Fungus terrain bug

[octalot]

I'm not understanding why having both a mixed and non-mixed terrain is confusing. I'd think of the single fungus as a terrain where it's completely overgrown, so it can also be thought of as a mixed terrain of fungus underfoot and tree-size fungus, and that's what I'd hope could be visible to the user in the new sprite.

The difference between this and mixed fungus/flat is that on fungus/flat there's visible ground to put your feet on, even if you have to step on a mushroom then you know where the ground is under it. In single fungus then you have to test every step, unless you know the terrain like an elf knows the forest floor.

[sergey]

@octalot
Ok, your explanation convinced me.

[Soliton]

I performed some investigation and as I understand forest was gradually moved from single terrain to always mixed terrain. I think developers forgot to make the same transition for the fungus terrain.

Kinda weird conclusion since you posted a link to a discussion that shows that it was moved to a mixed terrain and subsequently reverted since it brought too many unwanted consequences. The way the Mushroom Grove is now is how it's intended to be for map balancing.

An additional mixed terrain would be nice if it can be made visually distinctive enough.

[sergey]

I performed some investigation and as I understand forest was gradually moved from single terrain to always mixed terrain. I think developers forgot to make the same transition for the fungus terrain.

Kinda weird conclusion since you posted a link to a discussion that shows that it was moved to a mixed terrain and subsequently reverted since it brought too many unwanted consequences.

Fungus transition in 1.12 doesn't look like a planned change and it is much later than forest transition.

You can read the irc logs from the day that this change was made, but if I remember correctly we were motivated to do this because the current system seems quite confusing for newbies. Best defense / worst movement is a good system that we use for forests, why do we do something completely different for mushroom groves? The "rule" that mushroom grove doesn't get this behavior isn't written anywhere... not very newbie friendly. I think the view was that we probably intended to do this when we introduced dual terrain types but forgot about the mushroom groves.

[Soliton]

Fungus transition in 1.12 doesn't look like a planned change and it is much later than forest transition.

Depends what you mean by planned or why that matters. It certainly was no bug.

You can read the irc logs from the day that this change was made, but if I remember correctly we were motivated to do this because the current system seems quite confusing for newbies. Best defense / worst movement is a good system that we use for forests, why do we do something completely different for mushroom groves? The "rule" that mushroom grove doesn't get this behavior isn't written anywhere... not very newbie friendly. I think the view was that we probably intended to do this when we introduced dual terrain types but forgot about the mushroom groves.

Probably not useful to speculate on what iceiceice speculated on 5 years ago but mushroom grove was certainly not forgotten. Infact it was briefly a mixed terrain before 1.6 as well and was reverted.

[sergey]

Depends what you mean by planned or why that matters. It certainly was no bug.

Probably not useful to speculate on what iceiceice speculated on 5 years ago but mushroom grove was certainly not forgotten.

It's good that the fungus issue is not forgotten. Do you have any plans to solve it? Even if you consider that it is technically not a bug, the user experience looks like it is a bug.

[Soliton]

It's good that the fungus issue is not forgotten. Do you have any plans to solve it? Even if you consider that it is technically not a bug, the user experience looks like it is a bug.

If it's possible to improve the visual aspect to make the functionality clearer to the player and less likely to trip them up that's great. I don't plan to implement that, no. I doubt I could if I tried.
My objection was to trying yet another time to convert mushroom grove to a mixed terrain and break maps. (As I said a new terrain as proposed in this thread can be perfectly fine.)

[sergey]

If it's possible to improve the visual aspect to make the functionality clearer to the player and less likely to trip them up that's great.

I asked in the art forums if someone can make that.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

change the sprite for the ^Uf and ^Ufi overlay to have a graphic that completely fills the hex without showing any of the base terrain, so that it doesn't look like a mixed terrain. Old maps look a bit different, but the stats are the same.

That's nonsensical. If it fully covers the base terrain, then it should be a base terrain. There's no point in making it an overlay if you can't put anything underneath it (or if it makes no difference visually what you put underneath it).

