[Freeciv-Dev] Re: drawing tiles multiple times

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Jason Dorje Short wrote:

> In the past it's been suggested that a tile could be drawn multiple times.
>
> For instance if you have a 40x25 map and your mapview is 50 tiles wide,
> currently the extra 10 tiles are drawn black (at least they are supposed
> to be: it's easy to get bugs where junk gets drawn here).  But if tiles
> were drawn multiple times then the 10 tiles on the left of the mapview
> would be shown in duplicate on the right.
>
> In the above example there are no big advantages to drawing tiles
> multiple times.  The only advantage is that you don't have the big black
> area on ths screen (which is ugly).
>
> The main disadvantage to drawing multiple times is that it's hard to do
> right.  In the past we'd have situations where the tile would be drawn
> multiple times, but only partially.  Thus you'd get two copies of a unit
> but only one woudl blink.  This was confusing.  To do it correctly, both
> copies of the unit have to blink, and if you animate a unit both units
> need to be animated.  If done properly, I think the main argument
> against doing this (that it is confusing to the player) will be moot.
>
> So the question is, why would you want to draw tiles multiple times?
> With current topologies there's no reason why you need to do so.  As
> long as you center properly on the current unit it will always be
> surrounded by a lot of properly drawn tiles.  In almost all cases the
> mapview is much smaller than the map, so there is no issue whatsoever.
>
> But consider an exotic topology in Marcelo's PR#7287 patch.  In a
> quincuncial topology, there are tiles that are adjacent to themselves!
> That is, if you go northeast from (40,0) you wrap around to
> reach...(40,0).  (These "singularities" are generally hidden in remote
> locations like the north and south poles.)  If you only draw a tile once
> this gives you big problems.  Imagine what happens if it *looks* like
> the map ends one tile north of your unit, but when you move north you
> end up being animated to the east.  Very bizarre.  I've looked at these
> maps, and it's incredibly confusing.  But if you draw tiles multiple
> times everything becomes clear.  Hopefully.
>
> Marcelo's PR#7287 patch includes a full implementation for drawing tiles
> multiple times (actually only 1 extra wrap in each direction, so only up
> to 9 times AFAICT).
>
> So I'd like to reopen the discussion on whether drawing tiles multiple
> times is forbidden.

What for? I mean, if your display can fit the map 4 times, will you
replicate it 4 times as well? Seeing 4 times the same unit and city, etc.
Bloody confusing IMHO. View wraping I can understand, its like a map
camera position change, but replication of tiles? Makes no sense at all.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa