proposal for new terrain system.

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Darth Fool
Retired Developer
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Post by Darth Fool »

Eleazar wrote:Terrains are modified dozens of times while they are only added once.
* will the ordering of elements within a terrain tag have any effect?
graphically, only if elements are given the same layer.
* will campaign designers be able to modify particual aspects of a terrain without repeating the complete terrain definition?
Not initially, but I can imagine implementing it later. The difficulty is in defining how to address which elements to modify. I can, for example, imagine inheriting all the graphic elements, or all of the gameplay elements. modifying gameplay elements would be easy as they are all strict key=value pairs. modifiying the individual graphical elements would be difficult.
yes, I had not fully worked that out. I had considered that it could be a macro, but using a base_layer is a good idea
Further comments on base layers:
There are basicly 2 different kinds, 1) Bases that are other terrain types, (villages, forest) and 2) bases that only appear with their specific overlay(castles). The most convenient way to defiine these will probably be different. For (1) we simply want to say in effect: "now do terrain X according to it's tag", while for (2) it's probably best to define all layers within the same terrain tag.
bases that are other terrains would either inherit the graphics and not the gameplay elements (forest on grass) or could inherit both (bridge on water.) There would probably be different wml for inheriting graphical elements and for inheriting gameplay elements, or for inheriting both. For scenario 2, you would, as you point out, just add in another graphical layer to the terrain type.
* I'd also like to get rid of the alias tag, and instead choose MV/Def types according to archetypes. Functionally, archetypes would be the titles of MV/Def values. (I don't know if they need to be defined outside of the CFG with all the mvtypes)

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terrain_type = hills, frozen
move_type = worst
defense_type = best
Of course "move_type" and "defense_type" should also be able to take archetype names as arguements.

But why define both MV and Def when they are the same? For a simle new terrain "flower garden" it would simply be:

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terrain_type = flat
this seems reasonable to me.
freim
Retired Terrain Art Director
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Post by freim »

I just realized something about the current system which most likely will allow me to fix the majority of gfx layering glitches we currently have. The current system was even more flexible than I first though, almost to the point where I'm no longer so sure we need a total rewrite (although it's still horribly complex).

I'll see what I can do after this revelation. Will still take some time to figure out :)

Edit: I do get a nagging feeling that I need to mix horizontal-layered images and vertical-layered images though which might not be possible the way I need it to be.

From Ayins doc:
"**Note**: vertical-layered images are always drawn in front of horizontal-layered images which have a negative layer, whatever their respective layers and base coordinates may otherwise be. Vertical-layered images are always drawn behind horizontal-layered images which have a positive layer."

Not sure if it's possible to pull of what I wanted to then. Fx: to get the cave wall bg which is drawn as a base (horizontal) to overlap some of the vertical ones (like chasm), but not the cave wall verticals.

So the question becomes, is it possible to stack like this:
Vertical
horizontal
Vertical
Horizontal
etc

This is needed because we have several terrain/buildings which use both types and these "pairs" of vertical+horizontal need to stack correctly with each other again. Unless there is some other way to do this?
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Eleazar
Retired Terrain Art Director
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Post by Eleazar »

DFool: so, how is this going?
Is it still something you think you can pull off?
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
-> What i might be working on
Attempting Lucidity
Darth Fool
Retired Developer
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Post by Darth Fool »

With my laptop frying a few weeks back, I have been out of the development cycle. I just got my new computer set up this last week, although I've not yet installed linux on it. Yesterday I managed to download wesnoth source code to windows, and today I am trying to see if I can follow Xan's instructions on compiling it. If this works I will be back in the game! Still, it will take a while to get this working.
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