versions - lighter and darker one. I'll make some tests.

I just wanted to de the thing with less tiles.

The desert-to-water and the other flat-land-to-water transitions are the next in my updating list, so it's not very fruitful to compare to those.