Terrain Info & Links -- your one-stop sticky

[Eleazar]

This thread is very out of date, so I've unstickied it. -zookeeper

I don't want to clutter up things with a bunch of individual stickies for Terrain stuff, so i'm putting it all here.

Latest developments in Terrain

• * You can see many of the latest developments here in this thread.
  
  * Underground ToD now is color-shifted, so cave terrain tiles are now brighter, rendered as if they are in normal sunlight, so underground works better with other terrains.
  
  * We're also working integrating animated water to the land with all new water and land-water transitions.
  
  * Embellishments: Embellishments are overlay terrains that add to the character of the tile, but don't effect Move/Def. These were technically possible with older versions, but we just never did any. I've made a few, but there's room for many more.
  
  * The terrain beneath villages can be changed
  
  * Random transition variants are possible.

Unfinished Terrain
Sometimes terrains get abandoned before they are finished. This thread attempts to list those together so they can easily be found for committing or finishing.


New Terrain Ideas
Visit this thread to suggest new ideas for Mainline terrains.


Needed New Terrains
This is a short list of some of the terrains that i'd like to see created for mainline. Since none of these are absolutely needed stand-in-quality isn't sufficient. To be committed new terrains should be of mainline quality. Or at least close enough that i can quickly get them to mainline quality.

Key:
* = "not yet started"
- = "in progress"
X = "completed"

Easy

• * Alternates for the desert crater.
  * More snow versions of the human cabin villiage
  * Alternates for the human hill/mountain village
  X Dead Great Tree
  * More variants images for "small" forests. These appear next to castles and so forth where there's less room. Most have only one image, so there is obvious repetition..
  
  Embellishments:
  A embellishment file should be mostly transparent pixels, so the underlaying terrain is clearly visible behind the embellishment.
  - Wild Flowers (additional colors and varieties are welcome)
  X Water lilies
  * Submerged rocks (like the current scattered rocks embellishment only they look good over water.
  * Snow clumps
  * Loose floating Ice chunks
  X Mushroom farm (little mushrooms in rows for cave farming)
  * Scattered, old Bones
  * Scattered Autumn Leaves
  * Rubble of various kinds

Medium

• * New rocks for reef
  
  * Flowering Spring Trees
  * Better animated lava
  * Cracked Ice
  X Snowy Encampment
  * Snowy or Ruined variants of existing castles
  * Farmland with different crops, at different seasons
  X Etherial Abyss Done. Of course somebody could animate twinkling stars if they wished.
  - Interior tiles, like a wood floor, carpet, or mosaic
  * Salt flats
  * Parched, cracked ground

Hard

• X New wood Bridge
  * Fully Aquatic Castle (merfolk, naga).
  - Elvish treehouse village
  * Animate the waterfall
  * Better Animated Waves (talk to me before starting)

Eleazar's Todo List
(roughly prioritized from top to bottom)

Water to Land transitions

• X Dirt Bank
  - Cave Shore
  X Beach
  X Hills/Mountains
  - Castles

Other Water Stuff

• X Animated Swamp?
  X Waterfalls on Chasm. Should be done transparently in the style of castle-to-chasm i think.

New Mountain to Land Transitions

• * Green (maybe)
  - Dry
  * Snow
  * Cave

Chasm

• - Transition to Mountains
  X Transition to Castles
  - Alternate normal transitions

Cave

• - Alternate Cave Floor
  - Alternate Cave Wall
  * Alternate Cave Hill

[Eleazar]

Terrain Tutorials

Turning Square Tiles into Hex

How to Make Seamless Tiles

[Eleazar]

Release Notes for 1.9

There are many changes and improvements to terrain since 1.8.x. Many of these changes are ongoing, so some terrains are half-baked, but overall the appearance should be much improved.


-- Highlights: --

• * New Animated Water and new land to water transitions.
  * Cave terrains are no longer extra dark, so they don't clash so much with other terrains. The darkness in underground maps is now supplied by a "time of day" color shift.
  * The base terrain beneath land villages can now be changed.
  * The color of most terrains have been shifted, so that terrains look like they belong together.
  * Many new terrain variants.

-- Important Changes for Map Conversion: --

• * Cactuses and desert decorations. These are now *not* automatically part of Dd (desert). Mapmakers can now apply the embellishment "Desert Plants" (^Edp) over any base terrain, to get the density and placement of cacti that they want.
  
