From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17372 invoked by alias); 21 Sep 2004 04:04:43 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 17361 invoked from network); 21 Sep 2004 04:04:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp810.mail.sc5.yahoo.com) (66.163.170.80) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 21 Sep 2004 04:04:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.1.101?) (sampln@sbcglobal.net@67.121.168.201 with plain) by smtp810.mail.sc5.yahoo.com with SMTP; 21 Sep 2004 04:04:39 -0000 Subject: Pre-alpha version of a coating-based terrain module From: Lincoln Peters To: Xconq list Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1095739618.15989.38909.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 05:43:00 -0000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg01208.txt.bz2 I've given up on implementing bodies of water as coatings (I'll make them cell terrain), I've given up on soil composition (at least for now), and I've re-implemented climate as cell terrain. It's still a rather complicated terrain module, and it has a ways to go before it's usable, but it should offer at least a general idea of what I'm trying to do. You can download it at: http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/omniterr.g Right now, it's probably usable for the Xconq/GIS project, but for anything else, the following issues need to be addressed: 1. The existing code for generating maps does not allow me to place climate zones in a realistic manner. Currently (though this may be partially due to the means by which I laid out terrain), it sees nothing wrong with placing a "tropical wet" zone right next to a "polar ice cap" zone! Eventually, I would also need a way to ensure that, for example, a random map does not place a Mediterranean climate on the east coast of a continent (Mediterranean climates are *never* found on the east coast of anything). 2. There needs to be a synthesis method for applying coatings to terrain when the coatings are unlikely to change over time (as would be the case when climates and vegetation are defined as coatings). Perhaps some way to run the make-fractal-percentile-terrain (or a variant thereof, as per #1) on coatings after running it on cell terrain? (For now, I'm not even going to consider making dynamic coatings work!) The following issues affect the Xconq/GIS project, although they would not necessarily preclude the use of this module for that project: 3. I opened the module in "Design" mode, since I could then apply coatings to cells manually with little fuss. I discovered that, when multiple coatings exist on one cell, only the coating defined first in the module will appear. For example, if you apply a "savanna grass" coating to a cell, followed by a "rain" coating, only the "savanna grass" coating shows up on the map (both show up correctly in the text on the "description" bar). There needs to be a way to display multiple coatings simultaneously on the map. 4. There need to be terrain images that would correspond to each of these 20 different climate zones (not to mention the 8 types of vegetation, though they tend to be specific to one or two climate zones). If you don't understand why, try running the module and notice the color scheme I had to use!* 5. As soon as I put some real-world figures into the temperature definitions, I found snow spontaneously appearing, due to the hard-coded hack that was used to make ww2-eur-42.g work! 6. While trying to make the best of the unexpected snow, I discovered that, when a cell is in night conditions, coatings are *not* drawn at all. Weird. * Actually, I didn't try very hard to make the terrain images look good. At the moment, they're each basically the same color that is used in the color-coded map I was studying while writing the GDL code, and it didn't turn out very well. --- Lincoln Peters A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson