Request: New unpassable terrain

[Jetrel]

Despite its seeming disconnection from reality, I would say people readily accept the cavewall as an impassable terrain in their minds without regard as to why gryphons can't fly over it.

It makes sense - they don't see it as cavewall so much as a "barrier." It does sort of look like a set of bluffs, though.

I wonder if high mountains would enjoy the same treatment.

After all the [censored] that's gone on on this forum, I have no faith in sensible, well-educated people to make sensible, well-educated judgments.

really.

[Dave]

Terrain fading into the canvas, per se, is a really neat idea, but would be obscenely hard to do.

I'm not entirely sure it would be. If we could work out an algorithm that takes full-colour tiles and makes them look like canvas, that's all we'd need.

Not going to happen before 1.0, of course.

David

[Elvish_Pillager]

Having uncolored parchment tiles -- or just holes -- in the middle of the map, would be an odd but cool kind of barrier terrain.

[Quensul]

I'm not entirely sure it would be. If we could work out an algorithm that takes full-colour tiles and makes them look like canvas, that's all we'd need.

If I understand you correctly, that's precisely what Wercator does. It currently uses 20x20 hexes, but with a bit of work, could be made to use 72x72. The limiting factor is the tileset - the code can use arbitrary tile sizes. I drew most of the art freehand and scanned it in, so it wouldn't be *too* much work to generate a new set of tiles. Of course, if anyone with more artistic ability were willing to take a stab at a new, larger, tileset, I'd be ecstatic.

Of course, if you mean something more like sepia-toning the current terrain images, this is all moot.

[King Arthur]

da edge of da world

[Rhuvaen]

Of course, if you mean something more like sepia-toning the current terrain images, this is all moot.

Hmm... wouldn't it be possible for the creator of Wercator to invent a - hm, whaddayacallit - effect or filter in gimp to create those sepia-shaded tiles from the normal ones?

Then again, can't the Wesnoth engine apply coloration to tiles? Wouldn't it be possible to just flag some tiles as off-map, thereby making them impassable by ALL (independent of movetype - promising compatible behaviour even if someone designs a crazy movetype that can pass cavewall and the like), and in the display adjust the colors for them to something more brownish with less saturation?

Of course, that's for the map border tiles only, I don't see the two suggestions (alternate blocking terrain mid-map and map borders) as essentially linked.

[Breeblebox]

Yet another proposal that opens a great many opportunities for the campaign developer.

Make a map in the style of Shogun's strategic map, complete with edges fading to parchment. Set it up as the basis for a campaign overview a la turin's seafaring campaign, and create some army token type units for moving your whole army around the map.

When one of your army tokens moves adjacent to an enemy army token, expand to the sub map you created for that part of the world a la Rome Total War, unstore all the units currently associated with that army, and have a good old Wesnoth biffo.

Sorry if this is a little OT, but think of it as a thumbs up for creating a 'fade to parchment/ table' impassable tileset for map borders.

[scott]

thumbs up for creating a 'fade to parchment/ table' impassable tileset for map borders.

Aren't the map borders already impassable?


Bottom line: high mountains should fit the bill and are better than the other proposals, but I honestly have no heartburn over the continued use of cavewall. As long as there is some type of impassable terrain. Void/end-of-map is interesting to think about. I don't know if I'm ready for a Neverending Story type of meta-awareness for my Wesnoth characters.

[Rhuvaen]

Bottom line: high mountains should fit the bill and are better than the other proposals, but I honestly have no heartburn over the continued use of cavewall.

I'd really love to see three new impassable terrain for those (inevitable) small-scale, indoor scenarios:

• brick wall (just like a castle wall but with torch-sconces instead of towers)
  door (as in: wall with door)
  pillar (smooth wall-type terrain)

I know Wesnoth is not about dungeon-type scenarios, but they do appear in a lot of campaigns and with a little artwork could look much nicer.

[Cuyo Quiz]

Add a whirl tile to make some water impassable.

Just an idea.

[Breeblebox]

thumbs up for creating a 'fade to parchment/ table' impassable tileset for map borders.

