Re: [Freecol-developers] Upgrading Terrain to Civ3 Concept

[Michael P. <mp...@co...>]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:39:28 va...@tf... wrote:
> 1. The number of possible transitions are limited: For example, transitions
> between a High Seas tile and any land tile can be forbidden.
> This, what Firaxis did in Civ3. There are only transitions between 5 tile
> types, which results in a number of 5*81 transition graphics. I think this
> amount is ok, but really the limit.. with at least 2 more land types in
> freeCol, it is not the best solution.

IMHO even 5*81 is a lot of work.  I doubt this is practical at that level, and 
I would prefer we do not back Freecol into a position where we are 
discouraged from experimenting with the terrain model because it would hurt 
the graphics.

> 3. Drawing transitions between land tiles dynamically with Java AWT,

Can you comment on the likely performance?  Beware that people want to play 
Freecol on somewhat low powered machines (eeePC netbook style), and/or large 
screens with lots of tiles to be processed.  (OK, make that *I* want to play 
Freecol on eeePC-class-machines and/or large screens:-)

I am beginning to suspect that we will need a user-selectable graphics module.
We already have multiple usable tile sets.

Cheers,
Mike Pope