Seventh Child
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2007
- Messages
- 83
I thought the graphics looked great...
Like this:
The tiles are still pretty obvious, but by sharing a small fraction of the total terrain on a tile you could smooth it out and make the map not look like a honeycomb.
Like this:
The tiles are still pretty obvious, but by sharing a small fraction of the total terrain on a tile you could smooth it out and make the map not look like a honeycomb.
Yes, that looks good. But now you need to predict all possible layouts of grid shape for any given terrain, and render them each individually, while writing code to place the correct ones in each location whenever the map is generated (or as will happen in some mods and worldbuilder, the terrain is changed).
Other than the two brown hexes on the far left of the image, no 2 tiles are the same in that depiction. Not even the general SHAPE of the terrain within any tile is maintained constant (the dark green on top right ALMOST manages to match up with the light green directly below it that is cut by the water, but even those don't quite match).
The alternative to that would be to have something designed which can "blur" the terrains, but that means having something that seems out of focus between every terrain type junction. Or it means instead of designing full plot and multi-plot terrain layouts, you have to design a single TINY patch or twelve and have it look like an 8-bit amalgamation of tiny pieces. By doing that (rendered objects, each much smaller than a single hex to allow for gradients between terrain) you raise the poly count per hex dramatically. And if the terrain is animated (grass/trees blowing in the wind type thing) that means a MASSIVE overhead on the graphics card, all for some nicely blended terrain, which will probably be viewed with the grid enabled more than 50% of the time.
Great, that works for a static layout with no randomization, now, do that for hundreds of thousands of tiles laid out in a relatively randomized pattern. Then, do that a few million times and get smooth results every time. While your doing that, try to not make map generation take 2 hours, I will accept a maximum of 10 minutes(and I am being very lenient with that timeframe)
Can someone explain to me why we're discussing terrain rounding when it's pretty obvious that Civ5 already has this? For example, take this screenshot:
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2775&c=36
Hexagons? Where? The river could be better but the rest looks good.
The honeycomb is only obvious in some of the other screens because the grid display is turned on.
Can someone explain to me why we're discussing terrain rounding when it's pretty obvious that Civ5 already has this? For example, take this screenshot:
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2775&c=36
Hexagons? Where? The river could be better but the rest looks good.
The honeycomb is only obvious in some of the other screens because the grid display is turned on.
Just cause you are still playing on a 486 doesnt mean the rest of us want to be stuck in 1985. Now we are going back to the future. ;pI have to say that I think Civ graphics have been declining steadily since Civilization II.
Civ II has clear, crisp graphics that are instantly recognizable.
Civ III muddies them by adding noise, like shadows and animation.
Civ IV adds pointless 3d graphics, so that you need an advanced computer to show them. And, they change the model frequently: different directions, animations, damage... It's near impossible to recognize a unit without being zoomed in fully. Luckily they avoid many of the usual 3d traps, terrain obscuring important information and insufficient ability to zoom out. (They do add a layer of clouds when zoomed out though. I guess they didn't want the map to be too useful.)
If that trend continues, Civ VI units will be unrecognizable unless zoomed in enough to count the nose hairs, but that's okay since it will be impossible to zoom out anyway and there will be thick fog everywhere.