[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#8935) Relief Special

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=8935 >

Marcelo Burda wrote:

>> It was very hard 
>>to tell without asking what the output of a tile would be.
> 
> there is a png where i test the visibility of a base terrains under
> mountains and tundra. Hill can be make best with more transparent!

Currently the sprites cannot have any transparency.  And I quite doubt 
that hills/forests will look good transparent.

I also doubt they'll look good matched against terrains other than those 
for which they're intended.  This isn't a problem in isotrident since 
they're not really "intended" for any terrain.  But in 
http://freeciv.org/~jdorje/civ3.png the mountains and hills blend 
together very well with the underlying grassland.  But if this grassland 
were changed that would no longer be the case.

Finally I don't think the mountains will look good against all terrains, 
even in (iso)trident.  Of course this just means we need a 
CanHaveMountain terrain flag.  But for instane you shouldn't have a 
mountain on top of a forest.

Which brings me to my next point, that forests and jungles should be 
turned into specials before mountains are.

As for the overall design, I have an idea where not only all terrain 
types but also all special types come from the ruleset.  So roads (and 
the settler actions that create them) are defined in the ruleset, as are 
rivers (and the mapgen data needed to place them).  However this is a 
very long-term goal.  In the nearer future I want to have all terrain 
types come from the ruleset ("gen-terrain").  Having hills, mountains, 
forests, and jungles done as specials may help with this.  But it will 
take some work to convince me that any terrain other than grassland 
should get the CanHaveXXX flag (XXX={Hills, Mountains, Forests, Jungles}).

jason