Idea to remove the limits of the current terrain system

[SkeletonCrew]

The idea to start with direction modifier is to keep the terrain transition WML simple eg
/bw and /bs is matched by /*
bw/ bs/ wont' match

I don't see any potential use of that in the current wml.
The only place where \|/ dont appear together in one terrain-string is here:

Code: Select all

{BRIDGE \ | / cswX CKfFNQq bridge}

And matches like /* would be useless here. The other way around happens much more often.

Oke my bad, so objection withdrawn.

XY* matches any terrain starting with XY (including XY itself). It's very useful in the terrain-graphics.cfg but one should of course be able to use it in any place where you want to match against terrains. That's why sensible grouping of the terrains is important. You're right that you can't get things like movement information from this, but that's not its purpose.

Agreed with the full 110% once the final strings are determined they will be used forever or till somebody redesigns the system again(, depending on what happens first ).

[Eleazar]

Your "Archetypes"-proposal doesn't sound bad either, but it's fortunately completely orthogonal to the current work.

OK, lets keep further discussion of Archetypes out of this thread, unless it later becomes relavant. I'll copy or link the stuff about archetypes from this thread to the archetypes thread.

XY* matches any terrain starting with XY (including XY itself). It's very useful in the terrain-graphics.cfg but one should of course be able to use it in any place where you want to match against terrains. That's why sensible grouping of the terrains is important. You're right that you can't get things like movement information from this, but that's not its purpose.

Hmm, then it seems to me there would be some conflict between naming that's ideal for map-making with a text editor (emphasis on human-readability, and indicating the function of a terrain), and naming that's ideal for ease of making the terrain WML (emphasis on groupings based on transitions). For instance an emphasis on terrain WML would probably name the villages by the terrain they stand on, though 4 character arent' enough to do that well. Impassable and normal mountains would have the same inital letter under such a system.

In naming the terrains, i tend to think weight should be given to "ease of map editing", since this is an activity that many more people do much more often. But the "terrain WML" side shouldn't be ignored.

[torangan]

In naming the terrains, i tend to think weight should be given to "ease of map editing", since this is an activity that many more people do much more often. But the "terrain WML" side shouldn't be ignored.

One could also argue that editing by hand without support of a graphical editor will get extremly hard in any case once a certain number of terrains is reached. If you name them with ease of editing in mind the critical number will be higher but I guess it'll be reached in any case. So maybe it's better to keep the complexity of the terrain WML down as this will allow more people to work with it and most likely also improve the in-game performance slightly.
I think it's easier to provide people with an easy tool for map editing (integrated editor) then to create a tool which writes WML rules for new terrain. On the other hand, editing terrain is done much more often of course. Choosing the best path between the extremes won't be easy most likely.

[mog]

Choosing the best path between the extremes won't be easy most likely.

i don't think it's that bad. To make the WML more compact, we need just to make sure that terrains that share lots of transitions or base-terrain images have a common prefix (and of course that there are no "outsiders" in such a prefix group which would destroy the usefulness, like the oasis in the current W*-group).

This is already the case for most terrains in SkeletonCrew's and Eleazar's proposals, and for the most part it also is the "logical" classification. I made some proposals for changes which would improve the grouping and Eleazar seems to agree with most of them.

There are some differences between SC's and Eleazar's proposals, but most don't have a large influence on the WML (I like Eleazar's top-level grouping better for the most part).

The only problem atm are water terrains. I'd like to group deep, shallow and ford under W*, swamp as a own terrain and oasis under desert (which should have a own letter), Skeleton groups all water-related stuff under W (including Oasis and swamp) and Eleazar wants to split deep and shallow water.
The differences aren't huge here, and it's only a small part of the terrains.

[SkeletonCrew]

@mog, my proposal was more to have something to shoot at so feel free to propose differently. In my experience most people, including me, like to have something to shoot at then to invent from scratch. And yes the oasis are a bad idea, but I didn't have an better idea

[Eleazar]

The only problem atm are water terrains. I'd like to group deep, shallow and ford under W* . . . and Eleazar wants to split deep and shallow water.

It appeals to my sense of order that 2 different movetypes not be put under the same initial letter, however there is minimal advantage to the text-editor-map-maker, since i believe few graphical variations of water will be made. If mog believes this will noticeably simplify the terrain WML, i'll defer to him.

There will probably be other differences of preference, but i suspect we can work it out.


