Eleazar's Terrain Improvements

[Iris]

It's "Ethereal", not "Etherial", btw. I fixed the misspelling in a translatable string in [rev]43650[/rev].

[Sleepwalker]

Will these new water transitions completely replace the old sand bank ones? I mean it would be nice to be able to choose if that is possible. Naturally one would use the new ones as they are much better looking don't get me wrong. But a sand bank might be preferable in some cases. For example for a single tile grass/forest island.

That said, I completely dig all the new and updated tiles you've done here. Nice work.

[Eleazar]

I fixed the misspelling in a translatable string in [rev]43650[/rev].

Thanks.

Will these new water transitions completely replace the old sand bank ones? I mean it would be nice to be able to choose if that is possible.

Yes, they will. It's theoretically possible, but not practical possible or desirable. You've noticed that the sand banks are of significantly lesser quality than much of the newer terrain?

Though you will be able to make a 1 hex forest with a beach by setting the base layer to sand.

[beetlenaut]

The ethereal abyss has lots of straight lines of stars in it which is fairly distracting. It could probably be cleared up by one more tile variation. (BTW, I'm looking forward to just staring at 1.9!)

[Eleazar]

The ethereal abyss has lots of straight lines of stars in it which is fairly distracting.

You win the prize for observation (1 internet cookie).

There are actually 7 variations, but i didn't have them wired in right when i took and posted the screenshot. I decided to leave it up and see if anyone caught it.

[Eleazar]

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the blue of water needs to be significantly desaturated. It looks outrageously blue in the cave, but even outside, it goes beyond plausibility.

[Eleazar]

Further work on the dirt "bank".

Admittedly the mirror effect is cheap, and not quite convincing, but i wouldn't know until i tried it. It will work until i figure out a better process.

Also i know the transition between bank and cobbled road is too abrupt. The dry dirt i'll probably give the beach transition.

[Jetrel]

Further work on the dirt "bank".

Admittedly the mirror effect is cheap, and not quite convincing, but i wouldn't know until i tried it. It will work until i figure out a better process.

Not to state something that's common knowledge, but it might help that the trick with reflection on water, is that it's a max() operation. For any given pixel, either the water will show, or the underwater bank, and it depends on which is brighter. When looking at the lapping waves on a RL lake, I usually find that the highlit crests of the waves are opaque, and the shadowed troughs of the waves are transparent.

I don't know if this will help, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[Eleazar]

New castle-to-water transitions, that better match the dirt bank and also don't needlessly encroach on the water so much.

As mentioned before we have problems with some of the newer castles and water. Encampment, Human, and Elvish styles work fine (before and after this change). Orcish castle (not keep) sorta works.

Desert, Dwarvish Castles and Orcish Keep don't work well, pretty much covering up the castle-to-water transition but this was more or less the case before i made this change, so castles aren't any more broken than they were before.

I'm not sure what the best way to resolve the issues with the overlarge castles, for now i think i'll mostly ignore them.


I'm considering making an alternate transition for the encampment, since it doesn't need all that space.

Also the bank for castles might make more sense if it was stone (except for the encampment)


@ Jetrel.
That's a good observation about water. I'm not sure how to apply it, since our terrains don't combine with blending modes, but you did make me realized that the bank should probably have a little shadow.

[doofus-01]

Desert, Dwarvish Castles and Orcish Keep don't work well, pretty much covering up the castle-to-water transition but this was more or less the case before i made this change, so castles aren't any more broken than they were before.

I'm not sure what the best way to resolve the issues with the overlarge castles, for now i think i'll mostly ignore them.

Dwarf castles have special transitions for chasm and lava. Maybe the the chasm transition could be adapted to water?

You are still working on water, so I am scared to touch that right now. But if it sounds like it might eventually work, I could try working on an Orc Keep-Chasm transition. Desert Castle-Chasm doesn't sound very useful, but we'll worry about that after the Dwarf and Orc things.

[Eleazar]

Desert, Dwarvish Castles and Orcish Keep don't work well, pretty much covering up the castle-to-water transition but this was more or less the case before i made this change, so castles aren't any more broken than they were before.

