Bridges

[DerWer2]

Well, you wouldn't have a stone bridge over an abyss larger than 1 hex anyway, because there would be nothing for the supports to rest on.

I agree. The best type of bridge to span larger areas would have to be a hanging bridge. Something like the "Bridge of death" on Monty Python's "The Holy Grail".

[Alarantalara]

I was hoping for something more boldly different than a difference in the size and shape of the paving blocks. I.E. ornamental or multi-colored stonework. Here's a quick example just to show generally what i'm talking about.

That makes sense. I put that alternate up only because I'd already done it and laziness won out for a bit. Here's another alternative, this time trying to coordinate with the human city buildings, since it's supposed to be be an urban bridge. I want to add some variation to the stone colours so it's not quite so monochromatic, but I think this is the way I want to go.

[Atz]

The bridge looks quite high, almost taller than the houses. Which isn't necessarily a problem for long bridges, but could look a bit odd for a short one... also, the transitions on the end might need to be fairly long to avoid looking too steep.

[Eleazar]

1) The castles: Some remarks from Alarantalara and my experiments convinced me that the castles use vertical(?) positioning: the floor is below, and the walls above the normal layer. This could be fixed by using a special tile for this transition, probably like the wooden bridge works

The castle overlapping is the only serious issue here. You've tested it going into a castle hex and going along side a castle hex, and thorough testing is good, but it if a trade-off is necessary, the appearance of the bridge going into the castle takes priority, since that's how it will be used 9 times out of 10.

Bridges don't have a special transition with the castle, they are simply chopped up differently (the way i previously recommended that you do it). The pertinent thing is that the bit of the bridge that is projects over the land hex is a separate image, so it can simply be omitted when the land hex is a castle (and possibly in a few other situations). You could accomplish the same thing with an alternate, shorter transition, but i think it would be more complicated.

5) The coast: I have reverted to use the same tile near the coast as in the middle of the river. The piers overlap the land a bit, but is it worth special casing it?

I don't think this needs a special case. That's a weird situation for a map-maker to put a bridge in-- if they don't want the middle pier on land they can add another water hex.

6) The abyss: The bridges are now big anough to span the abyss. They look good, when only one hex wide, and a little silly when more hexes wide. If there is interest, I could make a special transition to use is this case: It would take a mightily motivated builder gang to build such high piers, but then who knows what dwarfes would do?

I think it would be great to have a "civilized" bridge for the underground. This bridge can work underground with some modifications, but you don't have to worry about that now if you don't want to. A bridge that doesn't quite work with the chasm is still commit-worthy.

I was actually thinking of making the supports much longer (and fading out like the border), as if built from the bottom of the chasm. But if at all that would only be useful in some special scenarios, because such a building would be quite exceptional.

That would be cool (if possibly WML intensive), you might also omit the piers altogether, making it exceptional in another way, but easier to implement.

If there are no major issues with this I will begin working on the n-s version soon.

Whatever issues there may be, none of them are really applicable to the N-S bridge, except #1 maybe.

Extra Credit:
A make a special ends for the bridge when a bridge ends over water, as if the bridge is broken. The wood bridge has a special end when it stops over water, but it's unbroken so it looks like a dock.

crumble.jpg (51 KiB) Viewed 3301 times

Strangly enough I found a fitting combination for the se-nw bridge, but not for the sw-ne bridge

That's odd. It may be easier to arrange as part of the total terrain-graphics.cfg

I agree. The best type of bridge to span larger areas would have to be a hanging bridge. Something like the "Bridge of death" on Monty Python's "The Holy Grail".

Not very practical with our terrain engine. Each hex would have to be a different terrain with a different unit offset.

Here's another alternative, this time trying to coordinate with the human city buildings, since it's supposed to be be an urban bridge. I want to add some variation to the stone colours so it's not quite so monochromatic, but I think this is the way I want to go.

That's a fine choice. How about adding some whiteish stone detailing to further coordinate with the houses?


For these bridges the terrain code should start with "Bs" for "Bridge, stone", and then have another letter to distinguish them.