Aren't the map borders already impassable?

Um, yes, but they don't fade to parchment/ table as in the quote you specifically used...

;]

[Stigmatix]

Using void tiles for impassable terrain would suck badly. Some form of large mountain would be best.

[drewed]

I'd really love to see three new impassable terrain for those (inevitable) small-scale, indoor scenarios:

• brick wall (just like a castle wall but with torch-sconces instead of towers)
  door (as in: wall with door)
  pillar (smooth wall-type terrain)

I know Wesnoth is not about dungeon-type scenarios, but they do appear in a lot of campaigns and with a little artwork could look much nicer.

I second that motion. It would be nice to restrict earth-bound units to certain paths for scenario variety (e.g. infiltrate castle and recover item, rescue princess, etc.). At present you can only do this sort of thing underground but it would be nice to have an equivalent situation in a castle/city/fort.

As for barriers to impede flying units why not use a magical wall (glowing terain tile--similar to lava)? You could even create selective magical bariers (holy for barring the undead).

[Pentalis]

For the border of the map, Void and Parchment sound like the best suggestions for impassable terrain.

As for impassable terrain in the middle of a map, I truly hate it, and it should not exist... but ignoring my own oppinion on this, I think the following:

The use of the Cave Wall as a middle-of-a-map impassable terrain is actually not that silly. It makes the whole map one is playing in to look as part of an underground world, were day and night come after each other in a cicle which depends not of a sun, but of the brilliance of the "cave sky" or something mystical like that, if you can imagine with me. And higher than mountains, Cave Walls represent exactly those "extremelly high mountains" which reach the very end of the world, in terms of altitude.
That is how I _feel_ when I am playing in a map which uses cave wall in the middle of it as an impassable terrain, and I think that it's the most reasonable and acceptable way to justify a "so high terrain that not even flying units can surpass". If you _truly_ want to change something as ok as that (even when I hate it), then the idea of "extremelly high mountains" is not a complete idea.

Let me elaborate further...
In Mars, THERE IS extremelly high mountains, as tall as 24 Kilometers (or something near that), which is about 14 Miles (roughly), high mountains like those could still be passable by a flying creature, but at a very low speed. Also, in that planet there is ocassional winds as fast as those of Earth's hurricanes, now THAT is truly impassable for any flying creature with a little (really, little) sense of physics (isn't it?).

But "extremelly high mountains" sound unelegant, magical barriers... no, please no. Volcanoes make more sense, as the nocive fumes coming from them would truly intoxicate a flying creature trying to pass over it (except an Skeletal Dragon and such...), but it could still pass closer to the surface of it, far from the toxic area.

No, simply no, I think the Cave Wall and its implied suposition of an Underground world is the only and best idea of an impassable terrain, every other terrain can be passed by at least one kind of creature.

The other option would be "dangerously inhabited terrains", something like a terrain filled of nasty creatures (let's say they are level 0, so they don't have a ZoC), like, for example, "poisonous bats" or maybe Elementals. Terrains filled with nasty creatures, truly INFESTED. Something like that would indeed make a single square of terrain impassable, unless your troops want to suicide, in such case they can simply enter to the "impassable terrain", and test their luck.
The idea behind this would be that "impassable terrains" are actually passable, but you'd have to spend quite some of your troops to make it passable for the rest. And of course, as the site is _PLAGUED_ by those creatures and their eggs (or spores, or whatever they use to reproduce), at the next turn the erradicated creatures would infest that square of terrain again.
That would constitute a more beleivable semi-impassable terrain, and I actually like the idea.

But if you want an impassable terrain that is impassable all the days of the year, every moment of the day, then Cave Wall is the only thing I find reasonable.

For the external part of the map I vote in favour of Void and Parchment.

Soulice Pentalis.

[Eleazar]

I'm having a hard time picturing a parchment edge in a way that looks attractive. Can someone provide a screenshot of a tile based game that does this? Or at least a better mock-up.

I don't think any terrain artist is going to get excited from these verbal descriptions alone. It just sounds like lots of work that doesn't make things better, to me.


Also walls are being worked on here: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8274