Animated terrain

Disto · Post by **Disto** » October 31st, 2005, 3:08 pm

Jetryl wrote:Do not add smoke using a hard-merged animation (eg - made by hand, and includes the image of the village as part of it). This is how we did it before, and that is Bad and WrongÃ¢â€žÂ¢ for a game of our scale. Cool if we have one village image, bad if we have many.

In fact, don't anyone add smoke to anything, period. Sometime over the next four months (hopefully), I'm going to give us a proper particle engine that can use bitmap images as particle elements, thus allowing us to do real smoke. We will simulate wind, and the smoke will drift correctly in the wind like it does in Myth, The Fallen Lords. It will be bad_ass.

That said, please *do* use the ability of terrain animation to do things like:
animated water lapping on shore
lights in village windows flickering in the dark <-- relevant to villages

I've just started on playing with the idea of animated terrain, so i've been looking at water, right now, i thought it would be cool to have water going through a Canyon, so i animated it. So here we are. This is pretty quick and easy to do as well, but not too stunning.... More frames would help me thinks.

martenzo · Post by **martenzo** » October 31st, 2005, 4:23 pm

If the situation is very tensional, it's good enough, but on a 100x100 map with only two players it's not. But IMO, better than I could do it.

Disto · Post by **Disto** » October 31st, 2005, 4:33 pm

martenzo wrote:If the situation is very tensional, it's good enough, but on a 100x100 map with only two players it's not. But IMO, better than I could do it.

?

It wouldn't be the only 1, i could make lots of variations.

dtw · Post by **dtw** » October 31st, 2005, 4:45 pm

It "wobbles", mate! Makes me feel kinds seasick if i stare at it!

Woodwizzle · Post by **Woodwizzle** » October 31st, 2005, 5:44 pm

I think it needs more frames to be smoother, also some white water around the rocks would be a good touch.

Disto · Post by **Disto** » October 31st, 2005, 6:00 pm

Woodwizzle wrote:I think it needs more frames to be smoother, also some white water around the rocks would be a good touch.

I did try to put white water around the rocks but it didn't quite work... hard to do on that scale.

I did say about more frames... And it's only an experiment

Post by **lwa** » October 31st, 2005, 10:58 pm

It's fine because the water has no special way to flow in the picture. If you had some decoration, warn to that.

Post by **Neoriceisgood** » October 31st, 2005, 11:00 pm

I'd prefer it if it flowed up.

Post by **lwa** » October 31st, 2005, 11:12 pm

What if the river turns and go back ?

-> What i might be working on · Post by **Eleazar** » November 1st, 2005, 1:20 am

That's not bad animation.

There was talk about animating the water about a year ago. (Wesnoth can support it)
But there are some serious challenges to be aware of.
For it to look good, the water would need to flow continously, even if the river turned North then South or Branched. Matching all those animating tiles seems to me prohibitive.

But if you can figure out a way, more power to ya.

Also, i'm attempting to make canyons a different way, which may very well replace those canyons that you've modified.

Woodwizzle · Post by **Woodwizzle** » November 1st, 2005, 6:32 am

Anyone ever play transport tycoon? or sim city 2000? these were isometric, but they may give you some ideas of how to make water that flows in all directions and looks good.

Disto · Post by **Disto** » November 1st, 2005, 4:36 pm

Woodwizzle wrote:Anyone ever play transport tycoon? or sim city 2000? these were isometric, but they may give you some ideas of how to make water that flows in all directions and looks good.

I've got Sim City so i'll have a look.

Disto · Post by **Disto** » November 1st, 2005, 4:37 pm

Eleazar wrote:That's not bad animation.

There was talk about animating the water about a year ago. (Wesnoth can support it)
But there are some serious challenges to be aware of.
For it to look good, the water would need to flow continously, even if the river turned North then South or Branched. Matching all those animating tiles seems to me prohibitive.

But if you can figure out a way, more power to ya.

Also, i'm attempting to make canyons a different way, which may very well replace those canyons that you've modified.

As i had thought about creating a water animation, i was having experiments, and also putting a idea down.

Woodwizzle · Post by **Woodwizzle** » November 1st, 2005, 4:57 pm

OpenTTD is a opensource clone of transport tycoon's engine that uses the original graphcis. On their page they have a picuter of a lighthouse surrounded by animated water. They used a smaller pallette, I think 16-bit so its not great or of course usable to us at all. But it being a game where you could modify the terrain, the water had to work no matter how it was used.

Oreb · Post by **Oreb** » November 1st, 2005, 10:19 pm

I Think it is good to have animated terrain, since we need to get something more exciting and different for the next version of wesnoth