Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

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Jetrel
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

Thrawn wrote:Having played 1.9.x, I agree that the non-tropical water could be a *bit* brighter, but overall, one gets used to it quickly.
Yeah. I agree with the idea that it shouldn't be a hyper-saturated blue, but at the same time, I think we desaturated it just a little too much.
Eleazar wrote:
freim wrote:Looks good.

Is it just me, or do the desert tiles with stone details look much sharper than the ones without?
I dunno, i can't fully convince myself that i see it -- or that i don't.

Anyway, since better looking stones can now be added as an embellishment overlay, i tend to think these should be removed.
:doh: Argh. NO. Stones of that size are deliberate; they're meant to make it look like sand from the american southwest, which often tends to be a mix of sand and large gravel. The "pure sand" tends to only happen in a huge desert like the sahara, or along beaches. So, if you add rocks, they should be much bigger. Please do not remove the little rocks from these, the whole point of that tileset, when I made it, was to be a mix of sand and gravel. So that we can have a separate "sand" tileset, and then this "sand+gravel" tileset.

We really need this kind of sand, because this is the kind of sand you see around desert scrub and vegetation. Desert vegetation doesn't grow in the "pure sand" areas of the sahara, because the sand moves and would bury it within days.

http://www.cactuslovers.com/tucson-cact ... esert3.jpg
http://www.photographyplusbylaura.com/A ... desert.jpg
http://www.jaekl.net/~chris/drive/pics/ ... Desert.jpg
http://jboyd.net/AZwinter/AZdesert.jpg
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Iris »

Eleazar wrote:If i don't hear back in a week or so i'll assume the objections are withdrawn. I want to finish some of this water stuff up soon.
I'd not sure that it's because people don't find anything wrong with it, it's just that they are afraid of commenting on it because we are used to artists rejecting less relevant comments on how artwork should be different besides structural flaws — see portrait and sprite development, for example.

I for one feel unsatisfied with the new look of water in rivers and other small areas in maps, although the effect tends to be less noticeable on large watery (i.e. sea) maps, probably because there's less unsaturated terrain around that would display my perceived lack of contrast between water and ground tiles. While I don't like the new "real is brown" direction because (IMHO) it increases the style difference between sprites and terrain even more than before, I haven't complained in public channels because I'm afraid of negative responses, mainly because I'm not an artist and I am unable to give an objective and thorough review of *why* I think something is flawed. This actually goes for a lot of portraits and sprites I've seen — I just don't talk about it most of the time.

Those are my two cents. If you are going to throw fruits at me, please don't use tomatoes — I'd prefer fresh watermelons. :P

tl;dr version: we are afraid of giving negative feedback.
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Eleazar
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Glitch Fixes:
* Removed hard edge on top of impassible cloud
* Removed hard edge on the top of the cave beam's beams.
* Fixed transition between leaf litter (Gll) and water

Jetrel wrote: :doh: Argh. NO. Stones of that size are deliberate....
:doh: The stones i removed are these, not the ones from your allacrost-decended desert:
beach-rock3.png
beach-rock3.png (9.32 KiB) Viewed 13986 times
Now the map-maker has an option of making smooth, stone-less sand.
Anyway those rocks were old 1.6-level art.

Or he can add some of these to either desert if he wants more rocks:
stones-small4.png
stones-small4.png (3.62 KiB) Viewed 13986 times
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Spiffed up the Volcanoes.

I de-greened the lower edges so they look better in caves, and made a small variant that fits as a 1 hex piece surrounded by chasm or lava.
Also they are generally a bit darker.

Also fixed the weird red halo that non-chasm lava sometimes made.

Not sure if i want them all to have the smoke that the big one does-- or if the big one should keep it.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

We'll i've at least partially cracked a problem that's been bothering me.

Encampments can now be mixed with all human and elvish castles without leaving huge gaps in the walls, or getting extra walls where they don't belong. This should add some interesting possibilities for making ruined-but-partially-repaired castles.

I also fixed some transition glitches where the base water/swamp transition of a castle was layering over the walls.

It's probably possible to make the encampment work with sand and orcish castles too, but this is enough for one sitting.
This is not a good way to build a castle, i'm just showing how all combinations fit together.
This is not a good way to build a castle, i'm just showing how all combinations fit together.
Also because i'm lazy here's another change map-makers should be alerted to clipped from IRC chat:
  • eleazzaar: BTW, the new village stuff allows villages to be placed inside castles
    fendrin: Very nice.
    fendrin: Is it working with any village and any castle?
    eleazzaar: any land villages
    fendrin: I have the newest trunk compiled. I expected that a village inside a castle is not surrounded by walls anymore, right?
    eleazzaar: if you SHIFT-Click, yes
    fendrin: superp.
    eleazzaar: it then has castle defense & healing
    eleazzaar: so caution should be used
    eleazzaar: i.e. it is a more powerful hex
    fendrin: It is even working on top of a keep, just wonderful.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

I took things a step further and now you can blend any non-dwarvish castle or keep together. Of course this often will look bad due to the art not lining up, but at least it fails more gracefully than it used to.

Encampment combined with other castle types works best-- with anything else there are no guarantees.

Currently what i've done actually simplified the WML. Encampment pieces are used in between such as when you mix orcish castle with human castle. It might be possible to make the WML smarter, but that would also make it much more complicated.
EDIT: Non-encampments now combine with each other better without using encampment walls except when the map-maker chooses them.

I've also added transitions between the ground layer of the castles (in most cases) and allowed transitions to mix through the castle walls. There may be some places where this will be a problem, but with current graphics,i think this is generally an improvement.

EDIT:
Don't assume any particular castle combo will look good. There will be lots of situational glitches and will be unless most castle art is overhauled-- something i have no intention of doing. Most Keeps combine with other types of Keeps very badly-- which you might expect due to the great difference in size/shape.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

A minor little change, but the kind of thing we should do more of.

The chasm bridge now is a single terrain in the editor palette, It will automatically choose the right variant weather it is placed over chasm, lava, or water.
Thanks to zookeeper for doing most of this.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Finally i'm getting to the Hill and Mountain transitions to water.

I suddenly figured out how to do it this evening, and now it is mostly done. The similarity to the flat-to-water transitions are intentional. This means a single set of lapping wave animations will fit both.

Note hills and mountains are raised above the swamp. I'm considering doing the same thing for swamp everywhere, to cut down on the number of special transitions, but for hills, mountains, this unquestionably makes sense.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by doofus-01 »

Eleazar wrote:Note hills and mountains are raised above the swamp. I'm considering doing the same thing for swamp everywhere, to cut down on the number of special transitions, but for hills, mountains, this unquestionably makes sense.
It certainly makes sense for the mountains & hills, but the dirt/swamp transition looks nice as it is. It's like solid ground rising out of the swamp. The raised edge would make it look artificial because the stagnant water wouldn't cut away at the banks. That's my take, anyway.

On a similar note, I think the fuzzy sand/water transition is nice too, and hope that stays. If you are trying to cut down on transition templates, could sand/water & dirt/swamp use the same one?
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

doofus-01 wrote:On a similar note, I think the fuzzy sand/water transition is nice too, and hope that stays. If you are trying to cut down on transition templates, could sand/water & dirt/swamp use the same one?
No, that's my cheap hack. It's gonna look something like this instead:
sand-to-water.jpg
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I don't know what exactly you mean my a "template", but no, that doesn't really help. There's nothing that could be reused expect the same understanding of WML.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by doofus-01 »

Eleazar wrote:I don't know what exactly you mean my a "template", but no, that doesn't really help.
By "template", I mean outline or footprint or mask (I don't know your method for making & integrating transitions). So that if beach sand doesn't have to have little cliff banks, the swamp doesn't have to either.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Now the shallow water colors are based off a single set of images that are color-shifted to provide two more color variations. Using color-shifted terrain at runtime is supposed to be easier on resources too.

Three is a reasonable number of color variations for an important terrain like shallow water, and i can understand how previously the two options weren't a perfect fit for some purposes.

Tropical (Wwt) remains unchanged,
Regular (Ww) is a bit more saturated,
and the new Grey Water (Wwg) is even less-saturated than Regular used to be. In most cases Wwg should be used on underground maps.

I'll probably give the same treatment to the ocean.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Jetrel »

Eleazar: good, those are fine to remove. Sorry about the confusion. :)

For a touch of constructive critique (everything else being good enough that I have little to say), a bit more "cast light" on the inside of the volcanos might make them look better. I see that there is a bit of it right now, but there's little enough that the lava looks slightly "pasted on".


Castle<->Chasm is just looking awesome at the moment. :D

Likewise, that new system for the water looks like a very good idea. The caves would have very different color requirements.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Zerovirus »

If grey water is a new terrain on its own, then the ford's going to need a different appearance. The two look practically the same on a cursory glance. Of course, you've said that the Ford isn't a finished image.
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Re: Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

Post by Eleazar »

Jetrel wrote:For a touch of constructive critique (everything else being good enough that I have little to say), a bit more "cast light" on the inside of the volcanos might make them look better. I see that there is a bit of it right now, but there's little enough that the lava looks slightly "pasted on".
You are probably right. The volcanoes are still more of a quick frankenstein that i'd like.


For something easy to do i applied the new chasm appearance to the lava. Most notably changed is the non-chasm lava, which was an ugly remnant from years ago (0.9.x i think). I gave it a similar edge to the lava chasm, but much less deep. It never made much sense for the lava to sit on the surface like it did.

The only good rational for having both these terrains is so that someone can build a cool lava-fall between them, but i leave that to someone else for now. Lava-to-chasm is currently the same as always--- if it looks worse, it's because the rest is improved.
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