Comment on Eleazar's Terrain Improvements or other threads

[Crendgrim]

3: The rails are only an overlay - is it possible to improve this if it's on top of a chasm? So that there would be a small bridge? It's looking really weird ...

As the person who drew the rails, I can answer this question. The answer is not without a lot of effort. lurker had been working on a fancier chasm bridge and discovered that the WML macros didn't support it yet (see here for a outline of the problems). The rails would have the same problem.

Also, it's a terrifying number of images to draw, especially since once you start drawing bridges for the rails, you'll want a second set for over water, a third set for over lava, etc. To put it in perspective, the only terrains with more images than the bridges and rails are water (which is animated) and the castles with keeps. This probably applies to the your second question as well: the stone bridge actually needs more images than the wooden one despite not bending.

OK, thanks .. I think I have to look at how Wesnoth creates those terrains from the codes... (I thought that bridges were overlays which are automatically copied over the terrain by the engine ... ) My fault.

Why is the castle bridge not also only an overlay? Then it could be used also "on top of the earth"...

I'm not sure what you mean by "castle bridge". All the bridges are overlays. SHIFT+Click to apply bridges (or any other overlay terrain, without the default base-- If the have a default.

Euh... I wanted to say "cave bridge"...
The SHIFT-feature I didn't know. Thanks for this hint


Crend

[doofus-01]

I'm not exactly sure what your concept is. The ends are all irregular (angle and shape) but the don't seem damaged or weathered.

I was trying to split the difference for something that looked OK everywhere, but maybe it wasn't a good idea. The lines in the middle of the boards weren't supposed to be there, it was a WML goof.

This is a better layout? (I didn't have time for drawing edges yet though.)

[Reval]

Not the perfect place to post general terrain problems, but some of them are already posted here...
That terrains that are just pictures other terrains, like rails, flowers, stones, bridges (!!)... cause problems with non zero-level terrain is pretty clear.
What surprised me more is that there are so many problems with the natural cave walls.
Maybe someone in here wants to improve some of the marked transitions.

[Eros]

What surprised me more is that there are so many problems with the natural cave walls.
Maybe someone in here wants to improve some of the marked transitions.

Unless I am wrong someone is redoing the cave wall WML (and maybe the art?) The fact that nothing interfaces with cave wall has been around for ages so I imagine it is quite a knotty problem.

[Alarantalara]

It's not knotty, just excessively large. Every image is easy to make, and could almost be done with just cut, paste and erase. There's just 3,456 images that need to be done. This is more than the total number of terrain images for everything in 1.9.2. So, if you want to make the 20+MB of images, go right ahead, they're not hard and may even be added. But I'd be shocked if anyone felt it was worth the time to do it. At best, you might see the ones that are used in mainline completed.

[Reval]

It's not knotty, just excessively large. Every image is easy to make, and could almost be done with just cut, paste and erase. There's just 3,456 images that need to be done. This is more than the total number of terrain images for everything in 1.9.2. So, if you want to make the 20+MB of images, go right ahead, they're not hard and may even be added. But I'd be shocked if anyone felt it was worth the time to do it. At best, you might see the ones that are used in mainline completed.

Not every transition might be found "worthy". But e.g. the transitions to keeps and castles are probably frequently used and they are especially bad. That would definitly be the point to start.

[Alarantalara]

Actually, that estimate was just for cave to castle/keep. I've been thinking about it a little more and it's an underestimate.
One castle, including its keep, needs 360 images if it wants to work with all possible cave wall patterns.
There are 13 castle types. That's over 4000 images.
Even if you can do an image every minute, it's still 78 hours of work. Know anyone who wants a full time job for two weeks drawing the transitions (without pay)?

Oh, and if anyone adds a new cave wall or castle, you need to do all the extra images for each other castle/cave this implies. Right now a complete castle needs ~45 images; you want to multiply that by 10. I think the pretty orc and sand castles would never have been drawn if that was a requirement. Note that those 45 images work against every flat terrain type, the extra 360 are needed for just 6 more. They are not the majority.

