Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

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Radar
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by Radar »

Please tell me what is the problem to add the option about choice between 1.10 and the 1.8 graphic? Just bring back the old look of water and beaches. Certainly most of players want this.
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Dixie
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by Dixie »

Radar wrote:Certainly most of players want this.
Just popping in to say: not me. Please, if you are gonna speak for "most of players", have them come say so in here or at least give their names yourself. "most of players" is not regarded as a valid argument around here.
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by artisticdude »

This is the drakes all over again. :roll:
Radar wrote:Please tell me what is the problem to add the option about choice between 1.10 and the 1.8 graphic? Just bring back the old look of water and beaches.
I'm not in an official position of any kind here, but off the top of my head I can say that such an option would increase the filesize (in terms of images and code) for the Wesnoth package for dubious gain. Like it or not, the developers obviously think that the new graphics are an improvement, otherwise they would never have included them in the game. And I don't think that they will want to increase the filesize to include old images for a (most probably minority) group of players who want the old images. If they did keep old images and features in core as options for those who want them (old drake sprites, for instance?), Wesnoth would rapidly become - there's only one word for it - bloated. For what?

Ultimately, this is the developer's project. We users can offer suggestions and help, but it is up to the developers to decide what features to include and what art to use in the project. And in this instance, it seems the developers agree that the new terrain graphics are superior to the old (a viewpoint I personally concur with).

But then, Wesnoth is open source software. If you don't like the way something is done in the official package, you're always welcome to modify it for yourself. :wink:
Radar wrote:Certainly most of players want this.
Just wondering, where did you get that statistic from? There have been a few users who have posted in this thread who obviously want the old graphics back, but I'd hardly call that "most" of the players. Personally, in my experience most players consider the new graphics to be generally a great improvement. Sure, there are a few bugs to work out, but give it time. Eventually it'll look even better. :)
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xtifr
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by xtifr »

Indeed, let me be another voice saying that, with the possible exception of the ford, I find the new graphics a vast improvement. Putting them side-by-side only emphasized, to me, how much of an improvement the new graphics are.

As for the ford, I'm not particularly fond of either version, and would rather see something that doesn't look completely bizarre and surreal (like the old version), but is more easily distinguished from ordinary water (unlike the new version). But if that's not an option, I have a mild preference for the new version.
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by Vlad_III_Draculea »

@artisticdude funny i had the the other feeling that more players dislike the new graphics;)
just for the record, as dixie wanted it so, i would like to have the 1.8 graphics back too!

@Cackfiend: thanks very much :) now wesnoth is playable again:)
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by artisticdude »

Vlad_III_Draculea wrote:@artisticdude funny i had the the other feeling that more players dislike the new graphics;)
Well, that may be, as I speak from only my personal experience with the Wesnoth community (hence my adding the words "Personally" and "in my experience" to my statement). But simply stating definitively that most players want this, when the common opinion on the matter is not well known and without providing any names or substantial evidence to back up such a claim, is - as Dixie pointed out - an invalid argument.

And it's not like what "most of the players" want matters anyway. This isn't a democracy. In the end this is the developers' game, and they will do what they think best. The community is welcomed and encouraged to offer suggestions for the project, but in the end the decision is up to those who are actually developing the project.
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by tr0ll »

just chiming in that this isnt just a new vs old flavour popularity argument. in a previous post in this topic, SlowThinker identified a step backwards in usability of the game interface. i do like the look of all the newer graphics, so i hope a way can be found to accomodate people's needs.
the add-on for colour-blind / low-contrast vision is a step forward in accessibility, thanks for making it!
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by SlowThinker »

I found this related thread: Retro-minimalistic (Terrain) Package
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by Eleazar »

shadowmaster wrote:I don’t personally see a particular need to determine which water hex is of what kind when covered in fog, since that usually means I don’t have any units currently able to move to those hexes. In a rare situation, they’d have immediate tactical significance if there are units with the submerge ability in the battlefield.
I'm interested in hearing from balancing devs or top players weather it is a problem that terrains under the fog can't be distinguished. If it is, i think the best solution is to alter the fog.
shadowmaster wrote:In the same vein, I don’t see a need to have all six kinds immediately distinguishable between each other, since the three base variations (tropical, medium, gray) are supposed to be used in different environments, and not in the same area. A visible difference between shallow and deep water hexes of each single group should be enough.
exactly right.

There are three possible reasons for controversial terrain changes:
1) The terrain turned out exactly as intended, but some people don't like it.
2) The terrain is not yet as it should be and hopefully will be improved later.
3) The terrain was changed to support additional changes in the future

The new coastline falls under #1 and #3

The ford and difference between deep and shallow, and incomplete wave animations are #2

I'd really like to see a unique animated ford and animated deep water, but that kind of animation isn't something i'm good at. But these changes make it much more practical for an animator to provide animated water throughout the game, without the absurdity of making unique wave transitions for nearly every terrain.


