Arrakis.py map script discussion

[davidlallen]

wacky/possibly stupid idea: could we reskin *roads* and have the graphic automatically appear inside fresh water areas?

Concept art screen shot attached. I reskinned art/terrain/routes/roads/roadprimitive.dds and drew in roads using WB. The idea is to make roads have zero effect on movement, and appear automatically wherever there is fresh water. It looks kind of fake, but I kind of suck at art. Probably if it used the alpha layer to blend better, it would look less "painted on".

Comments?

 

[The_J]

A simple renaming of the river textures and putting them in the road folder doesn't work?

 

[Ahriman]

Interesting, but the road pattern would have to be changed. This looks too busy.

Basically I imagine it would work better if each well or windtrap had a single waterway leading to eac

So imagine a numberpad grid (ie a 3x3 grid from 123 at the bottom to 789 at the top).
Imagine a well at the middle. There would be, at most, one road going from 5 to each other number; there would be no roads going between any other two numbers.

But even then this might look too busy. If there are too many obvious signs of water then we lose some of the deserty feel.

Is it possible to have improvement graphics vary depending on whether or not they have fresh water access?

Then we could have regular cottages with no access, and cottages plus a little fountain or something if there was fresh water access.

 

[davidlallen]

A simple renaming of the river textures and putting them in the road folder doesn't work?

I suppose something could be worked out, but I believe the basis for the graphics are different. Rivers go in between tiles, roads go through the middle of tiles. Possibly something involving rivers would be less "busy", but it also would not go through the improvements in the same way that roads do.

Screenshot with vanilla rivers attached. (Just paint on using WB).

 

[Ahriman]

The rivers look like way too much water, I think it weakens the desert feel too much.

Open flowing water is going to exist only after serious, serious terraforming begins, potentially beyond the time horizon scope of this game.

Definitely no open flowing water outside terraformed tiles.

 

[davidlallen]

I still think we should use the Rivers graphic in the terraforming somehow. In Children of Dune, people are always walking along beside the qanat, or overlooking the qanat. So qanats are really like canals - open, flowing bodies of water. Try placing the river graphic down in World Builder - with some tweaks to the river graphics it could really capture the water flowing in the desert feel.

Also, from the recent part of the arrakis terraforming victory thread:

ii) fresh water access doesn't have any graphical indication. It would be annoying if terraform chance and terrain yields were significantly affected by a mechanic that was invisible except for mouseovers. Maybe there could be some kind of visual indicator, like the aqueduct building water channels? So these channels could go from the windtrap and groundwater well into adjacent tiles?

I have made the road reskin much narrower and less of a bright blue. Does it still seem wrong?

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, it seems too busy (though better). One of the things I really like visually about the mod is that the focus is the landscape, rather than things on top of it. And it doesn't make much sense, you really wouldn't have a big network of open channels. It makes water seem less precious.

I know what I said in the arrakis paradise comments, but I think I may have been wrong; in particular I also just suggested somewhere that we limit fresh water access; there is too much fresh water, and so
I propose limiting fresh water to only tiles adjacent to wells (and maybe oases if they happen); so not from windtraps. We could argue that windtraps aren't giving as much water as real groundwater wells. It makes it rarer, and so it makes it worth clustering cottages around wells, which I think has a nice feel. And it woudl be easy to remember that tiles adjacent to wells and only those tiles had fresh water.

And if makes the catchbasin more valuable, because it means that you can also build cottages at full bonus on tiles not adjacent to wells.

The children of dune channel is probably only after considerable terraforming work (I haven't seen it).

 

[davidlallen]

Does this seem like a reasonable proposal?
Fresh water spread:
* Need "some" subtle display of fresh water, perhaps roads or rivers
* Wells give fresh water in adjacent tiles
* Windtraps don't
* Some city building - catchbasin, or possibly water cache - does
* Reservoir of Liet gives fresh water in entire BFC
* Fresh water spreads into ocean/coast, so that ...
* Worms and spice will not go into any tile with fresh water *or any adjacent tile*. This is new; it extends the "dead zone" further, which will further weaken paradise civs once they start building reservoirs
Terraforming:
* Any tile with fresh water, with paradise civic, may terraform
* Mesa, ocean, coast never terraform
* Salt upgrades to graben (like desalination) to plains to grass
* Rugged upgrades to rock to plains to grass
* If it loses fresh water or the civic the tile will quickly un-terraform
* In sinks, grass downgrades to plains to graben; salt never re-appears
* On flat, grass downgrades to plains to rock; rugged never re-appears

 

[Deliverator]

Looking at it, I agree with Ahriman. I think either roads or rivers solutions are going to be too much for fresh water. For the late stages of terraforming perhaps.

