Bridges

[Eleazar]

Oh, and since we are talking about tweaking:
- It seems possible to posterize the bridge, so the result is more like pixel art than now. 10 or 11 different colors per direction seem to be enough. Should I do that?
- Is the bridge too bright? Should I make it a more saturated brown? As it is now, it cannot really be used for caves.

Good you are testing it against various other terrains.

No, don't posterize it. Units have a sharp edged pixel art style that helps them pop. But the terrain should (and mostly does) use a subtler, larger palette. A bit more grit and grain wouldn't hurt, especially on the walking surface.
Going a bit darker and browner, again especially on the walking surface, would be good

A couple things i noticed about Lurker's N-S bridge.
...
* the N end seems to extend much further into the hex that any of the other bridge ends. Is there a reason for that?

This one is much more worrying, because, yes, there is a reason for that (and I am unhappy about it, too): You can see the reason on the screenshot four or five posts above - the bridge has to be so long on the north, so it can cross the chasm even if the chasm becomes wider on the two sides. The fault lies in the wideness of the bridge: a shorter bridge would have the two posts directly over the chasm. AFAICT this only happens with the chasm (which could be just left aside), but the terrain transitions are not final yet (right?), so I had to err on the safe side. Advice on this issue would be more than welcome.

It's mostly the land-to-water transitions that are up in the air. By the way i've uploaded to trunk a sort of rough draft of where i'm going with those land/water trans. It's still approximate, but it's closer.

In this case it looks like my chasm is at fault. I probably can widen that left side without messing anything else up.

Edit: The attached screenshot shows that the north transition probably cannot be shorter. The post bases are just barely on their hexes, which in turn are the only ones I can be sure are land.

You are right about the chasm being a problem but i wouldn't worry too much about what exactly the post bases are over. The base of the post from that angle is barely visible. It's the kind of detail that the eye/brain will easily overlook in order to interpret the scene as something that makes logical sense. What we need to do is avoid any water or chasm terrain showing up past the magenta lines (see attached). We can fudge the rest.


Finally your broken overhang looks really good. The ones facing the player don't come far enough out into the hex for a unit to plausibly stand on.

[Jetrel]

It's mostly the land-to-water transitions that are up in the air. By the way i've uploaded to trunk a sort of rough draft of where i'm going with those land/water trans. It's still approximate, but it's closer.

I want to keep reiterating that I like the direction you're going with that.

[lurker]

if I understand you correctly, if we have a n-s bridge terminating on its north edge, you have three transitions

* one on the n hex
* one small on the ne hex
* one small on the nw hex

Correct

assuming that transition can spill on neighbouring hexes, you could be one transition to cover those three, and it would be removed as one piece when arriving into a castle, like it does for current bridge terminations... except bigger than hex

(that's what i'm trying to get to work, i'll keep you posted on my progress, just making sure it covers your need)

so, would that do ?

No, unfortunately. If the end transition is removed in one piece, then assume you have a castle on the nw tile - or let's make it the sw tile, because the length of the transition has little to do with it. You could either show the transition, which would look like so:

show.PNG (77.48 KiB) Viewed 3741 times

or you could hide it, like so:

hide.PNG (80.14 KiB) Viewed 3741 times

, both of which do not look right.

Greetings

Lurker

[lurker]

No, don't posterize it. Units have a sharp edged pixel art style that helps them pop. But the terrain should (and mostly does) use a subtler, larger palette. A bit more grit and grain wouldn't hurt, especially on the walking surface.
Going a bit darker and browner, again especially on the walking surface, would be good

It should be fairly easy to recolor the whole bridge using the gimp - as a post production step, so to speak. Will try with the grain, but I do not know how just now - maybe gimp will help here, too.

It's mostly the land-to-water transitions that are up in the air. By the way i've uploaded to trunk a sort of rough draft of where i'm going with those land/water trans. It's still approximate, but it's closer.

I am on my linux machine again this weekend, where I can enjoy the new transitions (I like the drafts more than the current final transitions, btw)

In this case it looks like my chasm is at fault. I probably can widen that left side without messing anything else up.

Well, I will get one more pixel on the left side just be fixing the alignment, so I think I can make the transition shorter anyway.

Finally your broken overhang looks really good. The ones facing the player don't come far enough out into the hex for a unit to plausibly stand on.

Will fix this embarrasing mistake.

