Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

[Alarantalara]

The biggest changes were darkening the ocean and adding more blue, since the extra blue seems to really help with red-green colour blindness based on a recolouring tool I have.

Here's another attempt at the gray water. It's not quite as distinct, but it was rightly pointed out to me that I'd probably gone too far in darkening the ocean and otherwise moving away from the original colour.

Hopefully I haven't gone too far into indecipherability.

[Caphriel]

Based on my knowledge of and experience with color blindness, higher saturation almost always helps. [acronym=This sounds trivially obvious, but no sarcasm was intended at all!]Using blue will help with red-green color blindness, and using red, I have heard, helps with blue-yellow color blindness.[/acronym] I wish I could explain more clearly, but for unfortunately obvious reasons, I never made much of a study of color theory, and I'm not even always sure of the terminology

To my vision, the shallow grey water in that image is distinguishable both with and without fog from the deep grey water, and from itself with/without fog.

[Iris]

I can actually tell the all the water types apart under fog. (Can people with normal color vision do this with the original colors?)

I believe I have normal vision, and I can’t do so with the original colors indeed. However, I don’t personally see a particular need to determine which water hex is of what kind when covered in fog, since that usually means I don’t have any units currently able to move to those hexes. In a rare situation, they’d have immediate tactical significance if there are units with the submerge ability in the battlefield.

In the same vein, I don’t see a need to have all six kinds immediately distinguishable between each other, since the three base variations (tropical, medium, gray) are supposed to be used in different environments, and not in the same area. A visible difference between shallow and deep water hexes of each single group should be enough.

Of course, the usual disclaimers apply: I am not an expert player and rarely play MP; I’ve not had my eyes checked by any doctors; I don’t know whether my brain is fully functional; and most importantly, I am not a lawyer artist.

EDIT: At this point, I believe this belongs in Art Contributions. Alarantalara can move it back to Users’ if deemed necessary.

[Jetrel]

I can actually tell the all the water types apart under fog. (Can people with normal color vision do this with the original colors?)

I believe I have normal vision, and I can’t do so with the original colors indeed. However, I don’t personally see a particular need to determine which water hex is of what kind when covered in fog, since that usually means I don’t have any units currently able to move to those hexes. In a rare situation, they’d have immediate tactical significance if there are units with the submerge ability in the battlefield.

In the same vein, I don’t see a need to have all six kinds immediately distinguishable between each other, since the three base variations (tropical, medium, gray) are supposed to be used in different environments, and not in the same area. A visible difference between shallow and deep water hexes of each single group should be enough.

Of course, the usual disclaimers apply: I am not an expert player and rarely play MP; I’ve not had my eyes checked by any doctors; I don’t know whether my brain is fully functional; and most importantly, I am not a lawyer artist.

EDIT: At this point, I believe this belongs in Art Contributions. Alarantalara can move it back to Users’ if deemed necessary.

I actually strongly agree with this. We have terrain-type mouseovers for a reason.

Making the terrain ugly for the sake of visual differentiation defeats the purpose of spending all this time carefully drawing this stuff. Eleazar put a buttload of work into making these ocean tiles not have this bizarre, unnatural "seam" between different types of water, and yet still keeping them reasonably differentiable. These edits are getting dangerously close to being ugly - in fact a few of them have crossed the line, IMO.

We made a choice a long time ago to fall on the side of visual quality over visual obviousness - otherwise we may as well be minecraft. It's rare that we actually have to choose, usually these don't conflict, but when we do, visual quality is what we want.


Unfortunately, this is a rare case where they do conflict - the water has to be roughly the same luminosity for all types to not look bizarre. However, I don't think this is impossible, if we take a different tack at fixing this: I think that if we come up with an animation of "whitecaps" on top of the deep-water tiles, they'd visually seam right with the regular water, and yet would be easily differentiable.

[Alarantalara]

To quote myself:

this is something that can be fixed with an add-on of about 9 lines of WML. For that matter, if it's considered a bug (and the fog makes a convincing argument), then it might just be changed for the next release.

I can see some need for minor changes in mainline to make the border between fog and not fog easier to see, especially since that is not information provided by any other means than the fog image. Obviously this edit goes well beyond that and I was thinking of it in terms of an add-on for people who need/want such a difference. As I wrote earlier, it's just a few lines of WML to override the core graphics. As such, I'm moving this to the Art Workshop where it is more suited.

I will note that animated white caps may not be enough, since it's quite possible for animations to be turned off.

Edit: The add-on has been published under the name "High Contrast Water". People can modify/change it as it suits them.

[SlowThinker]

Making the terrain ugly for the sake of visual differentiation defeats the purpose of spending all this time carefully drawing this stuff. Eleazar put a buttload of work into making these ocean tiles not have this bizarre, unnatural "seam" between different types of water, and yet still keeping them reasonably differentiable. These edits are getting dangerously close to being ugly - in fact a few of them have crossed the line, IMO.

