Topic: New Immovables

Astuur, your idea sounds really interesting I just find it hard to imagine, how the mountains and rivers will look like in the game Maybe, an example graphic would help a lot - for later, I mean. Of course I know, by now it is still just an idea

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@Astuur: Man, I am LOVING the ideas you are bringing! The marsh and river vegetation, more relics and ruins, and the mountains certainly sound very achievable. I feel they all should be seriously pursued and included in build 17.

As soon as we get those Barbarian building models straightened out, I will have opportunity to play with some random fractal mesh effects for mountain building. I can hardly wait! (EDIT: That's not to say that some other readers of this forum shouldn't give it a try!)

@fraang: I wasn't around when the existing trees were put into widelands, so animating your palm tree will be a learning experience for both of us. We may still need to tone the hues down a bit, but all in due time.

I see little people.

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Coming back to this topic after a while, I have 2 new, very simple suggestions.

1) an invisible immovable!
Now -- do I have a nerve, proposing this in a graphics forum?
In this thread Ixprefect explains
how regions that allow medium size buildings (but not large ones) must be created
from unrestricting terrain by using blocking immovables, not by height profile.
These immovables must be blocking and indestructible by the player in order to do the trick.
We don't have much choices there. The least visible item from the "ruin" series is quite good
on grassland, but something even less intrusive may be helpful.
(completely transparent, a whole in the ground, a stone - whatever.)

2) bushes, brambles, bracken in a variety of shapes. Something that you can form small irregular groups of.

We currently have sort of "one each", but that is just too repetetive.
These things must be created and placed with a bit of botanical knowledge.
Having groups of cactusses in a swamp is just downright silly.
Maybe the UI should prevent such nonsense, or at the least explain where all these plants should be places and where not.
They're only eye candy and can disappear when roads are built of houses.

Not very challenging, I admit, but they would help to create better looking worlds.

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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SirVer wrote: ...but I feel that a completely invisible one [immovable] would confuse the player.

Hmm... they would fell all trees and collect all stones and still cannot build a big site. That is true.
Invisible would have been most versatile, but we can do without, if you want to avoid puzzling folks.
Okay then, so let's give them some indicator.

• Unminable rocks, (all worlds)
• maybe a big old (unfellable) tree, with a bird's nest (all worlds)
• an animated bubbling mudhole? (Blackland)
• an anthill, (Greenland)
• a foxhole, (Greenland)
• a molehill (greenland) (good, since mulitple ones are very credible!)
• a tile to make crevasses of variable length (Winterland)
• a pit full of snakes (Desert)

Note that you should be able to make medium sized buildings also with mixing buildable and non buildable (e.g. snow or lava) terrain (afaik. not completely sure currently).

I did not manage to do this. Terrain that disallowes buildings does not seem to affect the vicinity in that regard. Or did I misunderstand you?

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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I'd like to recap the suggestions so far for new immovables and add a couple of my own:

• Palm tree and other new trees
• Plants near water bodies
• Hints at a previous culture
• slabs of an ancient road
• half-ruined archway
• a single standing column
• fallen and broken columns
• pieces of masonry
• Mountains (for large impassable areas)
• Volcanoes
• animated bubbling mudhole (Blackland)
• geyser (Blackland, Greenland)
• steaming hot springs
• Rivers
• boulders in rivers that show some water current
• moving water, rapids
• fish jumping out of water
• Whirlpool in water
• waterfalls
• bushes, brambles, bracken in irregular shapes
• Unminable rocks (all worlds)
• big old unfellable tree, with a bird's nest (all worlds)
• anthill (Greenland)
• foxhole (Greenland)
• molehill (Greenland)
• crevasses of variable length (Winterland, Desert?)
• pit full of snakes (Desert)

Edited for format

I see little people.

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