Solidifying the void - nondev version

[Sapient]

My suggestion: instead of wood, make the edges run together with the UI, ie. replace the wood with the "stone" or whatever what that is in the GUI.

I agree; a non-scrolling background that blends with the existing UI elements is my preference by far. I made a mockup of this already, but it was a rough sketch that could be improved.

[irrevenant]

So, in answer to your question, a border of 15 hexes in each direction should be more than adequate for the vast number of scenarios.

15 hexes to send some troops through the fog and assassinate the leader?

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. I can't decide whether it's a pro or a con. Certainly it's something skilled players would know they have to defend against.

It'd take a lot of time to pull off and would leave you awfully vulnerable on the main front, so it'd probably be a fairly rare occurrence anyway.

[ivanovic]

Okay, I did a little tweaking on the images and Mordante did implement support for using overlay images to create the border. This is how things look ATM.

Keep these things in mind:
* When the map is big enough, you will only see the fading effect, nothing of the "extra background".
* In the screenshot I did make the window a little bigger than the game map to show the "background".
* These transitions are not final, they are the work of some time in gimp and *definatly* need some polishing by the hands of a real artist.

[turin]

IMHO it looks good.


But of course the real problems are with the top and bottom borders... what's the plan with those?

[SkeletonCrew]

* The background doesn't scroll, this is a feature.

Visually, it really should scroll, because if we have a wooden background, the map works with the visual metaphor of a game board sitting on a wooden table - the same is true of most other patterns (stone, etc). Scrolling works with the visual metaphor, not-scrolling breaks the metaphor.

I strongly suggest changing this.

Well it would depend on the background. I think with the background Ivanovic posted scrolling is no longer required. (if we change the background it might be required but some people like the static version some people don't and the static version is the easiest to create.)

IMHO it looks good.
But of course the real problems are with the top and bottom borders... what's the plan with those?

Like I said before; the top and bottom also will get a border but it's a little bit harder to add that's why I postponed that until I had some feedback on the prototypes.

[freim]

First I would like to take a step back from commenting directly on the various attempts made in this thread and ask the following:

Why on earth do we want to make Wesnoths map look like it's a tabletop board game?

I strongly dislike this direction. It completely breaks the game immersion for me. Wesnoth has always been heading in the direction of detailed and "realistic" graphic. The only symbolic about it is the discrepancy in scale for the sake of gameplay. There is nothing whatsoever in our overall feel of the gfx that has anything to do with making Wesnoth look like a boardgame and neither should it. Wesnoth maps should look like they are part of a larger world, almost all of the proposals so far completely breaks this illusion.

So far the only one which doesn't is Ivanovic's last attempt:
- It uses a bg which fits with the rest of the GUI making it look like a natural part of the games interface. Furthermore it should not scroll. It should look like what it is, a static part of the UI.
- The fadeout seems so far to be the best compromize between the various problems this border stuff want to fix (the final version will be used for all sides of course).

[Dave]

I concur wholeheartedly with freim.

[mog]

The fadeout looks good indeed. But I don't see why we need it at all if the map is larger than the screen. We can simply cut off the map in that case (as it's done in 1.2).

[ivanovic]

The size of the map shown when the map is bigger than the screen section that can be shown will basically be the same, maybe a little more than in 1.2. This is to not cut off heads of units that are a little bigger and to allow defense anims that make the units go backwards even when they are in the top row.
In general I think it is good to use the fade itself on all sizes just to have the whole look uniform and I think it does not look too bad if there is a fade from ingame to the UI.

[taro]

Okay, I did a little tweaking on the images and Mordante did implement support for using overlay images to create the border.

Compared with the last snapshot from Mordante this looks a lot better. I tested the SVN version yesterday, the somewhat ugly stripe on the left side is gone, the transition looks much better now. But more essential if the (not yet implemented) transition at the top and the bottom of the map will "remove" the space of half a hex compared to the current version the problem with the impassable hexes disappears.

- It uses a bg which fits with the rest of the GUI making it look like a natural part of the games interface. Furthermore it should not scroll. It should look like what it is, a static part of the UI.
- The fadeout seems so far to be the best compromize between the various problems this border stuff want to fix (the final version will be used for all sides of course).

Although I preferred a scrolling background for the background used in version 1.3.4 I completely agree with this.

Looks like things are on a good way . Nice work!

[ivanovic]

Okay, we are getting closer to a "releasable" version.
Now shroud does look good again (thanks to alink) and we have a border at the top and the bottom. Just one little thing is still left to be fixed: sometimes the corners do not work 100% as intended. You will see one of the current glitches in the screenshot, too, it will soon be worked on so that this is fixed, too.

For all the artists who want to work on improving the background and transition:

Have a look at the files in the folder data/core/images/terrain/off-map. There you find these things:
alpha.png: tile used when the background should be seen, this is eg used in the map hexcake
wood.png: the "real" background image to fill up space when the map is too small to use the complete display
fade_border_*.png: the files used to create the transitions on the border

So please feel free to work on improving these images.

[SkeletonCrew]

I finished the work for 1.3.5 on the border, this doesn't mean it's finished yet! (1.3.5 has been planned for release pretty soon.)

The following things haven't been done yet:
* It's possible to generate a better background Ivanovic's version is a huge improvement but I think it would be possible to redefine the images even more. Note the odd shapes of the border tiles is to avoid them to be rendered on top of eachother.
* The _off^_usr terrain gets a ToD colouring which looks bad (just play hexcake).
* The _off^_usr terrain gets highlighted I think it would look better if that doesn't happen...
* Some transitions at the border look bad (show black terrains).
* The stuff hasn't been made themable yet.

The background still doesn't scroll and I think it's not required with the current version. Jetryl what do you think?

Thanks to alink the slowdown of the scrolling has been removed.

[SkeletonCrew]

* bump *

Now that 1.3.6 has been released with this version of the border it would be nice to get some feedback...

[jb]

Hey guys, some thoughts i had...

I really liked the wooden border, and I really like the new border as well. I'm sure there are other ideas that were talked about that never surfaced here.

Have you considered making the border a theme-able option? So that when when you host a game you could select your preferred border style, much in the same way you select the era? This way ideas wouldn't have to be rejected, instead they could all be included.

Campaigns could use the default theme.

[SkeletonCrew]

Hey guys, some thoughts i had...

I really liked the wooden border, and I really like the new border as well. I'm sure there are other ideas that were talked about that never surfaced here.

Have you considered making the border a theme-able option?

I already planned on making it themable and I just finished it. It's a part of the normal ThemeWML so should be changed by selecting a different theme.
More info here http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/ThemeWML#.5 ... _border.5D