Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

[Great_Mage_Atari]

I, too, have been experiencing some eye-sores with the new water. The water along the edges of certain terrain and the addition of fog to the mix does make for one bad-looking transition... I'm not necessarily complaining. Don't get me wrong, I do like the animation of the waves and wakes in general, but where land and water meet is just a huge eye-sore. I don't think, however, that we have to make a humongous deal about it though. I mean, it's a sure improvement over the last water hexes and I believe that the artists' jobs on these are, quite literally, stellar. But, in my personal opinion, certain issues to it should not have been overlooked for such a long while.

As a side note, I sometimes find it hard to distinguish between different water colors/ types also. It seems to me that some of the color schemes are just a bit too similar, especially in fog. But, then again, that's just my right half of my brain conflicting with my left.

[Caphriel]

Yeah, what I posted was mostly just trying to make the difference between shallow and deep water clear while under fog.

Check out the tropical water instead of the standard water in game. If it's easy to tell apart, perhaps a request to use the tropical versions preferentially for multiplayer maps may be useful.

Oh, in that case, yes, that made deep water much more distinguishable from shallow. I'll investigate tropical water tomorrow.

[Dixie]

...my personal main issue is still the ugle crusty edges

I dunno, I think they're pretty cool. Matter of taste, I guess.

[Pentarctagon]

While one of the main problems is definitely that its very hard to distinguish shallow water from deep water and forded water from shallow water (especially with fog of war on) my personal main issue is still the ugle crusty edges:

So what exactly does that mean? Do you want completely smooth edges, or just more smooth than they are now?

Personally, I think that the transition would look better if it was somewhat more smooth, since right now it appears more that I'm looking at a ragged edge than a shoreline. That said, its not really a huge issue, certainly not to the point that there needs to be a separate option added (especially after the feature freeze has already been going on for a while now).

Overall, I think that the water animation was a step in the right direction, though obviously there is still work to be done/tweaks to be made.

[Cackfiend]

While one of the main problems is definitely that its very hard to distinguish shallow water from deep water and forded water from shallow water (especially with fog of war on) my personal main issue is still the ugle crusty edges:

So what exactly does that mean? Do you want completely smooth edges, or just more smooth than they are now?

well, beaches of course


load up a map in 1.8 and then the same map on 1.9... you cant tell me that 1.9 water looks better

beaches and 10x easier to distinguish deep/shallow/ford = 1.8 graphics look way better to me


if nothing can/will be done about the ford graphics and the crusty edges with no beaches anymore, then at LEAST make deep water WAAAAY darker like in 1.8 so we can actually tell the difference

[AlaskanAvenger]

The current edges are more realistic under most circumstance... that's just what a stream/river banks looks like, and if you want a beach, that's what the sand is for.

[SlowThinker]

Seconding this, as another color-blind person. When I examined the water in 1.9.X to give feedback, I did it with fog of war off because the fog of war made it hard to tell what I was looking at. Somehow, it didn't occur to me that the fact that I needed to do that might be something worthy of comment In particular, fog on shallow water is hard to distinguish. Of course, it's way too late for this now

It looks the artists should have one color-blind tester ... and to distinguish the terrains by non-color details, like the ford hex in 1.8 that had stones in the water.

A related topic: also all villages should have one common detail, maybe a pylon without a flag. When I was noob I tried to capture all those village-like hexes in Howling Ghost Badlands.

[Madlok]

Fords are very easy to copy from 1.8. Shallow and deep water are not, because they need more files for animation. I thought it'll be easier to batch convert them in irfanview. I tried this but something goes wrong. I choosed ocean files and set -30 for R and -30 for G. It should make ocean darker, but doesn't. It's darker on minimap and map preview, but in game it's brighter.

[Crendgrim]

load up a map in 1.8 and then the same map on 1.9... you cant tell me that 1.9 water looks better

Well... actually, I can. I like the new transition way more than the ugly old let's-place-a-line-of-yellow-here-so-that-it-looks-like-sand-transition.

Why don't you see that this is mainly a matter of personal taste, and that there are people thinking differently? I do see the roughness of the new transition, yet I still think it's better than the old (yeah, personal opinion again ).

[Cackfiend]

The current edges are more realistic under most circumstance... that's just what a stream/river banks looks like, and if you want a beach, that's what the sand is for.

more realistic?

its like a bad earthquake/tsunami happened and all the beaches in the world washed away

[artisticdude]

Its like a bad earthquake/tsunami happened and all the beaches in the world washed away

But what if you don't want sand bordering the water? Inland streams/rivers/ponds/lakes/puddles/wetlands/marshes/etc. don't always have sand bordering them. And if you want a sandy beach, there's the beach sand terrain.

[AlaskanAvenger]

The current edges are more realistic under most circumstance... that's just what a stream/river banks looks like, and if you want a beach, that's what the sand is for.

more realistic?

its like a bad earthquake/tsunami happened and all the beaches in the world washed away

I said stream and river banks. Just google river bank images and you will find the fast majority look very much like the current art for 1.9. same goes for most minor lakes. If you want sand for ocean beaches, just add it manually.

[Caphriel]

I checked out the tropical water in 1.9. It's much easier to tell what's under fog and what's not. For me, at least.

[Alarantalara]

Since recognition is important, I've tried to improve the contrast between different water types both under and not under fog.

For reference, this is what it looks like in 1.10 rc 1:

This is what I am currently considering:

I'm not happy with gray shallow water (bottom left) as it's darker than the other shallow waters and the farthest from what was originally created.

Comments and suggestions from anyone are welcome.

[Caphriel]

The new ones are much, much more recognizable. I can actually tell the all the water types apart under fog. (Can people with normal color vision do this with the original colors?) In general, it looks like you made the colors in general more vivid, which definitely helps. The grey shallow water is still the least distinct with fog, but I guess that's to be expected, because the fog is grey, too.