22-05-2001 16:50									#61
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There's no 'Swamp' terrain type in the ecology model. The five terrains are covered by vegetation (ranging from desert over farmland to forest).
Wetland is one of the water types. It won't be on the same square as a river (though it can be part of a river).

Since all farming sites are always used, the ratio farmed/normal patches can depend on the total yield: in ancient times you would see a few farms, in modern times almost the whole square covered. Or let it depend on K. or L. or farming tech.

Wetland: 50% of the normal vegetation patches can be replaced by 'pool' patches

Last edited by Simon Loverix on 23-05-2001 at 15:34

	29-06-2001 01:26									#62
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Although my main focus lately has been on the map AI, it does have implcations for map graphics, so I have been thinking about that, too.

One of the things that has bothered me is the abrupt sea shores.

I would suggest that the way to get around that is to have an overlay terrain for land (it could equally well be for the sea, but having an overlay of a bit of sea is simpler than an overlay of a bit of land) with the appropriate beaches, or cliffs, shown.

This could be achieved, in the simplest case, with four overlays (one for each tile side). Alternatively, more complcated combinations (16 = 2⁴) for all the ways beach can impact.

You could also have a straight, where the water goes through the middle. Of course that would look a bit odd if a city were built in that square.

Cheers

	29-10-2001 21:12									#63
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Fiera, now that you are back...

There are a few things relating to tiles that need attention, if you don't mind!

• I did a pretty rough (a pun!) terrain tile for rough terrain. A nice one would be nice!
  
• We need a city (or town) tile that is an overlay, rather than a full tile, so it can go on top of hills or roads.
  
• Eight little road overlays (from the centre to each of the eight directions) is another fairly urgent need.
  
• A coastal water tile would be nice (lighter than ocean?).
  
• It would also be nice to have beach overlays for tile edges (see my previous post). These could also be used for tile edge rivers.
  

	01-11-2001 07:23									#64
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quote: We need a city (or town) tile that is an overlay, rather than a full tile, so it can go on top of hills or roads.

I had thought of something like this, I guess they're small enough to fit on top of hills.

	01-11-2001 07:24									#65
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Another style...

Attachment: town2.gif
This has been downloaded 107 time(s).

	01-11-2001 16:34									#66
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Hi Fiera:

Those look good to me. Although I'm a little worried about them being visible on all the tiles...

We also need to work out a spec for showing who controls land. I did that square colored medallion in D4, but that would Not fit with your city icons. Any ideas?

	01-11-2001 23:32									#67
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Those are great, Fiera. I will incorporate them when I get to my office (and send you some Roman pictures).

quote: We also need to work out a spec for showing who controls land. I did that square colored medallion in D4, but that would Not fit with your city icons. Any ideas?

My idea is to outline the tiles with the civilization colour. Easy to implement. Also, I might leave out the outline if two adjacent squares belong to the same civilization. So, in effect, you get a border.

Cheers

	02-11-2001 03:41									#68
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quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas My idea is to outline the tiles with the civilization colour. Easy to implement. Also, I might leave out the outline if two adjacent squares belong to the same civilization. So, in effect, you get a border.

I think this could have a very congested look when control changes by square. Other than that It'd be ok by me. But it doesn't cover the issue of showing population or economic power in a way the player can understand easily. "Is that empty verdant land, or crammed to the gills with peasants?" We could use little houses/farms but I think it would be too cluttered.

Ideas?

	02-11-2001 05:34									#69
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Some time ago I reached the conclusion that with a game as complex as Clash it would be impossible to show all the information on a single map, though some things could be turned on or off (civ or province boundaries for example).

For demographic and economic information, I would suggest a switch which changes the overlays on the map from military units to, say population or production bars (that is, miniature vertical bar charts).

Cheers

	02-11-2001 06:03									#70
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Gary, I'm with you that All relevant information can't be shown. But the economic power of a square is IMO Very important and deserves special treatment. This info would only be shown when there aren't military units in the square, so it wouldn't IMO clutter up things too much.

I agree that it isn't Imperitive and can be discarded if more people don't like it then do. Or put in as a simple switch that's shown or not at player preference.

I just had another idea... There will be all kinds of screens to show things by say color in terms of political control, or population, or economic power, etc. How about we allow the player to select One of these, and show a little square of the color that goes with that square on the main map. The little square would be maybe 10% of the size of a map square. I don't propose we do that now, but at some point we could give it a try. We could try it for D6 using econ strength If others like the idea, and see what players think of it. I admit it could be just plain ugly...

	02-11-2001 06:24									#71
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How does a small coloured square tell you the population of a map square?