We made a choice a long time ago to fall on the side of visual quality over visual obviousness - otherwise we may as well be minecraft. It's rare that we actually have to choose, usually these don't conflict, but when we do, visual quality is what we want.

Somewhere on the Wesnoth's web I have read "this is a strategy, not a simulation", and I see soon Wesnoth will be considered neither strategy nor simulation but a piece of art
You speak as an art director, but as a player I must disagree:

As a strategy player I don't need 10 (or more?) flat terrains, visually very different but with an identical combat/move effect. Especially if some flat terrains are hard to distinguish from other terrain types (sand and caves for example - details here and at the end of this page)
My primary need is to distinguish the terrains with a different effect without an effort. I like to see nice maps, but only if my primary need is not harmed.

Please perceive that there is something wrong once a player needs the mouseover. I remember I checked several times whether there was a passage through impassable mountains, and I am not very happy with 1.9 I will have to use the mouseover more frequently.

shadowmaster: I can agree the terrain is not important for MP players who played an identical map twenty times. But in most other situation the fogged terrain is important: you plan several turns ahead, and also you think whether an enemy can attack you from the fog. And this is valid for both SP scenarios and MP games.


(Edit: Ideally I would like to be able to switch between

• a player's visual interface (it could be even simpler than 1.8, the only purpose of the graphics would be to show game information effectively)
• an eyecandy visual interface

but I know thats a fiction)

[tekelili]

It is hard for me explain this with my limited amount of vocabulary in English, but I will try: I feel wesnoth artist were a little too deep in be realistic for terrain graphics in 1.9. Wesnoth is played on maps that have some degree of abstraction and plays with already developed language in map design along history.

I mean, villages have less size than a guy (unit), forest have just from 1 to 5 trees, and as far as I know, water was represented on maps always with unrealistic blue tones and thats what imho our brain expect to see to recognize an hex as "water". Just my 2 cents

[SlowThinker]

Edit: The add-on has been published under the name "High Contrast Water". People can modify/change it as it suits them.

How can I use the addon? I must copy the file to the core?

[Alarantalara]

You don't need to do anything other than download it like any other add on through Wesnoth's interface.

[Madlok]

Is it selectable like another addons or it is all time working? I'm asking because I don't see option to select this add-on, and I don't know is it a bug or something normal.

[Alarantalara]

It's always on, in single player, multiplayer, and the map editor. The only way to turn it off is to remove it.

[SlowThinker]

In case I turn the terrain animation off, is there a way how I can use the graphics from 1.8? (I mean by copying old images / editing some .cfg files ...)

[Alarantalara]

You don't need to turn terrain animation off and there is a way.

However, I see enough ways for this to go wrong or look really bad that I'm not going to provide directions.

If you do do it, then I suggest keeping everything in an add-on and not modify the core files. It is fully possible and will keep you having to remodify everything whenever you get an update. It's also far more reversible.

[Cackfiend]

In case I turn the terrain animation off, is there a way how I can use the graphics from 1.8? (I mean by copying old images / editing some .cfg files ...)

I also desperately want to know how to do this

edit:

kinda figured it out...

C:\Program Files (x86)\Battle for Wesnoth 1.8.6\data\core\images\terrain\water

copying the ford images from this directory into 1.10 has at least changed the way ford looks back to 1.8

guessing im gonna have to rename a lot of files to get the old deep and shallow waters back though

edit2:

download this .rar and extract the files into C:\Program Files (x86)\Battle for Wesnoth 1.10.0\data\core\images\terrain\water
select to write over the current files

good idea to back up the files first though before you overwrite them... you could just make a new folder and put them in there

TBH just having the old Ford back makes it easier to distinguish between shallow and deep water

edit3:

I found where to get rid of the jagged edges as well. Just remove the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Battle for Wesnoth 1.10.0\data\core\images\terrain\flat with the names bank-to-ice2-n etc, basically all the images with the jagged eges

same goes for C:\Program Files (x86)\Battle for Wesnoth 1.10.0\data\core\images\terrain\hills just remove all the picture files with jagged edges, they have names like dry-to-water2-s etc

Heres what the comparison looks like:

Current:


With old Ford:


With old Ford and no jagged edges:

[SlowThinker]

Cackfiend, I am looking forward to the deep/shallow water files.
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Could you also revert graphics to 1.8 so that next terrains don't blend?
But I think all the cave terrain should revert to black (IMO if it stays brown it will always blend with some flat terrain), and that may be quite laborious.

What about an opposite procedure? I mean you could use all 1.8 graphics, then add only the files that are new in 1.10.