I think that in the early stages water would be transported by hand or in underground channels so I'm not sure it is appropriate to have it visible on the map. Maybe a little water peddler's hut or something.

Any feedback on the mapscript itself?

The children of dune channel is probably only after considerable terraforming work (I haven't seen it).

I'm talking about in the book, but yes there is a lot of terraforming by the time of the third book.

 

[Ahriman]

Does this seem like a reasonable proposal?
Fresh water spread:
* Need "some" subtle display of fresh water, perhaps roads or rivers
* Wells give fresh water in adjacent tiles
* Windtraps don't
* Some city building - catchbasin, or possibly water cache - does
* Reservoir of Liet gives fresh water in entire BFC
* Fresh water spreads into ocean/coast, so that ...
* Worms and spice will not go into any tile with fresh water *or any adjacent tile*. This is new; it extends the "dead zone" further, which will further weaken paradise civs once they start building reservoirs
Terraforming:
* Any tile with fresh water, with paradise civic, may terraform
* Mesa, ocean, coast never terraform
* Salt upgrades to graben (like desalination) to plains to grass
* Rugged upgrades to rock to plains to grass
* If it loses fresh water or the civic the tile will quickly un-terraform
* In sinks, grass downgrades to plains to graben; salt never re-appears
* On flat, grass downgrades to plains to rock; rugged never re-appears

This sounds good, except that I don't think roads or rivers or big open water channels are right.

Since its only cottages where fresh water really matters, I proposed adding a little fountain graphic or well graphic to tiles with fresh water.
If you did want to go with roads somehow, I'd suggest it being a raised pipeline (maybe something like this: http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/30/alaska_oil_pipeline_T2163.jpg or this http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=FSA/FSA002/x19245543.jpg or similar but a pipe and two supports coming down at an angle, like an inverted V:
o
/ \

And I'd also suggest that the piplines only go from the well to the surrounding tiles, not between the surrounding tiles. So its like a starburst of pipes from the well.

Also, I'd say catchbasin rather than water cache for the fresh water access.

Any feedback on the mapscript itself?

I am still generally too overwhelmed by its graphical awesomeness to have useful comments. It would be nice if you could build cities on mesas.

I had a few other comments in the modpacks thread.

 

[Ahriman]

Cephalo, on city placement AI changes:
the single biggest problem with AI city placement, in vanilla, most mods and even more so here in Dunewars, is that the AI doublecounts bonus resources. That is, the AI has a high weighting on placeing a city so that it gets as many bonus resources in its BFC as possible.... but doesn't ignore the fact that the bonus in question might already be in the BFC of one of its own cities!

A groundwater resource or hill tile in the BFC of a prospective new city doesn't do any good if that tile is already worked by another city.

If you could somehow get the AI to ignore any tiles already within the BFC of a friendly city when it evaluates the value of placing a city on a particular tile, that would be a huge improvement.

 

[Fenring]

I think qanats should be restricted to flat land, which is both logical and looks better if you use road pattern.

 

[Ahriman]

I think qanats should be restricted to flat land, which is both logical and looks better if you use road pattern

The qanat improvement has been removed, it wasn't worth it for just 1 water; the qanat is now jsut a city building (renamed mushtamal).

 

[Fenring]

I am talking about the post-terraforming visual land features.

 

[Ahriman]

I think it is illogical to have a post-terraforming indicator for fresh water in the new terraforming system, since by definition any terraformed tile already had fresh water access, otherwise it wouldn't have terraformed.

We're still not going to be getting any real terraforming outside BFCs in the new system, since fresh water only comes from wells and catchbasin/reservoir.

Maybe we should make cottages *spread* fresh water access with a high level tech (like the one needed for reservoirs)? Like how farms spread fresh water with a tech in vanilla?
That way a few further tiles will get fresh water and terraform.