Cheers

	02-11-2001 17:45									#72
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If we do mapping of characteristics by color then the color shows the population in terms of that color scale! Suppose we use colors ordered as the visible spectrum with red = highest and violet = lowest. The squares with highest population I know of would show in red, and the lowest in violet. So most desert and mountain squares would get a little purple square in say the center. Rome at its peak would show as red, but we probably wouldn't use a little square in that instance since it'd have a city icon whose size would indicate population.

Or if the color is too distracting, we could do it by size of a black square (harder for player to distinguish, but less jarring).

	03-11-2001 00:35									#73
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Really don't think that would work. I would imagine the play testers complaints would be considerable.

Cheers

	03-11-2001 05:46									#74
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My humble opinion is:

Leave the main map with just city info (city icons) and province - civ borders and reserve the population and economic info for alternative maps. See how Europa Universalis is handling things.

Coloured squares in the middle of the tiles will be really ugly, as the demo 4 has shown us.

One idea is to make the details window display the selected tile in all map modes, in addition to any numbers and text it will provide.

	03-11-2001 06:05									#75
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Hi Axi:

Ah, province borders, that's a good idea. Thinner than the civ borders, do you think?

Well, I guess I'm outvoted am not inclined to fight it . We'll see how it works without a population or econ strength indicator on the main map. You're both right that it will look better without. I'm just a recovering information junkie.

	03-11-2001 15:55									#76
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Hi Fiera:

We could really use an alpha version of the roads. As Gary said above the spec is:

quote: Eight little road overlays (from the centre to each of the eight directions).

I expect we could use a placeholder in as little as a few days. Just a first shot would be ok, since speed is more important than quality at this point. Once the placeholders are there, then we could discuss at more length how to best do more permanent ones. A better version could then be put into demo 5.1 just before it comes out. The best part is you'll see them in a demo in maybe a few weeks

	03-11-2001 17:27									#77
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quote: Ah, province borders, that's a good idea. Thinner than the civ borders, do you think?

Or intermittent line like in civ3?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-------------------------------------

	04-11-2001 00:18									#78
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Sorry, coder's privilege - no funny borders. Ordinary ones are bad enough, and other options will further clutter an already intolerably messy map.

When I spoke about borders, I actually meant province borders. I should be pretty clear how the provinces work from this. I also intend to add hints (right click on map) which will give a small bit of detail about a square. And finally, a switchable "Show names" option to write civ, province and city names on the map.

Cheers

	04-11-2001 12:02									#79
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Mark, I will try something for the roads ASAP. I must say I did a first try some months ago, before summer, and wasn't very satisfied with the result, but since you're not looking for something definitive now, it shouldn't be that hard.

Re my email account, yes, jgv@edinoesis.com is my main account. It's only that I can't check it that often sometimes.

	15-11-2001 22:59									#80
	Remove this text

Anything happening here?

Cheers

	08-01-2002 01:07									#81
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I last posted something here two months ago, and the thread has been dormant since then. In my view this area is the most urgent of all in the entire Clash system. The game is starting to take shape, but the graphics are lagging far behind.

In particular, coasts and proper roads.

However, there are other areas:

Agricultural lands
Irrigated land
Decent rough terrain
Better hills

Cheers

	08-01-2002 14:17									#82
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The game looks kind of weird without a coast , and roads is a MUST. This really should be looked into. If anyone have played Civ3 with the Snoopy graphics modpack you will see what i think we should aspire to implement in Clash. If we can get the graphics up to that level, we should have something workable.

-Stian-

	08-01-2002 17:47									#83
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Hi Stian, an official welcome to the project!

I think some roads would be a great place for you to start! Its something that you can do quickly, and it will get you into the current graphics spec. And after that maybe some rivers or coastlines? Lets see what the group thinks.

Can you post a screen grab of the modpack you like showing the features you think are most important? Then we can all check it out.

Great having you in the group!

	09-01-2002 15:52									#84
	Roads and coast Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I've made a set of roads i hope we can use for now. They dont look good, but they should work. I will make them look more real later on.

Check them out :

http://home.broadpark.no/~sastokke/roads.gif

Allso, here is two pictures of the modpack i was talking about. I think the coasts look great in this mod and hopefully i can make something simmilar.

http://home.broadpark.no/~sastokke/snoopyterrain.jpg

http://home.broadpark.no/~sastokke/coast.jpg

Comments ?

-Stian-

	09-01-2002 16:38									#85
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Hi Stian,
I think the coasts look good, except they seem to mingle badly with the forest graphics.
If you have any ideas for rivers, and whether they should go in the middle of the squares or on the edges, please let us know.

	09-01-2002 16:52									#86
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Hey Stian:

I like your road concept a lot! It will add some unique flavor to the maps. I'm also a little worried how it will work for like forested tiles given that there is a lot of complexity in the roads we'd have to work around. Another potential issue is that a city image, if appropriate will go at the center, and some of your roads might not look like they 'go into' the city. Lets see what others think in general before getting into details.

