Bridges

[Boucman]

I'm not sure yet how I'll handle mountains and other "vertical but always behind units" stuff. they will probably get a couple of dedicated layers. we'll see.

there is no naming convention for the water termination, though stonebridge-dock-<ending>.png sounds good.

I can alway rename if it doesn't turn out the way I want it to...

[lurker]

Hello.

Here are the dock endings for the stone bridge. Provided the ones I did on monday were correctly cut these should also be.

They are only usable for multihex bridges. If we want to support broken single hex bridges too, we would have to use another set of broken/dock endings. But at least for this bridge it is not worth it, the single hex variant does not look particularly good nor stable.

Greetings

Lurker

[lurker]

Hello.

Lately I have been busy with the outdoor stone bridge, but I have not forgotten the underground one. I tried to improve the south-east ending (made the arc flatter). Then I increased the contrast which in turn forced me to increase the brightness also - the "fade-into-nothingness" shadows do not forgive much difference to the chasm without looking abysmally bad. I do not dislike the resulting color scheme, but the final outcome will have to depend on this thread.
Finally I tried out how the bridge will tile: Not too bad, I would say. There are two problems with the single hex variant that I can see:
1) The arc looks broken. That is because under normal circumstances the lower half of the arc goes a bit across a pillar and those are brighter than the shadow at the far end. The final variant will need a special image for the single hex bridge anyway, so that can be fixed then.
2) The asymmetry of the bridge is very distinct for the single hex bridge. I don't know what to do about it, though.

Greetings

Lurker

[Boucman]

thx lurker, I'll try to commit these at the beginning of the WE so you can try them ingame...

[Boucman]

ok, the good news is that your art looks great

the bad news is that I expected new termination transitions (the small bits) not complete extremity hex...

I'll have to work on it a bit longer. Hopefully I'll be done before the end of the WE, but no promises...

[lurker]

Hello, Boucman,

Could you please replace the attached tile in svn?

About the problem with the broken bridge: I have shortly thought about the possibility to replace the current transition with the one you assumed. But it does not work: You would have to replace the bigger parts of the corresponding end anyway, because we do not want to have a ramp when the brige is supposed to go on straight (just broken).

Greetings

Lurker

[Boucman]

yes, I had figured that out, that's why I didn't ask for any fix on your side...

i'll get it to work, it's just gonna be a bit longer..

P.S: an i'll commit your tile right away

[lurker]

Since returning from vacation I continued working on the chasm bridge:

- Changed the color scheme to fit the new chasm
- Removed the "cloud" inkscape effect. All it did was wash out the fishbone pattern on the bridge floor without really giving a "dirty" impression. At the moment I am relying solely on the gimp "noise" effect for some grit.
- Shortened the transition facing away from the viewer. I am still not really happy though, will have to look at those transitions once more.
- Added the sw-ne variant.

I have also added a package for whoever wants to test drive the new bridge themselves. Just extract chasmbridge.zip into your (1.9.x) add-ons folder. Things to note:
- The WML uses "Bsz*" for the bridge. This is not to clash with any committed bridge. If and when the bridge is admitted into mainline, I am aiming for "Bsu*" (Bridge, stone, underground).
- Currently I am using a non-standard cutting of the image together with non-standard WML. It is an intermediate step for the final cut anyway so I want to avoid the additional work until the image itself is final.
- The interaction with castles is wrong. What does work is the partial overlapping of the bridge by floor tiles immediately to the south of it. This brings me to my second topic:

Overlapping of the bridge does not really work.

I am not sure it could work even in theory, because the bridge must be painted on top of chasm transitions and cave floors except for the transition and cave floor immediately to the south. This is the same kind of image handled differently depending on context. If that can be made to work, all is well and the following is moot, otherwise:

Why do I care? The whole bridge is only visible in the rare special case that the chasm widens immediately to the south of it. Normally, when it spans a straight chasm then one of both ends is always partially hidden by the cave floor (try it out). This is something which absolutely HAS to be supported. What I would LIKE to have supported also is the middle of the bridge being hidden by some "island" of cave floor.

