Castle-to-Water Transitions

[Loci]

I got tired of looking at the old default "eroded grassland" transition for castle-to-water tiles (who builds a castle on eroding shoreline anyway?) so I borrowed some textures from the sunken castle tiles to create an underwater foundation for castles that just happen to be built next to a body of water. Of course the stone foundation didn't look right for encampments, elven castles and dwarven castles, so I stole the grassland-to-water transitions for the former two and modified the cave floor transitions for the latter. While I think the encampment works, the elven castle doesn't look all that great, and the dwarven castle still looks out of place on a lake (but hopefully less so on a lake in a cave). I'm not really happy with the shadows in the lower left tower of the n transition, but I still believe it is a significant improvement over the old transition(s). I have attached the transitions to be added or modified as desired.

[Peter the Great]

Cool, everything I would have said you already said yourself, except for one thing. I wouldn't suggest having shadows, because it's going to have that shadow whatever time of day it is (even night) so unless the developers decide to implement shadows correct to the time of day, then you should probably take them out.

[Sangel]

What a great note to enter the forums on. What you have here's looking pretty good, so I'll leave it to the serious terrain artists (mog, pekka, Eleazer, musketaquid) to polish it to perfection with you.

[woodmouse]

ooooh... Those are so cool... I hope those get mainline!

[Max]

I wouldn't suggest having shadows, because it's going to have that shadow whatever time of day it is (even night) so unless the developers decide to implement shadows correct to the time of day, then you should probably take them out.

these shadows are part of the existing tiles...

[Velensk]

I actualy like the cliffs, it makes more sense than having the walls built that close to the water. It also makes it look harder to scale.

[Loci]

Cool, everything I would have said you already said yourself, except for one thing. I wouldn't suggest having shadows, because it's going to have that shadow whatever time of day it is (even night) so unless the developers decide to implement shadows correct to the time of day, then you should probably take them out.

Max2008 was *mostly* right--the castle towers (which I didn't touch) cast shadows day-or-night; I added shadows to the underwater foundations in an attempt to match the rest of the castle. Of all the terrain tiles I've looked at, I don't recall a single one that had a separate "night" version. The same could be said for unit sprites. Perhaps we can assume there's a bright full moon off to the south east?

Actually, your comment did give me an idea; what if the villages had a "night" version with lights in the windows and such? You could even remove the shadows (though that might call attention to the fact that everything else still has 'em). I might give that a try the next time I'm bored.

I actualy like the cliffs, it makes more sense than having the walls built that close to the water. It also makes it look harder to scale.

According to the images in Wikipedia's entry on "water castles" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_castle), seven of nine castle builders prefer walls built directly in the water. Of the remaining two, neither used eroded dirt cliffs. True, WINR, Wikipedia's not authoritative, and the builders probably never considered a merman attack.

Anyway, my major problems with the cliffs, in no particular order:

1. They are using outdated transitions that don't match the current look and feel of Wesnoth
2. There is an altitude discrepancy--the height for the cliff has to come from somewhere
3. The transitions are misnamed (took me several tries to find that I had to edit both castle-to-water and castle-to-ice to get rid of the cliffs in water transitions)
4. Dirt cliffs would suffer significant erosion, and I wouldn't expect anyone to build a permenant structure that close to the edge
5. I think the underwater foundation looks better (obvious bias; YMMV)

[Peter the Great]

Weird, I've never noticed the shadows before, maybe there is a feature request in order, change terrains according to the time of day.

I do like the newer versions with them built into the water, but I think the developers will have the final decision.

[musketaquid]

I vote for the underwater castle foundations. They are cool. And don't we need those city buildings http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 66#p287766 from Sgt. Groovy with underwater foundations too? Then we could build independent trading citys like old venice once was.

...maybe there is a feature request in order, change terrains according to the time of day.

What are we going to do with the light, for example on the castle tower itself, not the shadow it casts. The shadows it casts, is easy to change, but the lightning on the building or unit is the hard part. If you really want to have it realistic, the brighter side of the tower, staying with this example, is moving around the tower the same way the sun is moving. And i don't want imagine how many graphics you'll need, having in mind, that the user can choose the direction the sun is moving.

[mog]

The dwarven castle transition is a definite improvement, but I strongly disagree with removing it from the elvish castle/encampment. The cliffs look very good there.

The human castle transition looks ok on water, but you should remove the sunken part from the ice transition. Another potential problem are castle/water/land transitions. The sunken castle already has some glitches in this respect, but it might not be a problem here.

All in all I'm not sure which version to use. Personally, I like the cliff a bit better but other devs might have a different opinion (Or maybe there is a way to have both (without duplicating the castle terrain), I'll have to think about that a bit) .

[Unnheulu]

I actualy like the cliffs, it makes more sense than having the walls built that close to the water. It also makes it look harder to scale.

According to the images in Wikipedia's entry on "water castles" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_castle), seven of nine castle builders prefer walls built directly in the water. Of the remaining two, neither used eroded dirt cliffs. True, WINR, Wikipedia's not authoritative, and the builders probably never considered a merman attack.

I live fairly close (as on the other side of a hill or two) to caerphilly castle, and that is basically on a cliff.