In terms of the specific implementation We'll need to get them into the tranparent Gif format (89a is the spec I think, but it might be 87a). I hope you've got a program that supports that format, if not you can probably find one. Also as now supported in the code roads are drawn by segment. So a lookup table would need to be created for your approach to work. But neither of those are big issues.

If you take your demo 6 jar file, and open it in winzip, you can extract the current road tiles to see the spec. They are in the \tiles directory and have names like RoadNW.gif. Once you get to the stage where you have the roads in transparent gif format, and match the road position in our files now (there is a little excess space at the top of the tile, beyond the diamond) you can put your matching ones in by hand into the .jar file replacing the standard ones, and see how they look yourself! In the long run if we accept your road concept we'd probably handle them in a whole sheet, just as you put them up.

I like the coasts on the map you show too! It would be great to have something like that. The rivers look pretty good too.

Great Start

-Mark

	09-01-2002 17:33									#87
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Thanks for the comments !

In reply to the suggestions/comments:

quote: I'm also a little worried how it will work for like forested tiles given that there is a lot of complexity in the roads we'd have to work around.

Well, I partly agree with you Mark. But if the color of the roads are easy to see in contrast to the background, it shouldn't be a problem. Here's an example:

quote: some of your roads might not look like they 'go into' the city

Good point Mark ! I was a bit uncertain about that one, and its something that can be fixed easily. Although it also depends on the icon size of the city. If its big compared to the square, it might not prove a problem after all.

quote: We'll need to get them into the transparent Gif format

No problem

quote: a lookup table would need to be created for your approach to work

Well, my reason for this approach to making graphics is due to the fact that Civ2 used this method, so I'm used to this approach. In my opinion this is the best way for making graphics (terrain and units). It saves a lot of time in the long run, and is incredible easy to use and change. Also I think it's easier when we're making the mapgenerator....

quote: If you have any ideas for rivers

I like having the rivers in the middle of the squares. Just my personal opinion. And if we plan to have certain boats with the capability to travel on rivers, its also more practical.

-Stian-

	10-01-2002 00:41									#88
	Full PM-box? Change here!

The way it works at present is that there are eight road segments which lead to the centre of the square. The code is arranged that way, and changing it to cover the 2⁸ combinations is a coding task that will get a rather low priority. So, at least for the moment, we are stuck with the eight segment system.

The roads in question are actually very high grade military roads, and are always paved. So maybe grey is a better choice of colour.

On the question of coasts, if individual tiles are used for each combination, I have no problem with it, but it will take 2⁸ times the number of distinct landforms that are in use. By my count, that is around 1500 tiles. Can you handle that sort of workload, Stian?

The approach that I intended to use was by means of four overlays, representing the four sides (and ignoring the corners). Even if this is multiplied by 6 landforms, the number is manageable.

The question of rivers in squares or along the edges has been discussed extensively in another thread. The only substantial argument in favour of in-square rivers is the movement along rivers issue. The significant problem with in-square rivers is that roads will cover them up, or interfere with their appearance. I have always been a strong proponent of edge rivers (as used in Civ3!) mainly because of the barrier effect in combat, and the boundary effect for political control. I also once had an (unfulfilled) ambition to be a civil engineer - I like the possibility of bridges.

The point here is that narrow coast overlays could also be used for edge rivers.

Until Stian showed up, I had intended to do these myself, but I would rather spend my time on the code.

Cheers

	10-01-2002 01:22									#89
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At least at present we do have roads. We don't have cultivated land, tundra or the equivalent of the plain tile of Civ. Although we do have a rough terrain tile, it is awful (I know, I did it). The hill one is pretty bad too. The visual appeal of fixing these is probably higher than that of fixing roads.

Then there are those coasts...

Cheers

	10-01-2002 02:19									#90
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I'm just posting to say that I totally agree with Gary on the rivers-on-side-of-square issue. I also feel that we do not need different coastlines for different landmasses; didn't we once say that the color of a tile depends on it's vegetation/ type of soil/snow coverage and not on it's topography (plains/hills/mountains) and that it will be an overlay over it? What we need is different types of coasts: shallow_beach/normal_coast/rocky_coast/cliff. They will inherit the color of their respective tile if necessary (I assume that the overlays will be INSIDE the tile and not outside, else we can't have rivers).

sas's solution on the road issue makes roads look more realistic, but it will be really funny to see them changing shape over time.

Paved roads were the exception, even in Roman times. They were to be found only in highly populated areas of the Roman empire. The used gravel for most of their roads. We will just have to have different levels of roads/railroads, like we originally intended.