Re: [Freeciv-Dev] City styles - proposal.

[Jerzy Klek <qpkjeek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > 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.
> 
> I like the idea; a few comments:
> 
> - "antic" seems a strange term to me, though I guess its related
>   to "antique"/"antiquity".  "Ancient" seems more natural.

OK :-), my english will never be that good :-(

> - How about a separate tilespec prefix, eg "cities.*" instead 
>   of generic "tx.*"

Yes, I've been thinking about it, and I agree.

> - Similarly, probably put new graphics in cities.xpm/cities.spec

It's probably a good idea, but if so, a really clean solution
would be to move all city related tiles to this file, like
city size tile, disorder and so on. But this can be done at a
later stage I hope.

> > styles = "industrial", "modern", "european", "antic"
> 
> Don't think this is really necessary; the server can just look 
> for all sections matching "city_*" (or maybe "cities_*") ?

It is not really necessary, but makes things easier. Without it,
I need other entries anyway, like:
industrial style = "industrial"
modern_style = "modern", 
because someone might want to draw its own style and use
"my_modern" instead of modern. The styles entry allows this
because I assume first style mention is for industrial period
and second one for modern times. Coding is also easier, and
when you look at the file, you know what styles are in.

> > ; There are 3 city sizes: small, medium and large
> 
> I was thinking this restriction could be made variable, and
> then I thought that it could be nice for the _client_ to 
> determine how much detail it wants to show the different 
> sized cities in (eg, based on tilesets).
> 
> So, there would be some "style" string worked out based on 
> national preference and known techs (now sure how this 
> should work exactly; should the techs be nation-dependent?)  
> With some means of fallbacks so can add new national 
> preferences and old clients use standard "default" graphics.
> 
> Then the client would use the style string and the city size 
> to decide what to display, based on info in cities.spec;
> eg, spec file could have tags "cities.foo_0", "cities.foo_4", 
> "cities.foo_7", "cities.foo_wall", meaning style "foo", 
> with different graphics for size 0+, 4+, 7+.
> 
> (OTOH this much generality could get more complicated to 
> implement, and maybe isn't really necessary.)

I'm not sure if I understand. You mean that some styles 
may have 3 sizes, and some may have 4 or more? This is not
a bad idea. But I need to have somehow indicate, what size
to use for which tile. Can it be like this:

[city_mystyle]

sizes = 4     ;number of size tiles
city_0 = "city.mystyle_0"
city_1 = "city.mystyle_4"
city_2 = "city.mystyle_7"
city_3 = "city.mystyle_10"
city_wall = "city.mystyle_wall"

where digit in an entry name is just a tile number, the other
digit shows when to use a tile.

I don't think techs used to decide if siplay industrial or
modern style should be nation dependent - real world experience
is I think that industrialization cuses industrial look
and something like automobile causes modern look. It's then also
useful when you explore and find a new civilization, then just
by their city look you can say something about their technology.

The only nation dependent thing will be just entry 
style = "xxx" to hint default pre-industrial city style.

That level of generalization seems practical. (and also I feel
capable of implementing :-) )

/Jerzy