 

[davidlallen]

I thought you were the one who first pointed out that fresh water should have some graphical indicator, instead of requiring a mouseover. This is true even for non-paradise civs, as well as paradise civs on plots which don't happen to have terraformed yet. At some point I will try to dig through the code which *creates* roads, to see if there is a way to make them less dense. If it was just a simple grid of point connections, it might not be so busy.

The new terraforming scheme I have proposed would only terraform plots with fresh water. That is not *quite* the same as saying that only plots within city BFC will terraform. A well at the perimeter of the city BFC will spread fresh water to plots outside the BFC. The AI may certainly do that. It is certainly possible also for players to build wells which are inside cultural borders, but outside city BFC. This will definitely lead to terraforming distant plots, although we doubt the AI would ever do that even by accident.

 

[Ahriman]

I thought you were the one who first pointed out that fresh water should have some graphical indicator, instead of requiring a mouseover.

I was, though as I said in post 387, I think that this is less important if only wells give fresh water.

It certainly doesn't make sense to have a graphical indicator which appears *only* on terraformed terrain, since that is redundant.

Maybe you could make the road graphic just a little pool of water, rather than a channel, and have that road appear on any land tile with fresh water access.

That is not *quite* the same as saying that only plots within city BFC will terraform. A well at the perimeter of the city BFC will spread fresh water to plots outside the BFC. The AI may certainly do that.

Yes, not quite, but pretty close; only those tiles adjacent that are not in BFC but are adjacent to a well that is in a BFC will get the bonus.
The AI builds forts, not wells, on groundwater that is outside its BFC.

Thats why I wondered if we could have some other late-game means of spreading water; maybe wells are all that provide fresh water in the early game, then catchbasin and reservoir provide them more widely, and maybe in the lategame cottages or windtraps spread water. This would have little impact for most of the game, but would eventually mean that more tiles than just the handful adjacent to wells could end up terraformed.

 

[davidlallen]

At some point, 1.5.2 or 1.5.3 I think, Deliverator set the flag to allow cities on polar terrain. In all the autoplays I have done, there are "polar supercities". These are cities with population 20+, when other cities are population 15-, pulling in 7 commerce per tile.

On the one hand, this is a success, because we were originally trying to encourage players to fight over the limited polar terrain. On the other hand, we may have succeeded too much.

In 1.5.4 I am going to reduce the tile bonus of polar desert waste from 2w 1h 2c to 1w, 1h, 1c. This is more in line with regular desert waste, 1h 1c.

However, I think the mapscript is a success. So, what do you think about deleting the archipelago mapscript in 1.6?

 

[Ahriman]

pulling in 7 commerce per tile.

How do you get 7 commerce per tile? Cottages give 4, +1 from civics. And 1 more from financial trait I guess.

In 1.5.4 I am going to reduce the tile bonus of polar desert waste from 2w 1h 2c to 1w, 1h, 1c. This is more in line with regular desert waste, 1h 1c.

IIRC, regular desert waste is 1h2c?
How about 1w1h2c ? Sounds reasonable to me.

However, I think the mapscript is a success. So, what do you think about deleting the archipelago mapscript in 1.6?

I still haven't really tested the Arrakis script, but the Dunipegalo can be a lot of fun. I don't really see any gain from removing it - what do you see the design gain as being? You want to shift sandstorms and to move in a circular pattern - is that all?
I can shift to testing on Arrakis if its working well now.

 

[davidlallen]

How do you get 7 commerce per tile? Cottages give 4, +1 from civics. And 1 more from financial trait I guess. IIRC, regular desert waste is 1h2c?

7 comes from spice on polar desert waste. Regular desert waste is 1h 1c.

I still haven't really tested the Arrakis script, but the Dunipegalo can be a lot of fun. I don't really see any gain from removing it - what do you see the design gain as being?

There is not much use for polar terrain in dunipelago. You cannot found cities there because it is only one tile wide. (Or at least, the AI will not found there. I haven't tried manually.) I see a lot of conflict in the autoplays over polar terrain in arrakis mapscripts, which is really what we are looking for. The reason for proposing to delete dunipelago is exactly that; I suspect playing on dunipelago will give a *lot* less commerce income compared to the supercities on polar in arrakis. It is going to be hard to come up with an economics scheme that produces balanced results on both, since the polar terrain plays so differently.

Try the arrakis, and see if "once you try it, you never go back".