Re: More flexible unit image use

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Elijah Meeks wrote:

> > Very nice. The more images the better. But we must
> > do something about the
> > image loading system soon. It's getting overloaded
> > :-).
>
> I think there should be a serious overhaul of the
> graphics used by XConq.  Some of them are atrocious
> (I've contributed my fair share with the Spec tiles,
> and I think they can be removed with no ill will) and
> some are just a little too outdated.  I've been
> looking around at freeciv and other open-source
> projects and I think there's enough good, free
> graphics that we could finally see the end of four
> monochrome guys with pikes representing infantry.
Hey! That was hot stuff for X10 in 1987! :-) Actually, they're
supposed to be carrying rifles, and they're arranged obliquely so
as to look visually different from other types (my first try was
a rectangular array of six, but it looked like a blob).

Of course, the state of the art now is to animate small models built
out of polygons in 3D. Anybody working on a 3D interface? Thruput
of graphics cards now exceeds vanilla 2D capability, plus you could
do continuous scaling instead of using all the magnification
infrastructure.

Stan