Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Tiles restructuring proposal

[Daniel Gudlat <gudlat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello FreeCiv team,
David wrote:
> Daniel Gudlat wrote:
> > My proposal:
> > Have 16 tiles with the grassland connector edges, that are otherwise
> > transparent. Then, for every terrain type, have two tiles: one for the
> > basic terrain (e.g. desert), and one other for a special visual gimmick
> 
> Didn't the dbennett tiles/patch (now out of date) do something
> like this?  I seem to recall it started with many fewer input
> tiles, but generated variations on the fly.

Hmm, now that you mention it, yes, I think that was basically what it
did. I thought the main reason it got rejected was that it was using the
original Civ II tiles, since the idea at least deserves some credit? I
think I'll have a look at the dbennet patch/tiles...

> Regarding your proposal: I think the question is whether you 
> can get it too look as good (or better!) than the current system,

Making it look as good as the current system shouldn't be too hard,
since the current tiles do just that, but in a prefabricated way,
meaning that what I propose to do at run time got done at the time of
the creation of the tile set. (Ralf: did I read you correctly there?
Please, speak up if I'm wrong!) Look closely at the classic and engels
tiles: the borders are the same regardless the terrain! I'd say the
looks depend very much on the care excercized in creating the border
overlay tiles...

> and particularly to guard against everything looking the same
> too much.  I don't know.

That may be the bigger problem here, and that's why I proposed that
gimmick tile in the first place. But one such tile may not necessarily
be enough, and further upping the tile count by adding additional
gimmick tiles kind of defeats the purpose of all this ;-)

> > Now, does that sound sensible and doable, or am I just raving mad? ;-)
> 
> Or both ;-)

Umm, that wasn't an exclusive or... ;-)
Anyway, I'm not exactly an artist, so I don't know hard it would be to
actually draw a tile set which implements these ideas in a good looking
and not to boring looking way. (* Dammit, we need more artists! :-( *)

Bye,
-- 
Daniel "Gudy" Gudlat                (mailto:gudlat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
ICQ-UIN: 5258903               (http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~gudlat)
"Let us do the undoable, let us think the unthinkable.  Let us prepare to
grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all!"