I'm not understanding why having both a mixed and non-mixed terrain is confusing. I'd think of the single fungus as a terrain where it's completely overgrown, so it can also be thought of as a mixed terrain of fungus underfoot and tree-size fungus, and that's what I'd hope could be visible to the user in the new sprite.

The difference between this and mixed fungus/flat is that on fungus/flat there's visible ground to put your feet on, even if you have to step on a mushroom then you know where the ground is under it. In single fungus then you have to test every step, unless you know the terrain like an elf knows the forest floor.

Indeed, if you want to split mushrooms into two types, then you should add two new terrains:

• Base terrain Uf[/u] which acts identically to current fungus. It might be called "Dense fungus", or maybe "Mycelium" or something.
[*]New overlay terrain [c]^Ufs, which is still mushroom (ie aliasof=Uft) but combines with the base terrain much like forest does. The S stands for "sparse".
• Oh, and an illuminated version of ^Ufs, because you can only have one overlay.

Since presumably the plan would be to deprecate ^Uf and ^Ufi, you could reuse those images for ^Ufs. However, existing uses of ^Uf in mainline multiplayer maps would be replaced by Uf instead. (In campaign maps, ^Uf might be replaced by ^Ufs with a sprinkling of Uf in any larger patches… but it would be handled on a case-by-case basis, rather than a mass find-and-replace.)

You could even add a few additional variants of the base terrain that fit in with different types of surrounding terrains. For example, Ufh might be hilly fungus visually similar to current Hh^Uf (but more fungal). It would help to avoid all the mushrooms suddenly looking identical in every MP map.

[josteph]

change the sprite for the ^Uf and ^Ufi overlay to have a graphic that completely fills the hex without showing any of the base terrain, so that it doesn't look like a mixed terrain. Old maps look a bit different, but the stats are the same.

That's nonsensical. If it fully covers the base terrain, then it should be a base terrain. There's no point in making it an overlay if you can't put anything underneath it (or if it makes no difference visually what you put underneath it).

In a word: backward compatibility.

The ^Uf overlay creates a non-mixed terrain hex. We can't change the stats of ^Uf hexes without breaking compatibility, so we must change the sprite to match the stats. We can add a Uf top-level terrain code, we can add an overlay that creates a mixed terrain fungus and re-uses the current sprites, that's all true; but right now, the sprite and stats of ^Uf don't match so we should change the sprite to match the stats.

[sergey]

If the new sprite won't be created or accepted consider the next idea. Replace all hills+fungus, mountain+fungus, swamp+fungus, etc with flat+fungus. It will look less confusing and still nice since there is a lot of different flat terrains available.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

In a word: backward compatibility.

The ^Uf overlay creates a non-mixed terrain hex. We can't change the stats of ^Uf hexes without breaking compatibility, so we must change the sprite to match the stats. We can add a Uf top-level terrain code, we can add an overlay that creates a mixed terrain fungus and re-uses the current sprites, that's all true; but right now, the sprite and stats of ^Uf don't match so we should change the sprite to match the stats.

I understand the desire for backwards compatibility, but I think leaving the existing terrain unchanged and adding new ones with the desired properties is a better way of maintaining it. Note that changing the sprite in itself is something like a compatibility break.

[doofus-01]

In a word: backward compatibility.

Yeah, if the mushroom terrain is an overlay that isn't an overlay, that's too bad, but not much to be done for 1.14. Getting rid of the confusing visual cue of the base layer still makes sense though.

Note that changing the sprite in itself is something like a compatibility break.

I agree with that too, so I've started something that should be fairly minimal change but still hides the base layer. I'll put it on github later, it's still got some glitches.

BTW, can we stop calling terrain graphics images "sprites"? I guess it could be called a sprite, like almost anything in Wesnoth, but it's not pixel art, it doesn't move around, and it requires more than one image (usually).

EDIT:
PR link ->https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/pull/4185

[josteph]

What would be the right term?

[EarthCake]

I suppose we could use term Terrain Graphics, or shortened TG.