[Uh-user] New Tile system

[Thomas nihathrael Kinnen]

On Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:24:45 +0100
Thomas Kinnen <nihathrael at unknown-horizons.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> we discussed the new tile/path system during the meeting.
> 
> Why do we need a new one?
> The old one is pretty hard to use especially for non programmers as it
> uses a lot of sqltables which are a pain to use. It's a lot of work to
> add new tiles. It's also not very flexible and doesn't allow adding
> different graphic sets for the same object.
> 
> What do we want to do?
>  The new system should be pretty close to the action_set system used
> by other objects like buildings. If we manage to use similar
> standards we could use the same animation loader for both grounds and
> buildings.
> 
> What do we still need to know?
> - naming conventions for the folders
> - where do we store the ground properties like the groups it belongs
> to (ground, water, buildable, unbuildable, stone, etc)? Db? Yaml
> files?
> 
> Any input is welcome!
> 
> So long,
> Thomas
> 
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Hi folks,
I'd like to summarize the knowledge we gained this weekend. And pin
down the progress we have made.

First of all, polar-coordinates + fife are evil! :) We had a tough time
figuring it all out.

Eventually we ended up using a
ps_NAME[0-9]+/tiletype/rotation/[0-9]+.png directory format for the
tile system. 
The difference to the action set structure is, that if you have a 1.png
this does not mean that this is the second frame of an animation, but
rather a second possible image for this tile, allowing for a more
random and thus natural tile look. If you add a second visual for one
action, it has to be added for all the rotations. But it is okay to only
add it for one tile-type. You do not have to add it for all the actions
in one tile-set.

The loaders are already added to the svn and work just
fine. Loading the graphics into fife also isn't a major problem. The
code of that is working here locally. The main problem we currently
have is that our old maps somehow don't want to be converted quite
right. So what we are going to do is wait for the 0.3.2 version of fife
(supposed to come in march) which will allow to add our own loaders to
fife and use those in the editor. We will then try to make the editor
work with the UH map format and then redo the maps. That seems to make
a lot more sense then trying to really fix all the maps by hand.

The directory structure for the tile sets has been established under
"content/gfx/base/{moderate,polar,tropic}".

For now development of the new system is being laid down, until the new
fife version arrives.

So long

-- 
Thomas Kinnen <http://www.unknown-horizons.org>