I'm not sure what the best way to resolve the issues with the overlarge castles, for now i think i'll mostly ignore them.

Dwarf castles have special transitions for chasm and lava. Maybe the the chasm transition could be adapted to water?

Seems you misunderstand the core problems (which granted i didn't go into in the previous post). I could pretty easily make similar banks tailored to each of the basic castle-types, if that was all there was too it. But..

A) Dwarf, Desert Castles, and Orc Keep encroach too much into the water hex, and making a custom embankment for them only increases that encroachment, and makes it less likely that the encroachment will ever be reduced.

B) We'll eventually want animated water lapping against the bank. Ideally all castles can share the same animation, since it takes a lot of time/skill to make a good water animation, and we have other more justifiable cases for custom water-edge animation.[/quote]

You are still working on water, so I am scared to touch that right now. But if it sounds like it might eventually work, I could try working on an Orc Keep-Chasm transition. Desert Castle-Chasm doesn't sound very useful, but we'll worry about that after the Dwarf and Orc things.

Incidentally, i hadn't thought about this before, but as you imply the castle/chasm interactions are pretty lousy except with the dwarven castle. The same problem that makes a standard castle-to-water difficult, also makes castle-to-chasm problematic. It's entirely possible to make a castle-to-chasm transition that works for human and elvish castles and encampments, and any other castles that had similar vertical and horizontal encroachments.

Some thing-- actually a lot of things-- are still in flux with the water. But i don't think the size of the castle-water transition in my previous post is going to change. If you adjust the orc-castle (for instance. it's the closest to fitting, the dirt-skirt is the most of the problem) to sit nicely on the that base, then it will be ready to receive the future benefits of animated waves, and a standard castle-to-chasm transitions.

Of course course custom castle-to-chasm transitions have the potential to look cooler, but they would be a lot of work, i believe it's better to get a standard transition first before tackling custom transitions. As the number of terrain varieties increase we need to emphasize flexibility and interconnectability more.

[Eleazar]

OK, i wanted to get this in so the new terrain is available early in 1.9.

Flowers are now an overlay (^Efm), and the old base based flowers (Ggf) is depreciated. Note you can put flowers over any other base terrain. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.

At the moment i just have a few tiles-- enough to make it work. Expect a lot more variety later..

EDIT: to encourage people to notice that the old flowers are depreciated, i deleted it's extra tiles, so now it has only one, with an obvious repeating pattern

[Iris]

and the old base based flowers (Ggf) is depreciated.

Deprecated.

Have you talked to esr about adding wmllint rules for converting old content that is no longer compatible due to this kind of terrain changes where an old tile type is no longer supported?

[Eleazar]

Have you talked to esr about adding wmllint rules for converting old content that is no longer compatible due to this kind of terrain changes where an old tile type is no longer supported?

Yes, thanks. I browsed the IRC log and saw a comment about that so i sent him a PM earlier today.

Incidentally i'm listing the significant ways maps might change between 1.8 and 1.9 here:


Also, you're right, the ford is not distinct enough from plain water. I'll get around to revising it.

[Eleazar]

Here's something i noticed recently.

The various styles of castle don't mesh together as gracefully as their pieces would allow.

The use case i had in mind was combining encampment with more conventional castles. This would represent an unfinished castle, or a castle that's had a hole blasted in one side and has been hastily repaired. Since they have a proper baseline encampment, human and elvish should mesh pretty well. Orcish is probably close enough.

For instance taking the normal images, i built this multi-type castle:

multi-castle.png (188.84 KiB) Viewed 3967 times

Note how there are no gaps in the walls, or unnecessary walls partitioning off the interior of the castle, as there when currently rendered by the engine. Granted the shadows don't all line up, and many of the castle bases don't currently transition with each other, but these issues seem smaller than the ones we currently have.

I realized the castle section of terrain WML is pretty complicated. I may be mistaken, but it seems that some of that complexity is due to trying to prevent castles from transitioning openly with castles of other types.

Anybody know why different castle styles transition as they do?