Deciduous trees

[beetlenaut]

I think that deciduous forest in winter should not be an alias of the forest terrain.

Greetings, Fabi

It depends; if it's just "winter," ie what's drawn now (without snow), it should just be forest. If there's a version created that adds snow then that should be something other than straight forest alias.

Fabi is probably thinking that ambush shouldn't work in a bare forest, and it shouldn't give such good defense benefits. It also would be a little easier to move through. Maybe we should add another(!) new terrain type. It could be used for bare forests, and deserts with lots of plants. It would be halfway between "flat" and "forest". Maybe it could be called "scrub". And maybe no one wants to complicate defense any more.

[Darker_Dreams]

And maybe no one wants to complicate defense any more.

This is what I was assuming... if I'm wrong, then I'm not going to knock it.

Fabi is probably thinking that ambush shouldn't work in a bare forest, and it shouldn't give such good defense benefits.

if you live in the forest, you generally live in the forest year round- so saying you're suddenly not as good at skills you've developed to live there because of a shift that happens every year seems a little odd to me. On a similar note (having spent a lot of time in the woods growing up) the foliage has less to do with how hard it is to find people than the sight-distance cut and sound warping created by the tree-trunks themselves. but that's just my $.02.

Maybe we should add another(!) new terrain type. It could be used for bare forests, and deserts with lots of plants. It would be halfway between "flat" and "forest". Maybe it could be called "scrub".

I'm not going to argue against new terrain types, though. I just think that it's a little odd to make elves better in coniferous forests than deciduous ones.



Meanwhile, I'm trying to get a feel for the spacing of trees in the hexes. I notice a number of the pine forests have trees that fall outside their own hex, and have yet to figure out how to make such things work nicely. I have, however, thrown together an orchard, or three. each of a, b, and c indicate a different row spacing to the orchard (they do not play nicely together) and each comes in all three "seasons." I have run them through the wesnoth map-editor to see that they look ok, but I'm not as cool as beetlenaut to include them in a "campaign" (or, frankly, a number of other ways). But, it's something.
cheerio!

[beetlenaut]

My first couple tries at forest hexes ended up looking kind of like orchards--It took a lot of trial and error to break up the straight lines. I never thought of making an orchard on purpose. You should put some fruit on the green trees though.

What would the terrain type be for orchards? That's another good use for a "lightly-wooded" area. Maybe we do need that new terrain type after all.

[Darker_Dreams]

I actually considered adding fruit a couple times- I may well add some fruit and make it a fourth variation. Ironically, I had more trouble getting the trees to line up than to get the "random distribution." it's those outliers that really give me fits though.

As I was thinking about the terrain type for orchard, I just assumed it'd be "better plains or forests" for both defense and movement. The nicely spaced trees make it fine for plains-dwellers, while the trees benefit forest-dwellers.

[Cernunnos]

<off-topic>
You can ambush when the forest tile is "just" a great tree =°
</off-topic>

I though it would be only deciduous tree forests
but well, mixed forest can do well too

Just my opinion: Good so far!

Good luck! bye.

[beetlenaut]

I worked on the trees, and I think I improved most of them--in some cases, quite a bit. Then I did two variations of a pure-deciduous forest for summer and fall (no winter yet). Now with three kinds of forest tiles, a forest can look much more organic than before! Even an area of nothing but forest has some good texture. There is a map in the zip file that demonstrates this. (Move it into the editor folder to take a look.)

I think the deciduous forest in fall looks a little monotonous, but it will be OK if used sparingly. I think I will try some more sparse variations to break it up.

I probably won't do any more work on this until around next weekend, but don't let that stop you! I'm including the png file I've been pulling the trees off of. If someone wants to make single tiles for the scenery folder, that would be great. (I think the oak at the bottom of the sheet is a prime candidate for that.) Or, you can do whatever else you want.

[thespaceinvader]

Looking awesome. I'd love to see these in-game for some real variation on big elf-forests.

[zookeeper]

Good job. In order to get it in 1.6 I'll probably have to commit it today already with the current set of tiles, but we'll just have to update them later once properly finished.

[fabi]

They look great.

The pure Deciduous trees are too similar in colour and the winter tile isn't working for me.
I can see the savannah underground but no winter trees.

edit: Why no spring tiles?

[beetlenaut]

Good job. In order to get it in 1.6 I'll probably have to commit it today already with the current set of tiles, but we'll just have to update them later once properly finished.

1.6 is coming out that soon?
We'll probably have to code some transitions in order for them all to look right, and I'm not sure how to do that. The wiki seems to be very out of date, and the core terrain folders are a complicated nest of macros that will take me quite a while to trace through in order to figure out.

The pure Deciduous trees are too similar in colour and the winter tile isn't working for me.

Deciduous forests do tend to be one color. I suppose I should not worry about realism, and make some different colored trees. The winter trees are not drawn yet, but they are coded, so you see a (blank) tile in the editor. The winter forests are going to be one color, and there's nothing much to be done about that. The bark color has to be pretty dark to show up against the savanna, so lighter trees will just disappear, and I can't get much darker before they just look black.

edit: Why no spring tiles?

What would be the difference between spring and summer? Spring trees would have flowers, but those would usually be way to small to show up.

[Vendanna]

What would be the difference between spring and summer? Spring trees would have flowers, but those would usually be way to small to show up.

You could animate it to have flying birds on spring trees

They look awesome, and at this rate I'm curious how 1.6 will look like with the huge amount of graphic changes they are adding

[fabi]

edit: Why no spring tiles?

What would be the difference between spring and summer? Spring trees would have flowers, but those would usually be way to small to show up.

Cherry tree in spring:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... 0327163025

[beetlenaut]

Spring trees would have flowers, but those would usually be way to small to show up.

I stand corrected. They can show up. Still, I have no plans to do yet another set of trees and tiles in multiple variations. I have enough to do already.

[Max]

We'll probably have to code some transitions in order for them all to look right, and I'm not sure how to do that. The wiki seems to be very out of date, and the core terrain folders are a complicated nest of macros that will take me quite a while to trace through in order to figure out.

shouldn't it be possible to "just" clone the files for the existing (pine) forest? they already have transitions for e.g castles...

[zookeeper]

I'm working on all this stuff right now, it's mostly done already. Don't worry about it. Stay tuned.