Improving castles in cave transitions

[vultraz]

I've noticed for years that the transitions between non-dwarvish castles and cave walls. Yesterday, I decided to tweak the terrain graphics WML to replicate the behavior of dwarvish castles with other castles (but not keeps). The result is at the end of this post.

However, as highlighted in red, we don't have transition images for all variants of castle with cave walls, so for the time being I used the dwarvish images, so it looks a little weird.

If anyone wants to take a shot at creating transition images for other variants of castle with the cave walls, that would be quite welcome. The transitions for the dwarvish castles are in data\core\images\terrain\castle\dwarven-castle-wall for reference.

EDIT: better comparison image

[Alarantalara]

I did the images for cave-encampment some time ago. You can find them in the Roar of the Woses add-on.
After I did them, I decided it was not worth trying to do this by adding more images in the existing style. The castles already don't line up well with each other and there are now 4 different types of caves for which only one has transitions to any keep. I'd rather take the time to find a new way of cutting castles into pieces so that no special transitions need be made for any case where walls adjoin - castle, cave, keep or otherwise. I think it's possible if towers are separated from walls and sides are done by walls and corners by towers, but I didn't get as far as actually trying it out.

[vultraz]

Hm. That's actually probably a good idea. It would allow us to reduce to number of images needed for transitions. But the castle cutter would have to be redone then, wouldn't it?

[doofus-01]

But the castle cutter would have to be redone then, wouldn't it?

The castle cutter is a relic, don't let that be a concern. It might have been used for the dwarf castle, and the obsolete human castle, but not for most of the others.

[vultraz]

So what would be the best way to do this, then?

[doofus-01]

Not sure. Drawing special transitions for all castles like is done for the dwarf castle is something I'm certainly not going to volunteer for (and dwarf castle is just single-level, the others would probably end up needing more images). Maybe there could be some sort of rough stone wall that wouldn't need precise alignment so could be re-used for all castle-cave varieties.

[vultraz]

I think Alarantalara's suggestion was to re-cut castles so the extra images won't be needed. I was asking if you could recommend a method for that.

[zookeeper]

So what would be the best way to do this, then?

Lots of grunt work.

[vultraz]

So what would be the best way to do this, then?

Lots of grunt work.

I was afraid of that

[Wussel]

I would suggest just to do it.

For starter: I would take human and orcish castle and keep!

Making the transition seems to be just cut and paste.

Meaning: Take the dwarven castle transition and replace the wall part with one of the for above.

For starter I would focus on one wall color, but I would definetely treat the keep as well.

[zookeeper]

I don't think new images are necessary; if someone wants to make them, then that'd be great, but if not, then we could fix it WML-side somehow.

Here's my attempt so far. There's a glitch with some walls drawing on top of towers, and I haven't yet attempted to make all of it mesh with keeps, but it seems like a good start.

[nuorc]

btw: Was the display of walls changed for 1.12? If not, I'd like to point to something I think isn't pretty:

bfw-osotw.png (79.52 KiB) Viewed 6143 times

I just can think of this example from 1.10, but maybe it's possible to hide the unexplored side of the wall?

[Tom_Of_Wesnoth]

nuorc, seeing that lets the player know there's a castle there, which is important information.

[Ravana]

Point is that player should not know that.

[nuorc]

@Tom_Of_Wesnoth: Sure it's important to know where stuff is, but I don't think cave walls are supposed to be see-through.


Edit: Ravana beat me to it...