[CF-Devel] Graphics & Derivative version

[Mark Wedel]

 Tyler Van Gorder brought up to me that the appears to be a somewhat derived
version of crossfire out there at 
     
     http://www.cabochon.com/.
     
       Since its in
java, and a quick glance makes it appear a bit different, I don't personally
think there is much to be done about it under the GPL (I've never been
one for much on look and feel, and to me that is probably the biggest
aspect that we could complain about).

 But unrelated to that - take a look at the screenshots.  To be,
that shows that even with standard tile based drawing and placement based
on objects, the graphics can look really good.

It appears their tile size is also 32x32 or so.  It also appears that
the viewport size is 13x13 (crossfire is currently 11x11)

 I would personally think that it would be easier to get near that
form of graphics by taking what we currently have and improving it
vs going to a new form (isomorphic).  I think some of the screenshots
also provide good hints on making things look better - ie, shadowing,
45 degree angles for many of the terrain types to smooth things
out, and more variations (bunch of types of trees, flowers
and lighter shades in the grass, etc).

 My other thought on graphics:

Good graphics will help a little bit in the first glance 'hey this looks cool'
category of gamers.  But what will really keep the gamers playing is the
gameplay actually being good.  The prettiest game in the world won't last long
if the gameplay behind it sucks.  Personally, I think crossfire has pretty
good gameplay, and what that will typically mean is that once you can attract
the player, they will stick around (and probably tell their friends about this
cool game).  Muds typically don't have any cool graphics, yet they have quite
a following.

 I guess my main point being - while increasing graphic quality should
continue, I think it would be better to spend the effort making the
gameplay better than switching to isomorphic graphics.

 I've also lived through two big shifts in graphis (xbm -> xpm
and now xpm -> png), and I've seen how long it takes and how much
effort it takes to make that change.  There are like 2500+ images out
there - this is not a trivial process.  Process takes somewhere
between several months to years.