For those who object to "pretty" every being given precedence over "clarity", see this post.
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.
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SlowThinker
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by SlowThinker »

Eleazar wrote:I'm interested in hearing from balancing devs or top players weather it is a problem that terrains under the fog can't be distinguished. If it is, i think the best solution is to alter the fog.
I don't think the fog is the only problem. IMHO the current non-fog graphics causes problems in these situations:
  • a bad vision - bad light conditions, a bad monitor ...
  • color-blind people
  • even non-blind people in a perfect light condition prefers not to have to fix even minimum attention on the terrain graphics
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by SlowThinker »

I reworked this post. Only the 2nd half contains the new text.

this is an answer to Super-Obvious Ugly Strategic Map View (in a restricted forum)
--------------------------------------------------------------

A note:
There are addons (like GEB) where the effect of terrains is not only the movecost and the defense (in other words two different flat terrains with two different terrain codes may have different game effects). But there are only few such add-ons, so the add-on authors may solve the problem individually, by placing items on map hexes for example.
shadowmaster wrote:That isn’t the only aspect of Wesnoth which isn’t friendly to color-blind people; think team colors. I have normal vision to the best of my knowledge, and even I tend to have trouble telling orange and brown apart
I have that problem too. Elipses solve the problem only partially, for example the blue elipse is not well visible for me.
I use the theme "dfool", which shows the team flag in the right side panel and so helps partially.

------------------------------------------------------------
edit: the new text:
Eleazar ([url=http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?p=521168#p521168]in this post[/url]) wrote:Don't you think this totally satisfies the need to know how well a unit will do defensively on a particular hex?
I don't think so.
An example: Imagine a user-made terrain: 'geyser', that has equal movecosts like 'deep water' except fliers cannot move there.
'Geyser' can be created as a combination of
  • 'deep water'
  • 'unflyable' ([movecost] unflyable=99 for fliers, [movecost] unflyable=0 for all other units )
This information is very valuable for a player who knows the movement costs of 'deep water', because he doesn't have to learn the movecost of 'geyser' for each individual unit.
So, the representation geyser=deep water+unflyable helps UMC creators and it helps players who have read the terrain WML. But in current Wesnoth it doesn't help an ordinary player.

Altough the example above is about a new user-made terrain, same arguments apply also for a mainline terrain and for Wesnoth noobs. For a noob who has no access to the explanation of the terrain mechanics it takes some time to grasp that the movement on 'frozen hills' is equal to the worst value of 'frozen' and 'hills'. And then it is even harder to understand there are some exceptions with 'village' and 'forest'.
fabi ([url=http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?p=521162#p521162]in this post[/url]) wrote:1) A terrain info box.
The box can be reached by a context menu entry during game play.
I think a sub-panel of the right-side panel would be more appropriate. It wouldn't have to show all the treeview, only the topmost level: for example "smoking forested hills = forested hills + unflyable". A player could click on 'forested hills' in order to get to the children information. Also he could get info how units-on-the-map (or recruitable units) behave on each terrain type ('smoking forested hills', 'forested hills', 'unflyable'), for example by a baloon (like the resistances are shown for weapon types).
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Re: Water Graphics in 1.9/1.10

Post by Mabuse »

in the early 1.9 releases the water differences between shallow/deep were horrible. but in 1.10.0 its ok.

in fact - since im actually working on a new SX map i must say that the new terrain is really nice
i even like the fords. good job.
SlowThinker wrote: Altough the example above is about a new user-made terrain, same arguments apply also for a mainline terrain and for Wesnoth noobs. For a noob who has no access to the explanation of the terrain mechanics it takes some time to grasp that the movement on 'frozen hills' is equal to the worst value of 'frozen' and 'hills'. And then it is even harder to understand there are some exceptions with 'village' and 'forest'.
well a newb and a noob is something different. ;)

a newb with some common sense will quickly realize that the wesnoth terrains work using common sense. i for myself NEVER found it in any way ODD nor i was surprised in any way, that my land-units have a bad defense in a water-village ;)
But it was intuitively crystalclear to me, that my landbased units will have the village-bonus in a land-based city.

as for movement, its clear that in a combination of terrains the worser movement is usually taken, for example frozen hills, since the "frozen" additionally makes it harder for the units to move through. common sense.

a railway in caves on the other hand- common sense that movement is easier here.
or village in forest .. common sense -- easier to move through


a newb will quickly learn/understand since all the mechanics in wesnoth are based on common sense. wesnoth terrain rules are simply common sense.

you would only give me a hard time if you break common sense for the sake of pure simplicity.
Last edited by Iris on February 22nd, 2012, 3:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Merged two consecutive posts.
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