Plans vary wildly in cost:
Just as a non-programmer can easily make impossible requests of a coder, you need to remember that each aspect of your planned art assets carries a steep time cost. It's incredibly easy to toke up a pie-in-the-sky plan for a game that will require more art than all the humans in the universe could ever produce. You need to be canny about choosing what art assets you're going to have - you need to avoid anything that requires a lot of brute force. One huge thing you need to bear in mind is that this is a big area where you can't imitate commercial companies. Imitating what commercial companies do on code is often fine and good, but art is one area where our inability to 'throw money at the problem' makes a big difference. Specifically, commercial companies can do 'death marches' to produce content. They can hire several artists to do grueling, unappealing, grunt work to fulfill their design-spec whims. They can commission a lot of work that's not fun to make, and that doesn't improve the overall visual quality of the game.

You, on the other hand, can't. Artists will generally only make stuff for you if they feel it will benefit the bottomline 'overall visual quality' of the game. Artists will usually 'scratch their own itches' - they'll improve the things in the game that are bothering them, or they'll add things to the game that they wish it had. You as the coder, have to be careful to make a plan that isn't doomed to be a work of fiction, either by being something an artist wouldn't want to do (by dint of being grueling or something unhelpful to the core game), or by planning to have something your artists could never possibly complete.

All that said, I did do the encampment for one cave wall 1.8, though I have yet to update it for 1.9 and it never became part of mainline. But it was only because I used that specific combination in a campaign I made.

[Reval]

Actually, that estimate was just for cave to castle/keep. I've been thinking about it a little more and it's an underestimate.
One castle, including its keep, needs 360 images if it wants to work with all possible cave wall patterns.
There are 13 castle types. That's over 4000 images.

Ok, I give in - you did think about it a little longer...
On the other hand, I think it is pretty easy to see that some of the cave-castle-transitions are the most severe graphical "bugs" of the game. Looking at the last sceen-shoot, I am not even able to understand how something like the black strip in the stone wall in the lower rigth corner happened. And there are even cave to cave bugs as the lower left corner shows.

If you allready did some attempts to fix some cases I really do not understand why they did not become mainlined. Who made that decission and for what reason?

[Lord-Knightmare]

Was this noticed before or the transition for Desert Sand Hills next to swamp look completely "raw" or transition-less..

[StDrake]

Is this the topic to complain about terrain changes? Someone brought this up earlier in a wrong thread and now, having played some maps where it's visible I've crashed inti this as well - lighting up deep water was a very icky idea, now it's awfully hard to tell it apar from shallow, even when they neighbour they blend so much you have to look deeply into it to notice a difference

[Lord-Knightmare]

Really? I didn't know that this problem was reported earlier. Sorry
But to my viewpoint, the deep and shallows are easy to differentiate and animating them was a great idea.

[beetlenaut]

even when they neighbour they blend so much you have to look deeply into it to notice a difference

I've failed to notice the difference before, myself, and I bet it would cause a lot more frustration for a newbie. Something that makes such a large game play difference should have an equally large graphical difference. It may not look as nice, but I think the ocean has to be darkened.

[bigkahuna]

It may not look as nice, but I think the ocean has to be darkened.

I agree. Maybe just a couple shades or so, because right now it is just enough off that the transition looks a bit ugly.

[Eleazar]

even when they neighbour they blend so much you have to look deeply into it to notice a difference

I've failed to notice the difference before, myself, and I bet it would cause a lot more frustration for a newbie. Something that makes such a large game play difference should have an equally large graphical difference. It may not look as nice, but I think the ocean has to be darkened.

Using the latest dev release?
The ocean/water colors went through a lot of adjustments last year, but i think my last change was to increase contrast.

Also the waves are bigger more widely spaced on the ocean version.

[StDrake]

yep, I use 1.9.3, and in the heat of battle (heat of battle in a turn based game..sheesh, who am i trying to kid) i keep discovering which water is which by the sudden cutoff in mobility