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

[Lincoln Peters <sampln at sbcglobal dot net>]

On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 09:39, Eric McDonald wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Sep 2004, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> 
> > 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!  
> 
> You can at least partially deal with this with the adjacent 
> terrain stuff that I added a while back ago.

Actually, I ended up using the adjacent terrain stuff to generate the
climates in the first place (you may notice a terrain-type called "land"
that never appears on the map).  Although a more sophisticated
terrain-generating algorithm is still needed in order to lay out
climates in a way that's even remotely realistic.

I'll give it a try, though.

> 
> > 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!
> 
> That hack is disgusting and must go.

Agreed.  Probably the best way to re-write it would be to have actual
tables to control how coatings appear due to temperature, such as:

tt_temperature-min-to-coat
tt_temperature-max-to-coat

Maybe also an interpolation list so that one could actually apply
different thicknesses to the coating, as well.


This would solve the mud/snow problem in a way that would work for both
omniterr.g and ww2-eur-42.g (although ww2-eur-42.g would need to have
the tables added to it).  It still wouldn't allow me to make the
presence or absence of coatings affected by other properties (e.g. in
extremely arid climates, it almost never snows, regardless of
temperature, because the precipitation just isn't there), but it would
be a step in the right direction.

> 
> > 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.
> 
> Sounds like a bug.

On the other hand, as I think back to the way the colors turned out in
the terrain module, it may look even worse if all of the coatings are
drawn.

While this bug does need to be (eventually) addressed, I think I'll have
to improve the graphics before then, so that I never have to find out
how it looks with all of the coatings in place.

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

 eat Depends: cook | eat-out.
       But eat-out is non-free so that's out.
       And cook Recommends: clean-pans.
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