[Freeciv-Dev] City styles - proposal.

[Jerzy Klek <qpkjeek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi people!

I have been thinking about one civ2 feature for some time:
the city picture were different for different city sizes
and also architecture styles like antic, far-east and so on.
What about having it in freeciv? The way I have it now:
Below there is a misc.ruleset describing what and how:

=====================================================

[datafile]
description="Misc data for Freeciv"  
options="1.8.2"

;
; There are 3 city sizes: small, medium and large
; and three development periods: old, industrial and modern.
; Graphic is specified for each combination of size and period.
;
; size_medium - size when the city is displayed as medium sized
; size_large - size when the city is displayed as large
;
; industrial - which tech is needed to display industrial image
; modern - which tech needed to display city as modern
;
; graphic_xxx - which tile to use for small, medium and large cities
; graphic_wall - wall tile
; 
; styles - list of architecture styles
; First style is assumed to be industrial period, second is modern,
; all the remaining are for pre-industrial style variants
;
; There is room for extending the scheme by new architecture styles.
; One must add his style to 'styles' entry and create section [city_xxx]
; which has 4 graphic_xxx entries. And of course create tiles
; in tiles.xpm and tiles.spec :-)
; There can also be a field in nations.ruleset: city_style = ....
; where you could default architecture style for a nation.
; (Not implemented yet)
; At first cities will have its own style,
; then industrial and then modern.  
; Select nation dialog displays all styles available.
; There is a limit of the number of 8 pre-industrial styles.
;

[city]

size_medium = 4
size_large = 7

industrial = "Mathematics"
modern = "Monarchy"

styles = "industrial", "modern", "european", "antic"

[city_european]

graphic_small = "tx.city_small"
graphic_medium = "tx.city_medium"
graphic_large = "tx.city"
graphic_wall = "tx.city_wall"

[city_industrial]

graphic_small = "tx.ind_small"
graphic_medium = "tx.ind_medium"
graphic_large = "tx.ind_large"
graphic_wall = "tx.ind_wall"

[city_modern]

graphic_small = "tx.mod_small"
graphic_medium = "tx.mod_medium"
graphic_large = "tx.mod_large"
graphic_wall = "tx.mod_wall"

[city_antic]

graphic_small = "tx.ancient_small"
graphic_medium = "tx.ancient_medium"
graphic_large = "tx.ancient_large"
graphic_wall = "tx.ancient_wall"

;[city_far-east?]
;[city_oriental?]
;

==================================================

So, that's the way I have it now. There are only 4 tiles
needed because the wall is a tile itself and is overlaid
on a city tile - which means 2 tiles less needed for
each style. Is it OK, or the scheme can be made more
flexible, or include some more? It does not improve
the game in any way, but give it a bit better look,
which is fun I think.

I have some code working, but only Gtk so far. I did also
some tiles but IMHO they're hopeless, so if you OK this,
someone will need to draw some better ones.

/Jerzy