Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

[Boucman]

you don't have to recompile to get it to work, it's a WML change only....


... theoretically. We had problems with macos that we never were able to solve entirely

[Eleazar]

you don't have to recompile to get it to work, it's a WML change only....

it actually works, except all the tiles are in sync-- but that's enough for me to work with.

EDIT: I can't figure out where "ANIMATION_15" is defined... thus i can't set up ocean and coast to both animate.

EDIT2: I've uploaded animation frames for ocean, coast, and tropical coast, but left the .cfgs alone, because i couldn't make it work on more than one at a time.

[Boucman]

ok, if you consider the images fine, i'll deal with the rest...

[Boucman]

ok, it's wired in.

quick problems : ocean-A01-n was not recolored correctly, and some transitions don't look good (water to water)

it would be nice to also reuse the base frames on villages, bridges etc...

as for ANIMATION_15 it's defined in terrain-graphics/builder.cfg

[Eleazar]

ok, it's wired in.

Great, thanks.

quick problems : ocean-A01-n was not recolored correctly,

Fixed.

and some transitions don't look good (water to water)

In fact they look quite bad. These will need to be redone.
How i redo them depends on some other things. We've talked about animating in sync and out of sync, and i'm not sure if dropping files into the 1.8 binary just doesn't produce the same results of if there is a miscommunication.

What Rhyging was asking for, and what i think would produce the most naturalistic appearance is out of sync animation. This would also be more processor intensive, due to the use of more transitions.

Here, you said "animations are randomized in mainline", but i'm certainly not seeing it. What i see now is every water tile on the map hitting frame 1 at the same time-- i.e. the miss-colored ocean transition appears on all tiles at once. This is being "in sync" which we don't want if we can help it.

Are you seeing something different?

it would be nice to also reuse the base frames on villages, bridges etc...

What do you mean? I see the animated water underneath villages and bridges.

[Boucman]

and some transitions don't look good (water to water)

In fact they look quite bad. These will need to be redone.
How i redo them depends on some other things. We've talked about animating in sync and out of sync, and i'm not sure if dropping files into the 1.8 binary just doesn't produce the same results of if there is a miscommunication.

What Rhyging was asking for, and what i think would produce the most naturalistic appearance is out of sync animation. This would also be more processor intensive, due to the use of more transitions.

Here, you said "animations are randomized in mainline", but i'm certainly not seeing it. What i see now is every water tile on the map hitting frame 1 at the same time-- i.e. the miss-colored ocean transition appears on all tiles at once. This is being "in sync" which we don't want if we can help it.

Are you seeing something different?

definitely. I'm using 1.9 trunk, but afaik, they are still in sync in 1.8... in case that clears things up

it would be nice to also reuse the base frames on villages, bridges etc...

What do you mean? I see the animated water underneath villages and bridges.

huh, yes, so do I... stupid remark, sorry

[Eleazar]

OK, here's what i've got. The difference in color is the difference between the normal shallow and tropical shallow water.

Comments on the appearance of the transitions? I originally wanted to do something else, but there were issues, and now i'm not sure what i think about these. You can check out the old water here.

Animated transitions are a bit trickier, since it is prohibitive to try to make the 20 multi-sided transitions that many terrains have.

Rhyging designed a transition that works well (i believe) smoothing out the differences between tiles animating out of sync-- it's a rather abrupt transition which keeps too many details from getting blurred. It doesn't work well in transitioning from ocean to shallow, since it is far to quick. I'm afraid for optimal appearance we need 2 sets of non-land transitions a water-to-water-of-the-same kind transition, and a transition to blend with other types of water. Can you do that?

EDIT: Is there any approximately up-to-date documentation on terrain WML? browsing through the wiki, i just see stuff from 1.3 and 1.4.

[Jetrel]

Please don't mind me - I'm just thinking aloud. I find this a bit vexing, myself.

Less of a sharp color difference might look better.

Also, not attempted in this, but making "deep water" not a solid color change, but the addition of "larger dark waves" on top of the existing shallow water, might be a better way to do it.

[Eleazar]

Less of a sharp color difference might look better.