Are we using numbers tagged on to the normal terrain string to indicate starting position now? It would be nice if a starting position wasn't assumed to be a keep. And possibly worth loosing 0—9 as options as part of the terrain code.

[SkeletonCrew]

Are we using numbers tagged on to the normal terrain string to indicate starting position now? It would be nice if a starting position wasn't assumed to be a keep. And possibly worth loosing 0—9 as options as part of the terrain code.

It's raining ideas today and good ones Yes we're still using a letter which is automatically converted to a keep. I've no idea how to change this at the moment but if you have an idea post away

[Darth Fool]

Are we using numbers tagged on to the normal terrain string to indicate starting position now? It would be nice if a starting position wasn't assumed to be a keep. And possibly worth loosing 0—9 as options as part of the terrain code.

It's raining ideas today and good ones Yes we're still using a letter which is automatically converted to a keep. I've no idea how to change this at the moment but if you have an idea post away

I would say this will definitely happen eventually. Like many other changes to the terrain system, this will be a lot easier to implement with SCs changes. Whether he, I, or someone else implements it, I don't know, but I would definitely make it a standard rule not to start any terrain with a number. This would reserve that for starting position placement whenever it gets implemented. Wheter to allow trailing numbers is another matter, but for now I would say no unless there is a compelling case for it.

[mog]

I combined the several proposals into a list:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Mog

I chose to use Ws/Wd instead of W/w because of my previously stated reasons and because I'd like not to have terrains to be distinguishable only by case (and using something different than W would be even worse).

I'm not quite sure where to put snow and ice, so I kept SC's versions. Also, there are some terrains where I'm not sure, i wrote down both variants there.

[Eleazar]

I combined the several proposals into a list:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Mog

I chose to use Ws/Wd instead of W/w because of my previously stated reasons and because I'd like not to have terrains to be distinguishable only by case (and using something different than W would be even worse).

I'm not quite sure where to put snow and ice, so I kept SC's versions. Also, there are some terrains where I'm not sure, i wrote down both variants there.

Underneath his last proposal, i've added one of my own. I've dispensed with the themes, because i don't think it's relevant at this point. More importantly i've added entries for terrains that don't yet exist, but probably will. I've shifted some things around to allow more consistant and distinctive use of the 2nd and 3rd letters. For instance, since "U" is the initial letter for cave terrains, whenever possible, "u" should indicate cave terrain in the following letter, not "c"

I've changed water to Ww/Wo (water, wadeable / water, ocean) because "d" and "s" were used for too many other things.

Ice and Snow are kind of a strange terrain. Whatever is easiest for the WML should dictate which terrains go under the inital letter.

[SkeletonCrew]

Mog, Eleazar, thanks for your proposals, I added a link to your proposals in my wiki page.

Eleazar, theme's are indeed not relevant at this point.

[SkeletonCrew]

Oke another update, the internal conversion seems to be ready. I tested it with single player and all seems to go well. I haven't tested multiplayer (client/server) yet. The editor is broken but will be done after the other changes. After changing the system I'll do more testing. I'll now start to test with some converted terrains but would like to start to work on the final conversion. The following questions remain:

Do we want to only use 2 letters or directly a maximum of 4. If somebody could write a conversion script it would be nice to see how both versions look.
Also we need to decide the final strings to use from the proposals of Mog and Eleazar.

Are we going to allow tabs? I'm thinking about allowing them, but not to use them.

I've had no feedback on the change in the map format for the terrain graphics, can I assume people like this?

The other points are resolved:

I've decided to let the editor only write the new format.

The custom tile problem seems to be oke with this proposal.

The themes are going to be made, which terrain will belong to which theme is not really important since this can be change later on.

The discussion about /R for roads is not relevant since it seems to be handier to put the / in the end.

[appleide]

I apologise for being a little off-topic... But...

When SkeletonCrew's system AND if UTF-8 was implemented... Will it then be possible to define a certain character "å­—" (View with UTF-8 ), and link to a custom terrain in the terrain translation?

[SkeletonCrew]

I apologise for being a little off-topic... But...

When SkeletonCrew's system AND if UTF-8 was implemented... Will it then be possible to define a certain character "å­—" (View with UTF-8 ), and link to a custom terrain in the terrain translation?

I'm not going to implant UTF-8 support, but multi-letter, which will allow for custom terrains. The full proposal for the changes is here http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:SkeletonCrew

Just curious but what kind of terrain do you want to add?

[appleide]

Well... I was just being curious... (and you still havent answered my question )