[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [Patch] Fortress with enhanced vision (watchtower-like)

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 04:26:11PM +0200, Bert Buchholz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Patch against cvs from Fri, Aug-24, somewhen in the evening :-) 
> This is now the watchtower "included" in a fortress, because most people
> liked it better this way. First, the features:
> 
> Features:
>   - The fortress provides a larger visionrange (2), as soon as
>     "invention" is invented (can be changed in rulesets)
>   - tech_flag_id: TF_WATCHTOWER
>   - *flag_names[]: Watchtower
>   - Still, fortresses have no owner, just like now, so everybody, who
>     steps into a fortress, gets enhanced vision (as long as he stays
>     there & he has made the necessary invetion), no matter who built it.
>   - If a fortress is empty, no enhanced vision will be granted.
>   - Units, that have a visionrange == 2 will get no enhanced sight. This
>     means, that they will keep their visionrange of 2.

Very nice.

> 
> IMPORTANT: Currently, if there are units with visionrange > 2, their
> visionrange is reduced. This is not logical, so maybe the visionrange
> shouldn't be set to 2 but enhanced by 1 (vision_range+1), but this would
> mean that spies inside a fortress would get a visionrange of 3, which
> seems to be very much. In fact, every visionrange > 2 seems to be too
> much, but maybe you think diffrently. Also, the value 2 is hardcoded,
> maybe that is not desired, even though I don't see too many reasons to
> play around with this one, but you never know :-)

For maximum flexibility it may be nice to have two variables:
watchtower_vision and watchtower_extra_vision. Your current code
implements watchtower_vision=2. Could you replace the hardcoded 2 with
a call to get_watchtower_vision() which is something like:

{
 int base_vision=get_unit_type(punit->type)->vision_range;

 return max(base_vision, 
            max(watchtower_vision, base_vision+watchtower_extra_vision));
}

Could you also make these two variables changeable by server command
or ruleset?

Another issue to have a more fine grained control over vision
range. The vision range is currently a square with the dimensions
(vision*2+1)X(vision*2+1). Maybe this could be changed to somelike
like:

vision=1:

   x
  xux
   x

vision=2:

  xxx
  xux
  xxx

vision=3:
   x
  xxx
 xxuxx
  xxx
   x
vision=4:
  xxx
 xxxxx
 xxuxx
 xxxxx
  xxx
and so on.

> Up to now, following events regarding watchtowers are handled (there may
> be more to handle which I didn't see):
> - A fortress is pillaged (vr reduced)
> - A town is built upon a fortress (vr reduced)
> - A unit steps into a fortress (vr enhanced)
> - A unit steps out of a watchtower (vr reduced)
> - The necessary invention is made (all units inside fortresses get
>   enhanced vr)
> - A fortress is built (all units on that tile get enhanced vr)

I have currently no clue about fog handling.

> So, if anything's missing, or other failures (which are of course
> intentional ;-), please tell me and I'll try to kick them out, or you do
> that or the devil knows who... :-P

        Raimar

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