Alaranralara, and Lurker, what do you think about modifying your Wesnoth to have the terrain graphics from trunk? You wouldn't have to use SVN or compile if that's not your thing. I could provide you with some folders of files that you copy over a couple places. That's what i'm doing. The downside is that it messes up the fog, since 1.8.x and trunk don't do fog quite the same way, but otherwise you can have all the new terrain stuff (expect off-sync animations) in 1.8.x.

[lurker]

Bridges don't have a special transition with the castle, they are simply chopped up differently (the way i previously recommended that you do it). The pertinent thing is that the bit of the bridge that is projects over the land hex is a separate image, so it can simply be omitted when the land hex is a castle (and possibly in a few other situations).

That (kind of) works also with the stone bridge. See screenshot:

But it is not perfect: The sw transition is suboptimal because the walls are not painted over the bridge. Also the orcish castle does things differently than the human castle. This is where my limited knowledge of WML stops.

6) The abyss: The bridges are now big anough to span the abyss. They look good, when only one hex wide, and a little silly when more hexes wide. If there is interest, I could make a special transition to use is this case: It would take a mightily motivated builder gang to build such high piers, but then who knows what dwarfes would do?

I think it would be great to have a "civilized" bridge for the underground. This bridge can work underground with some modifications, but you don't have to worry about that now if you don't want to. A bridge that doesn't quite work with the chasm is still commit-worthy.

It tickles me to try it out, but the n-s version of the bridge has priority.

Extra Credit:
A make a special ends for the bridge when a bridge ends over water, as if the bridge is broken. The wood bridge has a special end when it stops over water, but it's unbroken so it looks like a dock.

Wow, that really looks cool. I think I know how to do it WML-wise, I just hope it will look as good when I try to paint it myself.

For these bridges the terrain code should start with "Bs" for "Bridge, stone", and then have another letter to distinguish them.

Any suggestion for the next letter? s(imple) vs. r(efined)? r(ural) vs. u(rban)?

Alaranralara, and Lurker, what do you think about modifying your Wesnoth to have the terrain graphics from trunk? You wouldn't have to use SVN or compile if that's not your thing. I could provide you with some folders of files that you copy over a couple places. That's what i'm doing. The downside is that it messes up the fog, since 1.8.x and trunk don't do fog quite the same way, but otherwise you can have all the new terrain stuff (expect off-sync animations) in 1.8.x.

I have downloaded and compiled trunk now.

Greetings

Lurker

[Alarantalara]

Any suggestion for the next letter? s(imple) vs. r(efined)? r(ural) vs. u(rban)?

I took "c" for city since it's what the city villages use. Since you have the original, you could leave it out.

Also the orcish castle does things differently than the human castle. This is where my limited knowledge of WML stops.

The orcish castle is on layer 1 unlike every other castle. It's also why it clips the heads of units on one of Eleazar's screenshots. I should report it as a bug now that I've noticed — positive layers go above units.

I went for the extra credit assignment as well, though I don't like my WML for it yet.

[thespaceinvader]

Your second bridge model is looking good, but i think th edges are a little too sharp right now - making it look a little more organic would be good =)

[Boucman]

Also the orcish castle does things differently than the human castle. This is where my limited knowledge of WML stops.

The orcish castle is on layer 1 unlike every other castle. It's also why it clips the heads of units on one of Eleazar's screenshots. I should report it as a bug now that I've noticed — positive layers go above units.

yes, that was stupid of me, but I had a very bad knowledge of how terrain worked at the time

I reverted that change...

[lurker]

Any suggestion for the next letter? s(imple) vs. r(efined)? r(ural) vs. u(rban)?

I took "c" for city since it's what the city villages use. Since you have the original, you could leave it out.

Good suggestion, that would be most in line with how the villages work. Unfortunately Bs is already taken by the underground stone bridge. The most systematic approach would be to rename that bridge to Bsu and my bridge to Bs. But that would also break a lot of maps, so probably is not worth it. I will keep Bsb for the moment.

I went for the extra credit assignment as well, though I don't like my WML for it yet.

