river ford terrain

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scott
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river ford terrain

Post by scott »

Someone came up with a ford hex, and after searching for a while I concluded it was deleted you-know-when. Does anyone have it? I think it was frame or eleazar.

Also, not finding the terrain I tried to make my own. How can this be improved?
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quartex
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Post by quartex »

Eleazar made one when he was re-doing the water tiles. It looked really nice too.
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Simons Mith
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Post by Simons Mith »

Make it /much/ shallower. Imagine starting with a tile similar to the hills tile. 'Flatten' that until it's a bumpy/rocky river bed. Then layer shallow water over it at a very high level of transparancy, then steal the rocks from one of the variant grassland tiles and layer them on top. Then add a wake downstream of each rock.

The wake might be a pest, unfortunately - you'd have to have wakes pointing in different directions depending on river flow. Darn.

This image might be a bit big to use as a terrain tile :-), but it shows what I'm trying to get at:

http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1998- ... unning.jpg
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Jetrel
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Post by Jetrel »

Actually, it looks pretty good as-is. Good enough to use, IMO.
This would be *really* nice to have, for map variety. Our current water is a bit monotonous.


Possible suggestions - some rocks sticking out, a bit of what Simons Mith said.
Anyways, great work, and good luck getting it to a stage you consider "finished".
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Post by Rhuvaen »

Jetryl wrote:Actually, it looks pretty good as-is. Good enough to use, IMO.
The colour brightness is completely wrong - it looks too similar to deep water in brightness - a terrain that's quite impassable for most units. Exactly the opposite of what a ford tile signifies!
scott
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Post by scott »

It's weird because I built it up just like I thought it would be in nature:
a sandy bottom, rocks, and a thin layer of water on top. The result was gray because of the mixing between the yellow and blue. I did a partial erase of a lower water layer with a confetti brush to get some yellow to show through, and I think it could be done on the top layer to get some rocks to pop through the surface. I can then select the holes in that layer and try to add some foam. I'm not sure if that will address the depth problem or not.
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telex4
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Post by telex4 »

IMO the problem is that it is so different from the surrounding water tiles. It looks a little like Moses has come along and parted the sea, or there is a path that has been flooded when the water levels rose.

I'd do a tile anew based upon the 3D graphic posted by Simons Mith. Start with a normal water tile, have some rocks visible just below the surface and others poking above the surface. Put in a little surface disturbance and you should be there.
scott
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Post by scott »

So less rocks maybe? Simons' (Simon's in real life) picture was more or less what Eleazar was doing if I remember correctly.
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Shade
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If the ford is to go in

Post by Shade »

I would like to publicly thank Scott for his work on tSoE... If this goes in it will see it's first use here... As somebody sitting on 40 scenarios I can see about 100 places this would be useful... The same goes for Darth Fools new keeps... It actually makes me look forward to updating all of those maps. There are tales of a possible upcoming 'stable release' and of the Dawn of the .9 development era (Don't ask me for details, they haven't been hashed out, & IIRWIIR)... But I think there's be a bunch of neat things coming in in the beginning of the .9 cycle, and I think fords (and a tweaked tSoE) will be amongst them...
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Jetrel
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Post by Jetrel »

Note about the nature of relflective materials.

The reflected image is the only thing of the water that you can see - the water itself doesn't add much of itself. Water needs about 10 solid feet before it starts to color things the misty grey color it usually has, and even then, truly clear water can take almost fifty feet before it starts to do this.

The reflected image is opaque when it is brighter than the water below it, and is transparent when it is darker than the water below it.
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Post by Dave »

Not wanting to be off topic in the art forum, but what exactly is the function of the ford? I don't think we would want to create a new terrain type, and it would seem silly if it was the same as shallow water. Being the same as a bridge would also be kind of redundant and unintuitive.

It seems to me that a ford in Wesnoth is represented by a path of shallow water running through a body of otherwise deep water (for examples the Ford of Abez).

I suppose that if we set up the code to support this, it could function like grassland for movement purposes, but like shallow water for defensive purposes.

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scott
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Post by scott »

It was intended to be an alternative picture for the bridge and is an alias of grassland. It's no biggie.

Maybe this represents water depth creep. My apologies!
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Sangel
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Post by Sangel »

I think if the ford were shallower (with more rocks breaking the surface) then an alias to grassland would be more obvious and intuitive.
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quartex
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Post by quartex »

Sangel wrote:I think if the ford were shallower (with more rocks breaking the surface) then an alias to grassland would be more obvious and intuitive.
I agree. I think the ford should look more like Eleazar's version where you had a series of rocks and tiny patches of sand rising above the water to really indicate that you could walk across the water.
scott
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Post by scott »

No foam - it didn't look good (less so than these).
I haven't tried big rocks, but I will.

Anyone have Eleazar's version?
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