[CF-Devel] speculations about the floor (elevation)

[crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com]

Tim Rightnour wrote:
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      I actually have an idea.. but it would require work on the
     
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      java editor end.
     
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      First, if at all possible, the java editor should retain
     
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      elevation when replacing squares on a map. [...]
     
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      Second. the editor could possibly display the elevation
     
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      in the square [...]
     
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      Third, if the editor had a elevation mode, where it simply
     
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      displayed a color gradient for the various elevations, [...]
     
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      would make it easy [...]
     
     

Well, my concern about it is that this creates another menu,
another GUI - yet another feature that CF mapmakers need to
learn, understand and spend their time on.

"Fixing" problems in the editor should be seen as a last resort.
I'm not convinced that the weather/elevation problem is worth
having it's own built-in GUI in the editor.
A 50x50 worldmap tile has 2500 squares. Even with a colored
heightmap like you suggested, that is a non-trivial
amount of work you are asking from mapmakers.
All that for rain puddles and snow drifts on the floor?

I know that the weather code was meant to have more impact,
but there's nothing you couldn't do in a much easier way:
Grow random plants? - We can use treasurelists for that.
Snow? - Let the mapmaker set it.
Weaker fire spells in cold places? - Define it in the map header.
Seasonal effects? - Can be global, and defined in the arches.

The current approach to weather forces mapmakers to set a
lot of elevations, which then get summed up to create
more or less random effects. That serves no purpose.
Let mapmakers define their own effects directly.
That is much easier, faster, better to control, and gets the
mapmaker what he really wants.


AndreasV

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