Comment on Eleazar's Terrain Improvements or other threads

[Eleazar]

Oh, and you may have fixed this already, but I noticed that the sunken castle ruin isn't meshing with the new water yet.

What do you mean?
That it's a different color?
non-animated?
or something else?

[TheJM]

It's non-animated, the old tile that fit with the old water. Unless of course you meant it that way and weren't planning on updating it for the new water. I'd post a picture but I'm too lazy to load wesnoth up right now..

[Gomisan]

I'm new here, so please excuse my chiming in on this, but I've been playing for ages, and am an avid map builder. With almost daily multiplayer sessions of BfW.

Today we checked out the new tileset, and while generally it's really impressive, a few things look a bit flat, dull.

In particular, the water has really lost it's character.

* The rocky fords now look like muddy puddles. These used to be good for collapsed buildings in the waterfront but now look very plain.
* The coastal reefs look undefined and duller than before.
* The tropical water is so saturated that it doesn't really fit with the other tiles.

Somehow the water now all looks murky instead of clear. Less vibrant than it was.

Otherwise.... awesome work!!!

(oh and I'll sneak in a tile request here... water/chasm transitions where the water runs down the wall like a waterfall, big or small doesn't matter but the chasms should be lower than the water and hence water should look like it is flowing into them.)

[Mountain_King]

(oh and I'll sneak in a tile request here... water/chasm transitions where the water runs down the wall like a waterfall, big or small doesn't matter but the chasms should be lower than the water and hence water should look like it is flowing into them.)

you might not be aware of this, but this happens in 1.8. The only reason it doesn't happen in 1.9 is because of the new animated water, and the waterfalls aren't yet animated.

[Gomisan]

you might not be aware of this, but this happens in 1.8. The only reason it doesn't happen in 1.9 is because of the new animated water, and the waterfalls aren't yet animated.

It does? Where? I've used chasms next to water in a number of my maps (1. and never noticed. In fact always thought it weird that it didn't.

If I remember over the weekend I'll double check it

Edit.. checked in v1.8.1. Side by side the water looks very different, but there is definitely no waterfalls or flow into chasms!


and the new...

[Eleazar]

* The rocky fords now look like muddy puddles. These used to be good for collapsed buildings in the waterfront but now look very plain.

That's a highly specific reason for preferring the old ford. For collapsed buildings try combining rubble with water, or using the reef, or making something custom that aliases to reef.
The old ford was the ugliest terrain (besides perhaps the desert mountains) to survive until 1.8.x. I'd like to make it better if i had the time, but IMHO it's a strong improvement.

* The coastal reefs look undefined and duller than before.

What you see is a quick hack. I made it into an overlay and made it layer properly, but haven't made good graphics for it. I've been hoping that someone else would since it's a relatively simple task now.

* The tropical water is so saturated that it doesn't really fit with the other tiles.

I expect non-tropical water to be the better choice in the majority of cases. Yet the tropical water looks pretty good to me on tropical island maps.

Somehow the water now all looks murky instead of clear. Less vibrant than it was.

Otherwise.... awesome work!!!

I can freely say, since i made the original water (expect the reef) that overall the old water stuff was not very well done, nor even very watery looking. The new stuff isn't perfect, but IMHO is progress.

I'm glad you are generally happy with the results of my labor-- i've put a couple hundred hours of work into terrain and GUI this summer.

you might not be aware of this, but this happens in 1.8. The only reason it doesn't happen in 1.9 is because of the new animated water, and the waterfalls aren't yet animated.

....Edit.. checked in v1.8.1. Side by side the water looks very different, but there is definitely no waterfalls or flow into chasms!

Indeed waterfalls have never been part of mainline, though they would be cool.
There was at least one addon for 1.8.x that provided waterfalls but the WML didn't make inclusion in mainline easy.

[Mountain_King]

That's strange. Whenever I make a map in 1.8.3 it transitions to waterfalls. Which addon was it that had waterfalls?

[artisticdude]

Which addon was it that had waterfalls?

This one.

[Reepurr]

I'm sorry to say this, but I just got myself 1.9 and I prefer the old water to the new water. I just think the water looks like some guy desaturated the original (ehm...).
The ford does look like a muddy puddle, I'm sorry. Is that supposed to be a really low sea floor?
However I like the coral reef bits that are above water. They just don't seem to go any lower.

(I'm sorry about how harsh that was)

[Bad_Dog]

I've heard enough people talk about not liking the old water that I decided to chime in and put my vote on the new water.

I don't understand, but it seems that a lot of folks really like the over-blue mostly unrealistic-looking water colors. I don't. The muted and browner landscape is absolutely great, and the water, too.

Perhaps a proliferation of oversaturated cartoon-style art direction in fantasy games is to blame, who knows? But in any case, the new terrain is a breath of fresh air for me.

Thanks again.
-Ben

[Reepurr]

I've decided I'll probably fiddle in core to swap back to 1.7 water and d... the OOS errors. (if any)

However, quite a few people like this murky stuff, so I'll post what my little fiddles in the Map Editor came up with.

1. The tropical water is insanely bright compared to the other waters, e.g. deep. Maybe you should make a tropical deep water too?
2. Hills float. It looks very bizarre, as if they go down to sea level and then go down no further?
3. Coastal reefs and merman villages could probably do with a tropical water alternative.

However, on the good side, the new grass looks amazing, and so do the roads.

Here's a slice of my testing map.

Screenie of my testing map

[Eleazar]

1. The tropical water is insanely bright compared to the other waters, e.g. deep. Maybe you should make a tropical deep water too?

I did. It will be in the next development release, "soon".

2. Hills float. It looks very bizarre, as if they go down to sea level and then go down no further?

I know, that's high on my priority list.

[Reepurr]

I did.

Ah, sorry, I didn't know that.

By the way, I stared at the new water that was lagging my computer out while testing my campaign, and it grew on me. Despite lagging my computer out.

So I went a bit mad trying to find new glitches and help out this new water.

Anyway, there's a problem with quite a bit of tiling at the moment.
(Does this count as spamming?)

Several castle/rough terrains don't go much further than sea level:
* Orcish keeps
* Dwarvish castles
* Desert mountains/desert hills?
* Mountains
* Volcanoes

You might actually have to do entirely new graphics for the bottom of the orcish keep, since it gets so big.

[doofus-01]

Several castle/rough terrains don't go much further than sea level:
* Orcish keeps

That's because they have a different footprint than other keeps. The standard footprint was a rule I did not know about when I drew those, and redrawing them for something like this is ... ugh. We are aware of it, and it will probably get done some day.

You might actually have to do entirely new graphics for the bottom of the orcish keep, since it gets so big.

I won't stop you.


The dwarf castles are also non-standard. Their cave/chasm transitions are custom made, which is bad because it makes terrain revisions much more difficult.

[Eleazar]

By the way, I stared at the new water that was lagging my computer out while testing my campaign, and it grew on me. Despite lagging my computer out.

Good Speed should improve as we move towards 1.10

And, no this is not spamming.

Several castle/rough terrains don't go much further than sea level:
* Orcish keeps
* Dwarvish castles
* Desert mountains/desert hills?
* Mountains
* Volcanoes

You might actually have to do entirely new graphics for the bottom of the orcish keep, since it gets so big.

Volcanos/Moutnains/Hills (except for the frozen ones) will all use the same type of hill-to-water transition.

Orcish-keeps and other castles that are too big to work with the new bank will need to be redone to work with the water's edge (or at least have an alternate). Planned future water animations make it impractical to have a bunch of different sized water's edges.

...More or less what Doofus wrote at the same time...