  * Flower are are now an embellishment overlay (^Efm) "Embellishment, Flowers, Mixed". It can now be mixed with other base terrains. "Ggf" is depreciated. It still exists, but will eventually be removed. For a better appearance, convert to "Gg^Efm", or another base with "^Efm".
  
  * In 1.9.1 the volcano was given the terrain code of "Qv". To allow for easier and saner wildcarding it will be "Mv" in subsequent releases
  
  * "Desert Road" (Rd) used to be a rather dark and ambiguous dirt terrain. It's now much lighter as is appropriate for very dry dirt, but might have been used elsewhere as a dark terrain- which it no longer is. If dark was what you wanted switch to "Rb" or another of terrain.
  
  * "Rocky Path" (Rp) was intended as an overgrown foresty path, but didn't make this very clear and seems to be often used for plain grey cobbles. It is now really overgrown. If that's not what you want use Rrc, or another flat terrain.

-- New Cave Varients: --

There is a new cave floor and 3 new cave walls. Currently these are not very distinct, due to time constraints. The following is what they will look like in a later release.

• * Hewn Cave Wall (Xuc) A wall roughly hewn from natural stone
  * Earthy Cave Floor (Uue) Soil and Stones mixed together. Maybe some roots.
  * Earthy Cave Wall (Xue) Soil and Stones mixed together. Maybe some roots.
  * Earthy Hewn Cave Wall (Xuec) Wooden Beam support the walls, as in a mine.

-- Warning: --
The stone walls with pillars and bricks (Xos, Xol) are attractive, but built in a way that makes them extremely difficult to mesh with other terrains. These will likely be remade for a future development release, so custom terrains or scenery items will likely no longer work quite right with them.

New for 1.9.1
-- Removed Terrains --
Thanks to the work of Zookeeper and Silene, eight now redundant terrains have been removed from the editor palette. All villages except for water and swamp villages are now aliased to both village and the terrain they're placed on, giving best movement and defense of both. These means there's no need for a special village like Orcish Hill Village (Voh), which looks just like the non-hill village but give hill defense, but look identical.

These have been removed: ^Voha, ^Voh, ^Vhms, ^Vhm, ^Vcha, ^Vch, ^Vcm

Also the lava chasm bridge (^Bs*) has been rolled into the chasm bridge. The lava variant now appears automatically when the base tile is lava.

In 1.9.1 the volcano was given the terrain code of "Qv". To allow for easier and saner wildcarding it will be "Mv" in subsequent releases

[Eleazar]

Known Issues with 1.9 Terrain
Reports on glitches in the terrain are welcome, especially on terrains that rarely are adjacent.

1.9 gives map-makers more freedom to combine base and overlay terrains as they wish, however common sense should be used, not all combinations make sense, or have a reasonable move/def value. For instance you can plant a forest directly in lava. That doesn't mean you should, or that units will behave as you expect on such a tile. (it's a normal forest). Generally i want to make everything work together, or at least fail gracefully, but with some crazy combinations, you are on your own.

These are all things that will hopefully be solved by 1.10

• * Cave Walls have glitches (cave wall is being redone)
  X Stone Walls (Xos or Xol) overlap stuff wrong -- fixed in 1.9.8
  -- Some terrains have few transitions
  * All the cactuses and desert decor disappeared from my desert. See here:
  * Castles next to Cave Walls cause glitches
  * Lava chasm doesn't match normal chasm
  X Water castle transitions overlap castle walls.
  X Dwavish Castle doesn't mesh as well as it used to with chasm --fixed in 1.9.1
  X Desert Mountain is ugly and doesn't transition well with stuff --fixed in 1.9.1
  X Castles of Different types don't fit together
  X Hard edge on top of impassible cloud --fixed in 1.9.1
  X Hard edge on the top of the cave beam's beams. --fixed in 1.9.1
  X No transition between leaf litter (Gll) and water --fixed in 1.9.1
  * Snow mountains missing small variants
  ...

[Eleazar]

Terrain Tools

Attached is a map that useful for testing new terrains. Fill in the empty space with your new terrain, and you can see it next to everything.

EDIT: Updated for 1.9.1 -- with redundant terrains removed.