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

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Elijah Meeks wrote:

> 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 would expect that a dense redwood coating would pretty much obscure 
any other lower coatings by virtue of not having much transparency in 
the image, except maybe along an edge to indicate things such as snow, 
as Steven suggested. In principle, I like the idea of being able to see 
all layers that one can reasonably see.

> 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'...

Here there be steel mills....

Honestly, I have only been to Pittsburg once, and it was the area around 
Squirrel Hill (IIRC?), CMU*, and UPitt, and it wasn't all that bad.

Eric

* Carnegie-Mellon University, not Central Michigan University. As if 
anyone even knew the latter existed....