Dead forest terrain

[Christophe33]

I have seen dead forest terrain in the wish list, so I tried to make one. Since the tree used in the "live" forest are resinous/fir I draw some without needles as well as fallen trees. I used a mostly grey background as if the forest had burned down. I tried other background in between the tree trunks but didn't find anything better.
I don't know why but BoW refuse to display my dead forest on a test map when I replace the forest picture with it. This trick worked fine for the ice-water exchanges.
Any comments are welcome.

[Eponymous-Archon]

I don't know why but BoW refuse to display my dead forest on a test map when I replace the forest picture with it. This trick worked fine for the ice-water exchanges.

Should it be a .png?

Any comments are welcome.

Looks pretty good to me. I guess the question is how it tiles.

[Dave]

Changes I've made:

- converted to png
- scaled to 70x70, the 'canonical' size for tiles
- applied mask.png

It worked in-game for me, after these changes. Tiling looks okay, but could use some work. Further comments:

- trees could be a little bigger. They don't really look like trees at the moment
- ground underneath looks like snow -- is it meant to be? If so, this could be good for desiduous trees, so during winter this is what forests look like.

David

[quartex]

Hmmm, I wonder if certain units could burn forests, to gain a strategic advantage. I was just remembering the goblin pillager's fire attack, and was thinking that perhaps dead forest might gives elves less defense. And perhaps the ambush ability might not work in dead forest? Of course being able to change terrain types might be considered too powerful.

[Kamahawk]

From what dave said about having cracked ice turn into water, I think that burrning a forest would be very hard to code.

[Christophe33]

I made it in png to place it in BoW but whenever I send a png file to this websites the colors are completely off so I submit a gif version.
The size of the dead trees is about the same than the live one in the forest tiles, I used it as starting point to draw the trunks and branches. Some of the trees lost their top, other are fallen so the density is rather lower.
I used a greyish background for contast and like if there was aches but you are right that it could look like snow. I will had some more trees, fallen branches, rocks, charcoals... and darken a bit the grey to make it looking more like a burnt/dead forest.

If you want a dedicous forest with snow I could make it later on but then we will need a version for summer...these are rather fir/resinous since all their lower branches points down (only the top one point up).

It is clearly possible to pre-set changes of terrain in a scenario, like the winter one with the falling snow. But to get the terrain to change upon the action of a unit is probably far more difficult. However, wasn't something similar done with the gryphon nest and the various objects included in the scenarios?
A scenario with dying forest could be certainy done the same way as the one with falling snow. The elf will face increasing tatical problem while their belove forest is dying till they get the cure... a good topic for a scenario.

[Dave]

From what dave said about having cracked ice turn into water, I think that burrning a forest would be very hard to code.

Well, it wouldn't be hard to code, depending on exactly what happens when the forest burns.

It'd more be a matter of being convinced that such terrain transitions are beneficial to gameplay.

Do remember that there are already mid-scenario terrain changes in 'Northern Winter' when grassland starts to turn to snow.

David

[telex4]

From what dave said about having cracked ice turn into water, I think that burrning a forest would be very hard to code.

It'd more be a matter of being convinced that such terrain transitions are beneficial to gameplay.

I can see it being interesting in multiplayer scenarios, or scenarios with relatively sophisticated AI scripting, if the forest could either be rejuvenated by shamans or if it needed several simultaneous turns to destroy it.

With elves against any other race, particularly those who move slowly in forests, it could extend the idea of zones of control to zones of advantage, trying to control forests, and maybe other terrains.

Perhaps to stop it being used in all areas of forest there could be a special campfire that magical units can attack to ignite the hexes surrounding it. The fire then spreads each turn, and takes a few turns to destroy a hex. Shamans can extinguish fires and heal forest hexes next to them. You then just put this campfire in areas where you want that tactic available.

[Christophe33]

Here is a newer version of the dead forest with some color changes and a few more details. Instead of shrinking it to 70 x70 it would be better to apply the hexagonal filter over it. It would keep the size and resolution right, also would allow to try moving the mask around to get a better tile.
There is a lot of things that could be done with various terrain and terrain changes (by units or pre-programed) but we should discuss this in the "developper discussion forum".

[Dave]

Here is a newer version of the dead forest with some color changes and a few more details. Instead of shrinking it to 70 x70 it would be better to apply the hexagonal filter over it. It would keep the size and resolution right, also would allow to try moving the mask around to get a better tile.

70x70 is what tiles are displayed as in-game by default, so it's generally best to have terrain images as 70x70 -- that way they are at their best at the default zoom level.

It's looking good! Could be used in a scenario where the orcs have ravaged the landscape...

David

[Christophe33]

I realised that I never completely finished the dead forest. So here it is, also a burning version. Is it possible to have animated terrain? Then it would be fun to make the flame and smoke moving if needed.