Strategic map terrain -large scale map

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Wussel
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Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Wussel »

I did some experiments with tiles derived from Wesnoth official maps.

The key idea is that roads and river use the logic of the wooden bridge. Therefore the endings are only visible extensions. They are overlays. Cities (village) and villages are overlays to. There can only be a village a road or a EDIT: river on a tile. However there are many interesting visual effect combining this overlays with their endings. Unfortunately I did not find a way to use mountains, hills, swamp and woods as overlays as there is only one overlay. I had to go through all the transitions between the tiles.

If there is a river in the woods the tile essentially has both terrain types. So water and forest movement type applies, which make sense to me for a large scale map. I did come up with a flag variant which is essentially a colored needle which you pick into the village on your map to mark ownership.

There seems to be some pattern in the water and in the plains, which I could not get rid of. Any advice? I have seen the solution in the other thread on this topic, but I would prefer more structured terrain tiles.

Would there be a way to get the map border of the original maps as border for the strategic map? Enough talk. Have a look.
large world map.png
large world map-close.png
Last edited by Wussel on August 10th, 2012, 6:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Nice! I could see this being used for campaigns to create the maps shown before each scenario; maps made that way might perhaps be of slightly lower quality than the mainline ones, but would still look quite nice for a lot less work.

It doesn't sound like that's what you intended it for, but I think it'd be useful for that.

I suppose I should now go look around for this "other thread on the topic" that you mentioned...
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lipk
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by lipk »

I was working on exactly the same thing before, but this looks way better than what I did. Would you mind posting the png-s and the cfg files? Maybe I could help with the transition issues.
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Found the other thread! Lipk is right, your version looks better, though his wasn't that bad either.
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Wussel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Wussel »

Thanks for the kind words
Spoiler:
I made some tiny map as editor icon, but I guess it is not really essential for functionality. Here are the graphics for the terrain folder.
strat.rar
(631.61 KiB) Downloaded 639 times
to flags (maybe needs 4 files extension 1 to 4) and extra line in flag macro
strat-flag-1.png
strat-flag-1.png (1.45 KiB) Viewed 13457 times
To buttons:
group_s-active.png
group_s-active.png (1.54 KiB) Viewed 13457 times
group_s-active-pressed.png
group_s-active-pressed.png (1.56 KiB) Viewed 13457 times
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

As I understand, flags don't need to be multiple frames, but they do need an "icon" version for showing in the status bar at the top of the screen when it's that player's turn. In this particular case I expect you could just crop the orb out.

EDIT: I get a "macro BRIDGE not found" error with that code in 1.10... and I have no idea what I should replace it with...

EDIT2: You know the existing flag macro can support user flags, right? As long as you put the images in images/flags and name them according to the right convention, it should work. The only issue there is that it does assume four frames, but you could just duplicate one image for all four frames.

EDIT3: May be easier not to use the macro. You just need the keys "flag=strat/flag.png", flag_icon=strat/flag-icon.png", and "flag_rgb=flag_green", and it'll work. You could define your own macro if you wanted.
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Wussel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Wussel »

Hmm, I am still on 1.5/1.6. There is a wooden bridge in 1.10 too. It is darker brown now. Maybe the macro has been renamed. Maybe Lipk can help. He seems to be cool with the new terrain code.
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I managed to get it partially working in 1.10 (linked because large image).
terrain-graphics.cfg:
By the way, editor buttons require four variants: no suffix, -active, -pressed, -active-pressed.
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lipk
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by lipk »

I made my version, too. Extract it to your userdata folder and it should show up in the editor (group "Strategic Map").

I'd suggest to redo the hill, harsh and forest terrains with a different approach. The base image shouldn't fill the whole hex, but instead you should use transitions to blend adjacent hexes of the same type together. This way, you have to do only one transition per terrain type (for e.g., you'd need to make only a forest to forest transition for the forest, while with the current technique ideally you'd need at least a forest to flat and a forest to water transition). Also, as much as I admire your efforts on this project, the mountain is just plain ugly. I think I've done a much better job on that in my cartographic terrain pack.

There were some GIMP brushes somewhere with which I could draw Wesnoth-style trees and mountains, but I don't know anymore where did I get them :hmm:

You have a nice ship :P
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strat.zip
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Wussel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Wussel »

Good job!
You are lacking the extensions so far. The extensions are really what makes rivers and roads look cool. I am sure the wooden bridge has extensions in 1.10. Maybe they renamed the files in 1.10 for the wooden bridge. That means you would have to rename the files for river and road endings exactly the same way as you are using the same macro.

For the in between terrain transition Lipk might come up with something great. The old transition is in my opinion only optimal for any land tile to water. So what I did with Forrest to water is already sub optimal. I am under the impression that the new terrain code has some benefits. About the new terrain graphic you can read different opinions on the forum. So I guess my uneducated opinion is not needed.

I noticed the next 2 button files. But I did not see them in use. But you can copy the 2 I gave you. I have a previous version there, and they actually never show in 1.6.
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

lipk: Only problem is you missed swamp. :) Also roads don't seem to work.

Image

Transitions need some work, but apart from that it looks pretty nice!
Wussel wrote:I noticed the next 2 button files. But I did not see them in use. But you can copy the 2 I gave you. I have a previous version there, and they actually never show in 1.6.
It seems you're right about not using two of them, but it also seems that the two it does use are the two you didn't post, filename-wise. :P


EDIT:
Image
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lipk
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by lipk »

Yeah, I indeed forgot about the marsh and some road/river joints were broken because of wrong filenames. Here's a fixed version.
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

That doesn't fix road intersections or river ends (though for river ends you'd probably need additional transitions, and it's easy to just work around it). Also, I see forest-water transitions that don't seem to be used?
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Wussel
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Wussel »

Hi guys you doing great!
About the bridge logic. There is one file used if you go into water and another if you end on a land tile. This should work and is needed for roads and rivers. Roads just end and shoud not be extended into the water.
It would be best to just use the plain land to water transition and to use the new transitions between all other tiles. That is new I believe and did not work in 1.5./1.6. Very useful code.
Is the bridge macro still doing this 120 degree turns properly? I am positively sure, that you have all the extensions needed for rivers and roads. You just have to use them.
The mountains are ugly, because I did not want to get into bad mountain transitions. It is basically hills with a mountain on top. But Lipk can fix that with his new transition in 1.10.
Have fun!
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Re: Strategic map terrain -large scale map

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

It looks like he used the dock logic for river ends, so that you actually place an extra river tile out onto the sea in order to get an end. This does make sense to me, since it allows you to put rivers near coasts without them automatically going into the sea, though it might be a bit strange if you can step one space into the sea on a map using this terrain (that's not a problem for me since I'm just using it as a graphical tool. :P ).
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