Changing height from 0-15 to 0-255

[griffin71]

@Bilbo: Do I infer correctly that you think raising the land at the edge of the map is a restiction of the editor?

[Bilbo]

@Bilbo: Do I infer correctly that you think raising the land at the edge of the map is a restiction of the editor?

Not only editor, it is restriction in the game too. But I don't know whether things will break if this restriction is removed ...

[Rubidium]

I don't know whether things will break if this restriction is removed ...

Things will break.

[Bilbo]

I don't know whether things will break if this restriction is removed ...

Things will break.

Do you know which ones and if it can be fixed?

[Rubidium]

At least building all kinds of things; for example bridges. I know a few things that might break and that TTD was especially coded to be this way, so I guess CS has found a lot of other places that he could "optimize" using the assumption that the whole map has a water border.

So, I can say it will go wrong, but I cannot say where things will go wrong and whether it is actually fixable without rewriting large portions of the codebase *very* deep down.

[griffin71]

@Rubidium: Is there a manual (or just a text) somewhere, that explains the basic structure of the game?
I mean: if you want to change game aspects like these, and make the game a kind of Tranport Tycoon Super Deluxe, then it will probably be wise to make some structural changes that will facilitate other often requested features as well. I am thinking of things like signals on briges and in tunnels, and multi level bridges (crossing each other / bridging more than 1 level in height). Should somebody want to try a task like this, there must be some more structured way for him to obtain an overview of how the game code is structured. Reading and experimenting with the code is the hard way, but since there are experienced developers and patchers around, I guess, there must be some documentation about the code... Right?

[Rubidium]

Not that I am aware of; there might be some pieces at the wiki but I wonder whether they are up-to-date.

[MHTransport]

What's the fun in high mountains without steep slopes and cliffs?

Seriously it may be simpler to code cliffs. Perhaps like build on slopes.

That way at the edge you could still have optimising water with high sea cliffs.

With cliffs or really steep slopes (4:1) it would make the difficult levels actually challenging.

[athanasios]

It is already suggested. Seems it is hard to achieve.

[Mchl]

It's also been noted, that it could cause visbility issues.

[Roujin]

please also bear in mind that what's not visible is not available for building on, since we have no rotating.

[JazzyJaffa]

please also bear in mind that what's not visible is not available for building on, since we have no rotating.

Could be dealt with by a slider bar that disables drawing things above a certain hieght?

[Bilbo]

please also bear in mind that what's not visible is not available for building on, since we have no rotating.

Rotating won't help, if some deep hole is obstructed from all 4 angles

[Zephyris]

That issue is unavoidable (think locomotion), unless restrictions were placed on how tall and how close two cliffs could be to each other.

[Bilbo]

Still, perhaps the cliffs may be both useful and relativel easy to implement (at least I hope :) if they will be restricted only to edges, like shown in attachment. This will not affect construction (you can't construct on the edge tiles anyway :), so many issues will not need to be solved and will enable constructing maps with mountains "to the edges"

[griffin71]

Bilbo, does the solution with the border-cliffs solve the graphic glitches you reported earlier in this thread?
Intuitively, I'd say that if the borders need to be at sea level, then also, their slope need to be "continuous", as is now not the case.

please also bear in mind that what's not visible is not available for building on, since we have no rotating.

Rotating won't help, if some deep hole is obstructed from all 4 angles

Exactly, so we need a plain view, straight from above. Cliffs could be marked by a tileborder in a different colour, for sake of clarity.

[Roujin]

[...]Exactly, so we need a plain view, straight from above. Cliffs could be marked by a tileborder in a different colour, for sake of clarity.

I hope this was not a serious suggestion? That would look ugly, not even mentioning the need to redo all the graphics and the display engine and what not else I'd rather deal with not having cliffs...


About the cliff-at-border thingy: since i don't know of what nature the problems are that arise when the border tile is not a sea tile, it might be possible that the current internal stuff needs the last tile before the border to be max. level 1, the one before max. level 2, and so on? Better check that first (Rubidium?) before trying...

[Maedhros]

One of the problems of cliffs at the edge of the map is that the height of the tile is only stored for the northern corner. All the other corners are calculated from the surrounding tiles, which you can't do at the edge of the map as there are no surrounding tiles.

[XeryusTC]

Aren't the southern and western (using #openttdcoop compass) border tiles all MP_VOID and thus not rendered, isn't it just possible to have these not be 0 but also different heights. If only the north-east z coordinate is stored you don't need an additional row for the northern and eastern borders so the map should already support it technically.

[griffin71]

One of the problems of cliffs at the edge of the map is that the height of the tile is only stored for the northern corner. All the other corners are calculated from the surrounding tiles, which you can't do at the edge of the map as there are no surrounding tiles.

I dont' see why that creates a problem for cliffs. It could only create a problem for the tiles that are normally (the case Bilbo showed, but can't reproduce, excepted) the ribbon of sea tiles at the border. But if you respect those, I don't see why cliffs couldn't be a solution to creating a true alpine landscape. The idea is great, I think.