That is looking good. Have you perhaps thought of making the last one or two stone rows
of the piers submerged (i.e. semi-transparent)? That would reduce the percieved height of the bridge as well as making it blend better into the environment.

Greetings

Lurker

[Blarumyrran]

this time trying to coordinate with the human city buildings

Actually there's no need to hinder yourself with the city village colour choices. I'll probably upgrade the city villages sometime before the end of June; when I do that, I can use your bridge colours instead (only 1 is done, & easily recolorable).

[Alarantalara]

The first direction is not quite finished, but it's close enough that I want to see if there is anything I'm missing before I go on.
I've made the corners a little rounder for thespaceinvader, but I'm not completely sure that's what he was looking for.
Most of what I want to fix is cleaning up shadows so they align better, so if you see anything other than that that needs work, please tell me.

[Eleazar]

The first direction is not quite finished, but it's close enough that I want to see if there is anything I'm missing before I go on.
I've made the corners a little rounder for thespaceinvader, but I'm not completely sure that's what he was looking for.
Most of what I want to fix is cleaning up shadows so they align better, so if you see anything other than that that needs work, please tell me.

It looks good, but i have a few concerns.

A The single-hex bridge doesn't look strong enough to hold itself up. It needs some visible means of support-- either like the outline shown, or something else.

B Your bridge supports on the multi-hex don't seem centered. There's a visible gap between the NW support and the shore, while the SE support is actually touching the shore.

C The walking surface of the bridge seems remarkably thin. The hight of the edge of the bridge seen from the outside is about the same as the hight of the railing seen from the inside. At best the bridge is a pixel or two thick, which visually doesn't seem like enough.

[beetlenaut]

I think TSI was saying that the edges were too perfect, and I agree. Take a look at the bottom of the bridge on the right. I probably went too far with it, but that's the general idea. The railing edges could use some similar roughening.

organic_bridges.png (13.98 KiB) Viewed 2789 times

Also, are the terrain shadows going to be moved to the new shadow style? These will look out of place if not.

[Eleazar]

I'm assuming Alarantalara hasn't gotten to blurring his shadows yet.

Also, are the terrain shadows going to be moved to the new shadow style? These will look out of place if not.

You mean hard-edged like the units? My opinion is no. The terrain is essentially the game's background. The style is less hard-edged than what the units get, a little more painterly. This helps prevent the terrain from visually conflicting with units. Also the shadows cast by tall things (trees, castle towers, etc) would normally fade off anyway, and we'd have a mess if we tried to make hard-edged shadows cast a realistic distance from their sources.

As far as i know neither Jetrel nor Freim want to apply it to terrain.

[Alarantalara]

I'm assuming Alarantalara hasn't gotten to blurring his shadows yet.

I've been procrastinating on this actually. Some of the shadows overlap and I'm rather afraid of making a blurred shadow that has a second shadow on top of it that only changes the direction of the blur. If anyone has advice on how to do this easily, I'd love to hear it.

EDIT: I should specify that the overlapping shadows are only on the single hex version that touches land on both sides. I might just special case the whole single hex bridge rather than reuse the shore transitions with everything else.

It looks good, but i have a few concerns.
A The single-hex bridge doesn't look strong enough to hold itself up. It needs some visible means of support-- either like the outline shown, or something else.

B Your bridge supports on the multi-hex don't seem centered. There's a visible gap between the NW support and the shore, while the SE support is actually touching the shore.

C The walking surface of the bridge seems remarkably thin. The hight of the edge of the bridge seen from the outside is about the same as the hight of the railing seen from the inside. At best the bridge is a pixel or two thick, which visually doesn't seem like enough.

A and C. I'm working on.

For B, it is centred, but it's close enough to the edge of the hex that the shore comes out to touch it in both directions. I can make it shorter which will help on the bottom, but the left edge is about as far from the hex edge as I can get without having too many units overhang the edge of the bridge.

I think TSI was saying that the edges were too perfect, and I agree. Take a look at the bottom of the bridge on the right. I probably went too far with it, but that's the general idea. The railing edges could use some similar roughening.

I see what you mean. Now I just have to do the same without showing the background, especially near the top, since the more distant parts of the wall would fill the spaces.