How does the map drawing work?

Thue · December 29, 2000, 20:59

I have got mindeye's HiRes tiles (which btw look really nice!), and I am wondering how to choose base tiles for drawing. In terrain1.gif there is what looks like 2 desert, 6 plains and 4 grasslands; what is the way to draw then so that it looks good?
(this is made slightly difficult by the fact that I don't have windows installed, even though I do own a copy of civ2.)

You may have an educated guess as to why I am interested...

Thue · December 29, 2000, 21:39

A little thought shows that there is only two of each, and that the extra ones were hills mountains and forrests. But how do you choose among the last two?

St Leo · December 30, 2000, 00:33

Normal CivII only uses the first column with mountains and forests obtaining a background graphic from terrain1.gif and a foreground graphic from terrain2.gif. ToT, on the other hand, has three columns and randomly(?) picks among them.

P.S. HiRes hurts my eyes.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
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Thue · December 30, 2000, 15:14

ok, find X errors. What is wrong with this picture:

http://hjem.get2net.dk/thue_janus_kr.../snapshot1.png

(Yes I know the costs and river mouths is not yet drawn. I also know that in some cases the overlap is not drawn correctly.)

I think the desert/grassland borders look wrong, how are they done in civ 2? Could anybody post a screenshot from HiRes showing some desert?
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited December 30, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]

St Leo · December 30, 2000, 19:00

The bottom left tile in terrain1.gif is used to dither all of the non-ocean background tiles at their boundaries. I would guess that the rhombus is subdivided into four triangles (or the rectangle is split into four) and the black dots in each region are replaced by what would have been there if the terrain adjacent to the triangle was also the terrain in that triangle.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
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Thue · December 30, 2000, 19:38

That makes sense and is easy to do - thanks!

ps (unrelated): why do you use the

smiley in all your posts, even when it does not have any relation to the content of the post?

Thue · December 30, 2000, 20:02

Units adrawing (and moving, but I con't show that here...)
HTTP://hjem.get2net.dk/thue_janus_kr.../snapshot2.png
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]

St Leo · December 31, 2000, 15:35

BTW, are you going to just rotate the map 45* from the the CivI perspective or change to the pure CivII projection?

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Thue · December 31, 2000, 23:00

As you know current unmodified freeciv works as civ 1. What I have done is simply to rotate the view, and that will be it for some time.
However, with some effort the rest of freeciv can be converted to civ 2 style tiling, resulting in a non-rotated view. (I have though that through pretty well.) But that is a seperate effort.

Btw, I think I know why my screenshots look slightly wrong; I had assumed that moving one tile north would be done by drawing the tile one tile-height further up; turns out it is actually one tile height minus two pixels. (You can see how the black edges are slightly misaligned.)

On dithering: Mindseye conferms you are right, but I may choose to implement my own instead of using that.

Here is a screenshot; because of the height miscalculation I couldn't get the dithering working, so I made a quick hack to try my own. Why is when I realized the height mismatch

. The dithering will work better later. http://hjem.get2net.dk/thue_janus_kr...n/snapshot.png
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]

St Leo · January 1, 2001, 14:39

*.gif version
*.jpg version
*.png version

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Thue · January 1, 2001, 18:23

It turns out I should have read St. Leo's description of the dithering closer

They actually don't just draw when dithering, but do color averaging of some kind too.

Btw, it turns out that civ 2 doesn't move two pixels as I had presumed, as far as I can see from leo's screenshot, which is strange as it prduces better results. I will leave it in freeciv for now...
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]

Thue · January 1, 2001, 21:59

it works very well now! And what can't be seen is that I implemented the drawing efficiently, or at least it is so fast I can't fell the delay.

http://hjem.get2net.dk/thue_janus_kr...en/perfect.png
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 11, 2001).]

Thue · January 2, 2001, 01:06

Ok - I reduced the distance between vertical tile with 2 pixels. I tried using that tile St. Leo suggested for dithering, but I couldn't find a really obvious way to do it. Are you sure it is correct?

Btw, I only use one of the tile types. It would be nice to know what the pattern is in civ 2 if there is any. And it would be nice if someone would post a civ 2 HiRes screenshot with lots of desert.

Oh, and should I dither on the top of jungle? swamp? arctic? tundra?
I could also implement dithering between coasts with land om top, which I currently don't do. It seem like civ 2 doesn't do that. http://hjem.get2net.dk/thue_janus_kristensen/try1.png
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 01, 2001).]

Thue · January 2, 2001, 19:16

Lotsa things. Note the flags. The freight blocks most of it's flag, so I may invert it.

Shadowstrike · January 2, 2001, 19:36

I suggest reducing the flag size.

St Leo · January 3, 2001, 14:07

Thue, if you want to go for full Civ2 compatibility you are going to have to reduce the size of that flag. For that flag to look right you would have to allow for a larger graphics format.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Thue · January 3, 2001, 15:39

Perhaps if I cut down the size somewhat and position it the same place where the civ 2 shield is placed.
(They are on that screenshot mostly because it was easy to do using the flags from the standard freeciv tilesets, not because I intented to let them stay there.)
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited January 03, 2001).]

Jing · January 3, 2001, 20:44

WOW! Great work, Thue. And I absolutely love the HiRes tileset.

About the last message, the Freeciv shields look much better anyway.

deepone · January 6, 2001, 09:46

I agree...
Looks real nice!
And shields are nicer...

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Thue · January 13, 2001, 07:43

Is it just me or is the ocean gfx in terrain1.gif never used? Im my engine I always paint the coast tiles on top and looking at civ 2 screenshots I think they do the same.