Workaround for a Snow Map

[Ben]

Hey guys!

Lately, after seeing that beautiful canyon on the Megamap 2 (who made that? He did an excellent job!) I've been wanting to make a snow map. However, we still don't have support in the Remake for stone on snow maps. Snow maps can be done in three different ways:
1) Bite your tongue and just place some grass on the map
2) Skip stone by placing 1000+ stone in storehouse
3) Give the player enough stone to get started with his economy and force to trade for stone

Option number one won't work for me. It defeats the purpose of a snow map in my opinion.

Option two is doable, but it skips part of the economy and makes terrible traffic around the storehouse. In my opinion, it is good to make other starting resources, such as timber, very low to compensate for the skipped quarries.

Option three is interesting for me. It's not a terrible idea. Say your starting resources were like this: 400 stone, 60 timber, 60 gold, 80 wine, 50 loaves, 30 sausages, 30 fish. Very high resources. Also, starting gold and coal are close and there are many trees per location. Players could focus on wood production for trades like 1trunk -> 2 stone Or, perhaps players would make 3 mills and trade 1 flour -> 2 stone.
I think that it can be done. I played a game on Family Feud some time ago. I could only mine about 600 stone total, and that was almost enough for my base. With 400 stone, players should be able to easily get a trade production up. If it can be done efficiently enough for good 60 minute armies, I think it can be interesting.
The problem is that players always want to play the same way every game. I like coming up with ideas to make a new, interesting map, but nobody is comfortable with something new.

Your thoughts?

[dicsoupcan]

I think it is better to bite your tongue and keep a tiny grass cirkel around the stone, immediately followed by a layer of mud and so working back into snow. Or you can make a fight map and skip stone altogether

[WollongongWolf]

The problem is that players always want to play the same way every game. I like coming up with ideas to make a new, interesting map, but nobody is comfortable with something new.

Your thoughts?

Completely agree with that, makes me wonder if it might be worth the effort. I would appreciate it (even once started making a map (never finished) starting with storehouse and marketplace and 10 of every weapon and 20 of each other resource (or something like that)), but will enough people do?

[Shadaoe]

The best solution would be to actually have the stone-snow transitions

[Ben]

Yes, yes, yes. I addressed that in my first post. You do remember the topic viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1444, right? Krom has presented his resentments towards newly-drawn tiles. He doesn't want to add more tiles but rather masks. There were many reasons why this idea was not sound so I'm not sure where he stands on the idea now. I wish I could get an idea of whether this tiles will be implemented.

[Shadaoe]

Yes I perfectly remember this topic, I know it won't be supported (at least in the near future)
It is sad because the only viable option in your first post (in my opinion) is the first.
The other options force all snowmaps to have a different gameplay than grass maps which should rather be a mapmaker choice than a terrain-forced obligation.

I know you're trying to find a solution to avoid grass, in which case your trading solution seems good although it forces to use the market.

[Krom]

There is a core issue with adding new tiles - they already take up all available space that 1 byte can fit - 256 tiles. We will have to rework a whole lot of tile handling and map format - this is not an easy task just for adding a few stone mountains on snow It would be more beneficial to change the tile handling altogether, but at the moment that is not viable.

so I vote for option #1. Let's pretend stones are heated from Earth core and melt snow around enough to make some grass grow )

[Ben]

There is a core issue with adding new tiles - they already take up all available space that 1 byte can fit - 256 tiles. We will have to rework a whole lot of tile handling and map format - this is not an easy task just for adding a few stone mountains on snow It would be more beneficial to change the tile handling altogether, but at the moment that is not viable.

We are almost 100% independent from the original game (concerning editors). Can't this be changed now?

[sado1]

By accident, when I made a stone mountain but decided to surround it with grass/gold transition tiles, I got an idea of fixing the stone problem on snow maps. I hope the person whose map's stone is going to be demonstrated, doesn't mind it Currently, it is possible to surround stone on snow, with snow/gold transition tiles, and it looks very well: http://screenshooter.net/1487897/venuylg However obviously, when mined the stone doesn't look all nice: http://screenshooter.net/1487897/ikoukwx http://screenshooter.net/1487897/ojdmcpo But I got this little idea. What if the game would detect proximity of snow tiles (I think detecting the tile right below would be enough), and then just swap out the tile to snow/gold transition instead of what happens now (which is, grass/stone one)? The same might work for all the gold transitions, I didn't check it out yet. Advantages of my idea: requires neither new tiles, nor changing the map format, and looks nice at least for stone+snow. What do you think? And, would it be easy enough to implement?

[Lewin]

Stone uses quite different transition tiles than gold hills. Gold hills have the "big corner", "edge", and "small corner". Stone has "edge", "big corner", "passage", and "passage with end" (because stonemasons might mine a single tile passage into the stone). So it's not easy to interchange them.

I think we could consider changing the map format, but not for this release. We can use one of the bytes in the current map format that doesn't seem to be used (at least it's not used in KaM Remake, maybe the original game did something with it). Two bytes for tile types gives us a limit of 65,536 tiles. By reusing an existing byte it means that Krom editor (and probably the original game) will still be able to open it but will show any new tiles incorrectly.

But as I said, not for this release, probably the one after.

[Ben]

But as I said, not for this release, probably the one after.

We have hope!!

[The Dark Lord]

Sado's idea still looks better than this though:

I actually thought about doing something like Sado but immediately ditched the idea, for I thought in order to be able to mine stone, stonemasons needed the 'transition' tiles. But apparently I was wrong Seems like an acceptable solution until we have real snow/stone tiles.

[pawel95]

Interesting topic. I never noticed that this problem is actually the reason why you have in the last missions of tpr a full storehouse of stone, nvm..

I have no time to try it myself now, but isn't it possible to cheat with the elevation?

Like put the stonemountain on a very high level, the snow terrain on a middle level and the grasstiles on the lowest elevation level???
Aren't you able to "hide" those grasstiles with the help of the elevation? I'm not sure in which strategy game that was, but it was possible to hide such tiles with different elevation levels

[The Dark Lord]

It would only be possible on the front and back of the mountain, not on the sides (which are always visible). You'd also have an ugly ditch around every stone mountain which would look weird. And if you use such big differences in elevation, it will probably be impossible to mine the stone (no units can walk there).

[sado1]

Stone uses quite different transition tiles than gold hills. Gold hills have the "big corner", "edge", and "small corner". Stone has "edge", "big corner", "passage", and "passage with end" (because stonemasons might mine a single tile passage into the stone). So it's not easy to interchange them.

What happens if we ignore the passages? Are they necessary for stone to be operational? I understand that you'd prefer the long and proper approach, but for the time being (until the next next Remake version) a workaround (like, replacing passages with snow/gold "edge" tiles facing downwards) would still look way better than grass that currently spawns everywhere.