[Boucman]

hmm, noted... i'll have a look at how it can be done... i'll keep you posted

[mabeenot]

I'm so glad someone is working on stone bridges. Keep up the good work!

[lurker]

Hello!

I am uploading the latest changes to the stone bridge:
- The broken endings ar bigger.
- The bridge is darker and more saturated (greenish again, because I find that more fitting near water (think of moss).
- It also is less smooth.

I think it is usable in the open (read: bright enough) as well as in a cave (read: dark enough), though not over abysses - I will come to that later. If acceptable to those with commit powers, and of course modulo any recuts Boucman's new macro may need, I would like to declare it finished.

I have attached three zip files, one with the small pieces and the script to test it, one with a few bigger pieces since Boucman hinted he may find a way to utilize them and one with those files I regard as "sources" to the bridge.

I have as well started on a version of the bridge to be used over an abyss. It was soon clear that almost all pieces would need to be adapted - mostly for the shadows under the bridge which are different if there is no water. So I thought I could as well recolor the whole bridge and I made it much darker and browner. This is the temporary result:

stonebridge_cave.png (258.63 KiB) Viewed 3347 times

I do not like it: The piers make no sense, not so much for the hugeness, but for the shape: They do not have to direct water around them so they do not need to be formed like a ship's nose. Overall it does not make sense to have the bridge floor raised - there is plenty of empty space to make the floor flat. And finally the bridge is unusable over lava abysses because the piers would simply melt.
So I have decided to try a completely new bridge for the abyss. I already have a few designs in mind and will report back when there is something to show.

Greetings

Lurker

[Sleepwalker]

Great work, a stone bridge will come very well in handy for mapmakers. Will be interesting to see what you come up with for chasms.

[Boucman]

I'm still working on it...

I might have a macro that does all you want at some point. I'll split the bridge macros into the macros for the terrain and the macros for the transitions... we'll see how it turns out

[nindjo]

i realy like the broken briges would love to use them for a warzone city or something

[Yoyobuae]

@lurker: Quick idea for multi-hex chasm crossing bridge. Instead to making the pier seem like it's constructed all the way down, make it sit on a (conveniently) naturally occurring rock. Like the rocky support for the pier was there all the time, and the bridge builders just took advantage of it to build the bridge.

This would also work for lava, I think.

[Boucman]

eventually, you might be able to have random transitions for bridges, so you could make the pier appear randomly...

[Eleazar]

I have as well started on a version of the bridge to be used over an abyss. It was soon clear that almost all pieces would need to be adapted - mostly for the shadows under the bridge which are different if there is no water. So I thought I could as well recolor the whole bridge and I made it much darker and browner. This is the temporary result:

stonebridge_cave.png

.

I'd be happy with a color, pier and shadow modification of your existing bridge. The screenshot looks good. But if you want to start over, feel free.

Overall it does not make sense to have the bridge floor raised - there is plenty of empty space to make the floor flat.

Actually the arch still makes sense. Bridges are arched primarily for structural reasons, i.e. to keep them from falling down under their own weight. Also the arch looks good, so don't abandon it. -- Or do you simply mean to lower the arches?

And finally the bridge is unusable over lava abysses because the piers would simply melt.
So I have decided to try a completely new bridge for the abyss.

WINR.
Nothing about lava in Wesnoth is particularly realistic.
The edges of the lava chasm aren't melting, so it's not outrageous to have some hunks of non-melting rock for the bridge to stand on. However the lava chasm is a bit different since it would be expected to show some illumination from below. I don't know if we can make chasm and lava-chasm bridge a single terrain and let the engine choose based on what's beneath, but i suspect we could.


Note: Earlier in this thread i recommended bringing the images and various terrain .CFGs into a 1.8.x executable for those that can't compile. But something done in the last couple days breaks compatibility of the terrain WML with the 1.8.x executable.

[cretin]

for lava bridges put some supports then some magical glowing runes on them and say that magic runes keeps the stone from melting. magic solves all problems. this way you avoid long lava bridges looking strange without supports, and you have bridges over lava. 1 stone 2 birds.

[zookeeper]

Or you could simply omit such supports altogether and trust the map makers to not draw 10-hex long bridges over chasm without putting in a single hex of cave per every couple of bridge hexes. I don't think it'd look odd to have a bridge two hexes long without a support structure in the middle.