Topic: Attempting new quarry stones for Greenland

How are we going to include the Standing Stones?
Do they simply replace the "Asparagus" type stones, or do we add them to the list of immovables.
I have so far done the latter here with my installation.

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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Hmm.. the drawback of installing them as new items is, that every map that uses them is not loadable in installations without the boulder type. But we cannot escape that, if we introduce new immovables. So why not form a new category or two (boulders, menhirs)?
Honestly, I have yet to find a place where I'd need the asparaguses. They look alien in all worlds IMO.
My problem with them is, that I cannot see them as "stones"; they look clearly plant like to me. But for such a purpose they seem ideal.
A giant plant, sprouting out of the soil, growing until .... if we could make an animation of them, popping up into a great blossom? Great for Blackland!
Or maybe giant mushrooms? That could be one of those "play once" animations and should only occur in selected terrain types without houses (swamp?)
The animated dream catcher shows too much wind speed, I think. There is nothing else to accompany it at storm force 10.
I'd keep the more natural colors like green and yellow use them for something new, not stones. and save the rest in the repository.
But you must decide - being our Elder.

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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hjd wrote: One drawback I see with them is that the overlap way less than the previous stones did. To explain, compare the two images in the first post. For instance right north-east of the HQ, I think the new models have a bit too large gap between them. This make it look fairly obvious that there is two stone#1 next to one stone#2.

I am not quite sure which stones I should look at in the screenshot but it does not really matter; I can see and understand the princliple critisism.
You are right, the general impression is more that of discrete single heaps of rock. It is not so obvious if they are placed rather densely, but with scattered heaps it becomes more obvious. Partly this is inevitable and due to the distinct form that the heaps have. The old stone heaps were a sort of "compound" that consisted of several more or less identical units placed on top of each other. This helps a lot in camouflaging where one heap ends and the other begins.
The down side of this (and one of the reasons for me to change the old stones) was that they looked more like "take away" then actually quarry. Since we have that nice animation of the stonemason, I wanted the whole preocess to look more credible in this respect. Another point is visually blocking effect (not real blocking - they are identical in that). The new stones are somewhat taller and less wide, so the optical centerpoint is higher. This increases the "blocking" impression for staggered hives (.. into the depth of the picture) but reduces the blocking impression from left to right or right to left.

I preferred how the older models looked more tied together, creating the illusion of one larger stone structure which the mason could work on in different places, rather than a series of independent stones close together.

Well, I did not and still do not for the reasons I have already mentioned. I am sorry you dislike this aspect, but I guess you cannot please everybody in every aspect. Even if you had spoken sooner, I would not have know how to circumvent this effect. I have used the Blackland quarry stones as models that have already existed for a long time without attracting much criticism - so I thought it should be alright.

I think some of the stone lying around on the ground creating some overlap helped, but using a wider base for the stones may also help to prevent this problem. (The latter would potentially cause other problems with nearby roads, though).

That is the point - they are already almost as large at the base, as they are allowed. As for the extra stones lying around, please consider the quarrying animation. These heaps must look self-similar to create the illusion of a logical dimishing process. If I'd place some extra stones to fill the gaps, the stonemason would never go there; they would simply vanish from one step to the next. I tried to avoid such "miracles" as best as I could.

I don't really have anything against the models themselves, but looking at the map now, they make the different stones look a lot more separate than they used to.

As I said, I can see your point. My preference was with something else: I wanted to overcome the "modular" aspect of the the old heaps. They should look more like rock coming out of the ground and not like boulders forgotten by some glacier.
I cannot see any simple way to change this, except designing a brand new pile form and quarrying sequence, which means starting from scratch.
Let's see if this criticism is shared by others, and how important this aspect becomes.
If the need arises to redesign, I might try, given time. For the moment I cannot work on this project.

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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