[Freeciv-Dev] Re: borders patch (PR#1870)

["Ben Webb" <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 06:01:34AM -0700, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Ben Webb wrote:
> > In any case, my suggestion for a possibly more realistic
> > solution is to send tile ownership information for non-fogged tiles ONLY
> > if those tiles are owned by you, or they directly border a tile owned by
> > you. This way, you know your own borders exactly, but don't learn extra
> > information about remote players, except where you can see their
> > territory or they directly border your own tiles. Comments?
> I think the "more realistic" solution is going to be error prone.

Possibly. See the current version of the patch to find out. ;)

> How are you going to be "discovering" borders that are stale?

I'm not sure what you mean. The client will only "discover" tile
ownership, given the rules outlined above. Borders are simply drawn
between tiles owned by different nations, or unowned. "Stale" ownerships
are simply stored in the player map, so survive reconnects and
save/reloads.

> What happens if you move a unit into a border which is far from its
> previously known position?

You'll get a weird-looking border (but not _that_ weird, IMHO).
Try it and see...

> You would get drawing problems, but I guess the drawing problems might be
> your least worry...

What else is there to worry about? You'll always know your own tiles,
and any that you can see.

> I am not worried by the "information leak" of the new implementation.
> Classify it as a feature. If you want, I can invent some "realism"
> rationale for it.

It may lead to tile_info packet spam though - I haven't looked at this
too closely.

> While testing it, I found the dark blue border very hard to read.

Yes, so did I. You can't see it at all over ocean tiles.

> Some borders looked rather similar and may be hard to pick out by people with
> some colour blindness.

Not my fault. Blame whoever wrote the player_color function. ;)

> I realize we may run out of distinguishable bright
> colours, but maybe we can combine colours in some way, eg every second
> line dot in a different colour? Perhaps the dots should be of varying
> length too, so that you can recognize them on a morse code like pattern?

As a partial solution, the current patch adds tile ownership display to
the middle-mouse-button popup with the GTK2 client.

> Also, I think borders should go further into the ocean. It looks a little
> cramped the current way. It is almost claustrophobic at times...

It's done this way to mimic SMAC behaviour. I suppose it could be
configurable though - you can write the code if you like. ;)

        Ben
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