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

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

Todd wrote:

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      well not so much pain as entering a good value.  It isn't having the 
     
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      value that is the issue, it is having a good value.  I can't come up 
     
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      with enough good pseudo slopeing numbers for a 10x10 map.  Now if you 
     
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      want to do something in the editor, make a elevation fill command where 
     
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      you set the eleavtion for two points and it 'fills' in values on 
     
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      selected squares in between...  Even then it will be choppy and 
     
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      unnatural values, but better than some other methods.
     
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It may be a little easier for some of those.  But extracting elevation from
the maps wouldn't be hard.  Ignoring data, no matter where it comes from, is
quite easy.  I'd think as far as the server is concerned, having it in the
object is simpler, because this now isn't a seperate file that needs to get
loaded.

One disadvantage of seperate files is a greater likelihood of it getting out
of date.  Eg, user modifies a map, even going so far as to update elevations,
but doesn't run the appropriate commands or whatever to cause that other file
to get updated information.  This is one reason I like the idea of keeping it
with the object/map - no such issues, and just seems simpler.

I guess one thing I'm still trying to understand is exactly what needs to be
done to fix this.  Preserving elevation doesn't seem to be the answer,
because big changes mean the objects elevations would change.

Perhaps a script that does the following, either:

1) Backfills elevation for spaces that have zero elevation.
2) Calculates elevation for spaces that have zero elevation.

Option #2 could be relatively primitive, eg, I have a line of spaces with zero 
elevation - I'll take the two spaces to either side, average them, and then 
adjust the elevation of this space by ±10% (or whatever), just so big fills 
aren't perfectly smooth.

Maybe a third option that that fills in elevations based on expected elevations 
of the arch, so that in the case of adding a bunch of high peaks, those get 
filled in appropriately.  Although, at a some point, I wonder why dont' we jsut 
add some default elevations to some of these objects in the archetypes.

The automated fills don't have to be perfect - and in fact, I think it would be 
impossible to make it so that they are perfect.  Rather, make them good enough 
to cover the big cases.  There will always be cases that come up which can't 
easily be done by automation and still get good results.  In those cases, hand 
updates should be done.

  Just as the existing world was computer generated, it is getting improved upon 
by hand edits.




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