Cave floor transitions

[mog]

Ivanovic complained about the cave floor transitions (see http://gna.org/bugs/?9995 and attached screenshots) and I agree that it's not really good.

So I quickly made an a little more subtle variant:


Opinions?

[ivanovic]

This one really does look a whole lot better. IMO it does fix. This I would call a nice "bugfix". ;)

[Jetrel]

I thought the previous version was good, but I'm fine with this one, too.

[ivanovic]

I thought the previous version was good, but I'm fine with this one, too.

Please have a look at the screenshots I did attach to that bugreport. I am easily able to see that there is "something wrong" with the transition. I know things like this do depend a lot on the display that is used, it might be that it is not or only barely visible on ours but a lot more on mine due to *whatever* settings. Especially obvious it is with the transition of mud to cavefloor, there I do see a clear edge (surround a mud hex by cavefloor and have a careful look at the topleft corner of the mud hex).

I do attach a part of my screenshot explicitly marking a problematic area. I think in general this "old" trans does look "human made", not "natural". The new version mog made in his "mock up" does look a whole lot better.

[mog]

Ok, I *committed* the changes.

[Kestenvarn]

They still look jarring, but I suppose better than the previous ones.

[Jetrel]

The presence of those "clear edges" was indeed a problem, and that needed to be fixed regardless of whatever style of transition we used. I hadn't really noticed that flaw.

I am easily able to see that there is "something wrong" with the transition. I know things like this do depend a lot on the display that is used, it might be that it is not or only barely visible on ours but a lot more on mine due to *whatever* settings. Especially obvious it is with the transition of mud to cavefloor, there I do see a clear edge (surround a mud hex by cavefloor and have a careful look at the topleft corner of the mud hex).

I do attach a part of my screenshot explicitly marking a problematic area. I think in general this "old" trans does look "human made", not "natural". The new version mog made in his "mock up" does look a whole lot better.

The old transition did not look in the least bit "human made", to my eyes - it looked a lot like the stones in the ravine in my backyard, which split into small, natural segments as they merge into the sand of the stream bed. Usually the large slabs of limestone would fragment at the edges, quite like the transition looked. I mean, those rocks in my backyards were about as natural as you can get; they were carved out of the limestone bedrock by the action of a stream, and were never touched by human hands. I guess you and I have had different exposure to different natural phenomena. As they say, "reality can be stranger than fiction," and if you haven't seen the stranger parts of reality, it'd be easy to mistake them as bad fiction.

That said, I thought there was some disconnect between said stones and the cave floor, but I thought it might be somewhat to the cave floor's benefit if it got some similar fine-grained texturing that would make it fit together; e.g. making the cave floor more like its transition. The current amount of texturing on the cave floor, was heavily increased some time ago, from the nearly paved-asphalt consistency it had before, and I think it was a considerable improvement when they did that. More texturing would probably look even better; cripes, caves don't even -have- proper floors to speak of, in the real world.



Please note that, just because I'm saying the old one "wasn't that bad", I am in no way advocating that we roll back to the previous version. You don't need to waste your time defending the change - I do agree with you that this was an improvement and that it looks good, which is really the only important thing; so, let's not argue about this.