So I faked the effect by using one of two different images depending on context, one stretching into the southern hex, one not. This was helped greatly by the coincidence that in my non-standard cutting each image extends into only one southern hex, so the number of images is only multiplied by 2.

nonstandard_cut.png (114.06 KiB) Viewed 3688 times

With the (naive) standard cutting each base image (four to start with, only two are used in the following image) extends into two southern hexes, thereby multiplying the images by 4 (left shortened, right shortened, both shortened, none shortened).

standard_cut.png (113.47 KiB) Viewed 3688 times

Maybe somebody (Boucman ) can have a look at the problem and propose a solution.

Thanks in advance

Lurker

[lurker]

Added the n-s variant.

Edit: ...and the docks

[lurker]

Hello, all.

The underground stone bridge made less of an impact than I hoped, so I am letting it rest for now. However, since Eleazar told me that the woodbridge needs to be replaced, I have recently (and since I am slow that means the last few weeks) started to experiment with a design for it. Here is what I have come up with:

woodbridge_wip.png (147.48 KiB) Viewed 3226 times

It is intended to eventually become a drop-in replacement for the current one, with no WML-changes needed.

Greetings

Lurker

[Reepurr]

All the good old graphics are being replaced!

That sort of gripe over, my critiques on the new wooden bridge:
It doesn't actually seem to drop into the ground on either side of the water. If I look closely, yes it does, but it's not so obvious.
It's...ehm...dark. It's very, annoyingly, dark.
I think it's very thin. Can a troll warrior stand on it?
Where are the ripples where the waves hit the struts (er...are they struts?) and rebound?

The perspective looks better to me, though.

[lurker]

All the good old graphics are being replaced!

I like the old woodbridge, too, but the perspective does not fit with the rest. So, yes, I think it needs a replacement, but the decision whether and which is certainly not mine.

That sort of gripe over, my critiques on the new wooden bridge:
It doesn't actually seem to drop into the ground on either side of the water. If I look closely, yes it does, but it's not so obvious.

The transition needs to be completely outside the water tile. That is how the WML works. On the other hand it has to cover only a little part of the land tile, because that tile has different statistics than the bridge and it has to show. So the transition is rather short and steep. Perhaps I will add some dirt later on.

It's...ehm...dark. It's very, annoyingly, dark.

Yes. I think wood in humid sorroundings tends to get rather dark rather quickly. Dark and slimy, actually. On the other hand I have new hardware now and so do not see the images on a CRT any more. If there is too little contrast left, I will make it brighter once more.

I think it's very thin. Can a troll warrior stand on it?

Barely, and only because there are no rails and the struts are not much higher than the floor.

woodbridge_warrior.png (56.74 KiB) Viewed 3197 times

On the other hand I am bound by the hexes and cannot let the bridge spill over. That is how the WML works.

Where are the ripples where the waves hit the struts (er...are they struts?) and rebound?

Not there. I do not think I am gonna need them with the new water, but we will see.

The perspective looks better to me, though.

Yes.

Greetings

Lurker

[Sgt. Groovy]

Why not revise the design also, while you're at it? The old design is very low-tech, even for a quasi-medieval setting.

Here's some examples, small and big:

[Reepurr]

The only problem with arched bridges (although they do look nice) is that that type of bridge will look kind of odd if you use WML to extend it (er...I think) and, of course, they can't easily be used for piers.

[lurker]

Why not revise the design also, while you're at it? The old design is very low-tech, even for a quasi-medieval setting.

Your examples are beautiful. And I like arches more than most people, actually. But Reepurr has two valid reasons why I cannot change the design too much. I will add a third: The wood bridge supports (almost?) any sort of curve and crossing, which I have to be able to do also. Doing that on such a small space with anything than the most basic design is bound to exceed my possibilities by far.

Edit: I would like to solicit a few more datapoints about the darkness and/or contrast of the bridge. I would like to keep it as dark as possible (You know, the dark and slimy bit about wood standing in water...) but if you cannot see the details of the construction please tell me.