CoM II - Terrain tiles

[Seravy]

Markers help a bit but why not draw units last so they could be on top of everything?

Then we get this :

   
   

Looks bad, the units are standing on the trees. But even worse with City Walls nearby.
   
Limiting it to only forest tiles prevents the latter unless the forest is directly adjacent to the city in which case the unit will still be drawn on top of the walls.

[Seravy]

Myrror grasslands.
   
Quite different but I think the CoM II version might have better visibility for the trees as it uses more green and purple and less brown compared to the original. Are we happy with this or should I try changing it? If yes, in which direction? (More green, more brown, more purple, etc)

[Sapher]

Yea, this is also bad. Then why was it neccessary to change forest battles? In CoM1 there was a few trees even in a forest battle
Let's try attacking a random unit in a forest
http://prntscr.com/ukvten
The whole map has so few trees there is no problem that a tree can hide anything
http://prntscr.com/ukvtur
Why was it changed?

[Seravy]

I tried adding the old mountains.
   
It seems, the old game used 20x18 pixel tiles instead of 20x20 so they don't work well, there is a gap of 2 pixels. I wasn't expecting that.
The only way to avoid it is to use the single tile unconnected mountain images. Obviously, redoing the entire procedural generation of all terrain types to use 20x18 tile size is not possible and not worth doing for an optional feature.
   
The difference between the current and old grassland also shows but not so much on the single tile version. Might be worse on Myrror but I haven't added those yet.

I'm doubting it's worth adding this feature considering the problems, but let me know. I won't continue unless there is enough demand.

The whole map has so few trees there is no problem that a tree can hide anything
http://prntscr.com/ukvtur
Why was it changed?

Because that doesn't look like a forest at all. It looks like a grassland. It doesn't have enough trees. Does that really need explaining?

The original game looked like that for Swamps too. Maybe even hills, not entirely sure. Rivers too. It wasn't a feature, the original developers simply had no time to do the rest so everything that wasn't done looks like grasslands.
(also the DOS engine couldn't handle drawing more trees - it was limited to 256 objects at a time and that included unit figures which used 144 of that 256, so there was 112 total left for all other objects like unit curse effects, cities, walls, etc. so even if they wanted to, and had time, they still couldn't have more trees. In fact, if we hack wizard.exe to put more trees, the game will crash.)

Also on that image you can't tell which tiles cost 1 and which 2 to move on. In my version a tile that cost 2 will have enough trees to make it obvious most of the time.

[Sapher]

Old mountains looks much better even if they are displayed by a single tile. So if i had to choose i would pick that. Ofc, old and connected mountains are even better. There is still a new chaos node tile that doesn't fit well...
Yea, in old CoM it was not always possible to easily understand how much it will cost to move... but trying to get rid of one problem you created another ^_^

[Seravy]

Yea, in old CoM it was not always possible to easily understand how much it will cost to move... but trying to get rid of one problem you created another ^_^

I know, it's not that easy to make games ^_^

Ofc, old and connected mountains are even better.

There is only one way that can happen. If someone volunteers to edit all the necessary 18x20 tile images to become 20x20 images. There are about 50 of them total (mountains, hills, volcano, chaos node).

There is still a new chaos node tile that doesn't fit well...

For the test I only changed the mountains.

[Jtm]

First, I must comment that I like new procedually generated mountains more than the old mountains.

Second, I agree with Seravy that the combat in tree/swamp areas needs improvements from the old system. I like the new trees and I think the arrow markers are a good start, what can be later improved with the second iteration.

[Seravy]

Added the optional mountains to the "missing art" list in the other thread.

There were no responses to Myrran grasslands so I'm going to assume they are good as is.

Here is the Myrran Forest :

   

The problem with these tree is... everything.

The black is the exact same shade of black used for unit outlines.
The grey is too similar to the brown used on the ground so there is no contrast.
Finally, the trees have these white things on them (flowers? fruits?) which is way to big contrast from the rest of the tree making it hard to recognize as parts of the same tree especially when there are several nearby.

So let's try recoloring them.
   

Much better visibility though they hardly look like trees, more like coral. I'll make a few more versions...

   
   
   
   

I can't say I like any of these. Maybe the problem isn't so much the colors (those too) but the shape and size of the trees? Arcanus trees are, well, one, smaller,single block of similar colored pixels which has good visibility, they are basically a circle. Myrran trees on the other hand at thin branches spread over a larger area which is both bad for visibility (thin) but also for overlapping (large area, no defined shape/edges)?

All of these use a tree density of 1 per 225 pixels while an Arcanus forest has 1 tree per 45 pixels. So there are only 1/5 as many trees here compared to an Arcanus forest and it still looks like a mess. As you can see, most actual combat tiles only have 1-2 trees on them, mainly the mandatory one on the tile center, so the seamless "forest' image is nowhere to be found.

[Seravy]

PS : this is how it would look like with "normal" tree density of 1 tree/45 pixels :
   

Any suggestions?

[Sapher]

I like mfv2 the most. Arrows are a good addition.