[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#2369) iso-view eye candy

["Jason Short via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To answer a question I've received...

Eye candy is an idea Daniel had a little while ago, to give isometric
tilesets the same variety that non-iso tilesets have.  Non-iso tilesets
have lots of different copies of each tile, because that's the way the
blending between tiles is done.  This is bad and meeans a lot of work
must be duplicated - but it does allow for a lot more variety.  For
instance the trident desert tiles have cactuses, skulls, rocks, and
grass scattered around.  By contrast, isotrident's desert is very plain
- just mile after mile of sand.

The eye candy patch allows sprites to be declared which will overlay the
terrain tile.  For instance in the desert the skull and cactus each have
their own sprite, which is drawn on top of the desert at pseudo-random
intervals.  Daniel has also created support for this in isotrident
(although there is nearly unlimited room for improvement here IMO).

Daniel's original patch produced the folling screenshots:
  http://dspeyer.student.umd.edu/candy.jpg
  http://dspeyer.student.umd.edu/nocandy.jpg
This also includes his multi-dither patch, which is now split off.  The
effect is subtle, but pervasive.  I recommend toggling between the two
to see the effects.  Look particularly at the desert tiles, which IMO
have by far the best eye candy graphics.

My update of this patch changes things slightly.  Now, more than two
eyecandies are possible.  But it is not possible for eye candies to be
drawn one over the other.  The former is good.  The latter is necessary
given the former.  To see this in action, apply the patch, copy the
eyecandy.* files into your isotrident directory, and run any isometric
client.  Toggle the "Eye candy" view option to see the difference.

jason