[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7261) restructure tileset to avoid explicit terrain mention

["Raimar Falke" <i-freeciv-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7261 >

On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 11:27:33AM -0800, Jason Short wrote:
> > I like the idea and the design. 
> > 
> > Two issues:
> > 
> > Documentation, Documentation, Documentation. Really I don't know what
> > dithering, blending and layering is here. Please explain it. Yes I
> > know this is the first version of the patch and so doesn't contain
> > much docu.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> These terms are mostly invented by me, but they should be discussed and 
> probably improved, since they're a bit contradictory.
> 
> dithering: What iso-view does to meld two adjacent terrains together. 
> It uses a dither mask and simply "blends" the two terrains together. 
> Thus only one sprite is needed for each terrain.  The implementation is 
> tied to iso-view and is gui-specific.
> 
> blending: What non-iso view does to meld to adjacent terrains together. 
>     Say you have a grassland.  Each of the 4 cardinally adjacent tiles 
> are looked at, and the grassland terrain that is drawn depends on which 
> of these tiles is also grassland.  There are 16 sprites per terrain. 
> Generally the terrain is only blended with identical terrain: forest 
> with forest, hills with hills, mountains with mountains.  However in 
> civ3 and some current tilesets hills and mountains are blended together. 
>   This is controlled by the is_mountainous tileset variable which is no 
> longer needed under the patch.

Is the following correct?

  The goal of both methods are to create an image of a tile which is
  depending on the other tiles around. The reason for this is too be
  more graphical appealing and be less monotone.

  One approach is to graphically let the base images influence each
  other. The other approach is too select a different base image based
  on the surroundings.

  The first approach doesn't require any changes to the set of tile
  images (except the mask). The second approach enlarges the size of
  the set.

  These to concepts are orthogonal in the way that you can use both to
  draw a certain tile.

> layered: What iso-view does to meld forest, hills, and mountains
> together with adjacent similar and different terrain.  First a base
> terrain (grassland) is drawn and dithered.  On top of this another
> terrain (forest, hills, mountains) is drawn and blended.  (This is
> similar to how S_RIVER is handled.)  Logically, if the terrain is
> layered then dithering refers to the bottom layer and blending to
> the top layer.  However it's also possible to mix-and-match
> combinations of dithering, blending, and layering.

This looks like an approach to reduce the number of base images by
splitting and recombination and so eliminating redundancy.

        Raimar

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