Re: Pre-alpha version of a coating-based terrain module

[Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 15:39, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> > One way to maybe display multiple coatings would be
> > to make custom
> > tiles for each coating
> > with holes in them...for instance, for grass make a
> > cloating that is
> > "patchy", so you
> > can see the underlying tile terrain underneath.  For
> > rain, clouds, and
> > snow, it could be patchy
> > in alternating areas, so that you could put a grass
> > coating and a rain
> > coating together
> > and have the holes in one merge with the patches in
> > the other.
> > 
> > For thick forest, you could fill the center totally
> > with tree texture,
> > and leave a couple of
> > corners open to show other coatings/terrain...
> > 
> 
> I think this is the best way, and I'd take it a step
> farther by saying you don't need any caveats to show
> the terrain underneath, except insofar as, say a
> forested hill would need to be obvious.  As it stands,
> a high-K-dirt hex, with a sparse-grass coating and a
> dense-redwood-forest coating on top of that can look
> like just the top coating, with further information
> available to players in the position to gather it. 
> For the most part, the top coating in this style of
> terrain is the dominant terrain in our current method
> and that seems to work fine for players.

I hadn't thought of that, but I suspect that we might be able to get
away with using the existing partial implementation of the coating view
code as long as the most important coatings are defined first.  That
way, the most important one will always be the one that shows up.

> 
> Now, if the Tolkien-style map tiles works, and we can
> import GIS data, does that mean we could one day have
> a Tolkien-style map of, say, North America?  Maybe
> complete with 'The Desolation of Pittsburgh'...

I think it would work.  Of course, the terrain module needs to be able
to model 'The Desolation of Pittsburgh' in an appropriate manner.  Maybe
the omniterr.g module needs a few more coating types to represent
different kinds of pollution... (I'll worry about that later.)

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

Push where it gives and scratch where it itches.