You could be right. The hues are about the same as my old water, but with the subtler texture, they stand apart more strongly.

Also, not attempted in this, but making "deep water" not a solid color change, but the addition of "larger dark waves" on top of the existing shallow water, might be a better way to do it.

I'm not sure what you mean. I agree it would be preferable to have a distinction other than simply re-coloring. But i don't have a way of generating an appropriately similar animation. I suppose i might scale the waves bigger, say 150%, but it is hard to guess how that would look animated.

[Eleazar]

Here's what i have for grass replacements
Normal at the top,
"Savannah" in the middle
and a really dry at the bottom though this needs to be more sparse-- possible replacement for what currently under the forests, or perhaps a new terrain

[zookeeper]

Please do keep working on that. That'd be a really, really good improvement to the overall look of any map featuring lots of grassland (that is, at least half of them...).

I think we should definitely have at least two variants of grass: the normal green one and one yellowish (the colour you have there looks pretty nice) that'd fit autumn and drought and so on. In fact I think we should do away with the name "savannah" completely too and just have several variants of "grassland".

[Eleazar]

I've committed new semi-dry grass--i agree with zoo that pigeon-holing it as "savanna" is not useful. Haven't touched the transitions yet.

ATM i'm planning on handling the green and very dry grass by using this as a base.

The basic green grass has had a scattering of small rocks for quite some time. I've been thinking about applying them as an overly only terrain like the beam of light, so they could be scattered on any ordinary "flat" terrain at the map-maker's discretion. Can we make such an ornamental overlay terrain that doesn't effect move, defense or the name of the terrain?? I also have considered doing flowers the same way, but am less sure of the usefulness of that.


Also i'm curious about the darkish olive color currently used under all the non-hill forests-- I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to be. A flat-ish color chosen to contrast nicely with the forests while, serving as a reasonable approximation of needles, leaves, or a dirt/grass mix?
Anyway, i think some of these grasses might serve better for some of the forests.


To replace my extremely out-of-date ford, i thought to use the cobbled "road" as a starting point, while dropping out most of the rocks so it could ford and road would match. Obviously this would be an overlay over animated water and would eventually be animated itself. However, my terrain WML isn't up to the task, even without animation. Can someone show me what to do? Attached is a semi-transparent ford tile to test with.

ALSO: what ever happened to these curbed roads?

[Eleazar]

I've committed:

* Alarantalara's fix on the dwarf castle and cave wall alignment issue
* improved "Desert road" based off the dirt tile, recolored as previously shown to harmonize more with the desert.

Picture 4.png (375.41 KiB) Viewed 5567 times

also lest it get forgotten, the water stuff is pending an answer to this WML question:

Rhyging designed a transition that works well (i believe) smoothing out the differences between tiles animating out of sync-- it's a rather abrupt transition which keeps too many details from getting blurred. It doesn't work well in transitioning from ocean to shallow, since it is far to quick. I'm afraid for optimal appearance we need 2 sets of non-land transitions a water-to-water-of-the-same kind transition, and a transition to blend with other types of water. Can you do that?

[zookeeper]

The basic green grass has had a scattering of small rocks for quite some time. I've been thinking about applying them as an overly only terrain like the beam of light, so they could be scattered on any ordinary "flat" terrain at the map-maker's discretion. Can we make such an ornamental overlay terrain that doesn't effect move, defense or the name of the terrain?? I also have considered doing flowers the same way, but am less sure of the usefulness of that.

Hmmh, yes, we can. You just use aliasof=_bas for the overlay terrain; that is, just like the lightbeam does it.

Also i'm curious about the darkish olive color currently used under all the non-hill forests-- I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to be. A flat-ish color chosen to contrast nicely with the forests while, serving as a reasonable approximation of needles, leaves, or a dirt/grass mix?

Yes, something along those lines. I'd think you're pretty free to change that.

[Eleazar]

Committed improved green grass terrain. Haven't redone the transitions yet, that's for later, once i'm done with the main flat terrains.

Anybody think i went too far in lightening the non-desert dirt? Refer to screenshots-- i haven't committed that yet.