Look around

[TiagoTiago]

I've looked for a button or keyboard shorcut for this and couldn't find it, so i assume it isn't present yet; and from what i've seen pretty much all things got an image for each side (or looks the same from any side, or at least ocupies a square area) so it seems like it shouldn't be hard ti make it work.


I would really like to be able to change the camera position to look things from all sides (in 90 degrees increments); in case a few things currently don't got image for all sides, at least lemme look from the exact opposite side (keeping the same images when necessary), but keeping the code already being capable of looking around so when the images becomes avaiable there won't be the need to adjust the the 180 degrees code.

The way i picture it would be a button with a compass in it, where depending on where you click on the button it will pick one of the angles (NW, SW, SE or NE), plus a keyboard shortcut, somthing like pressing one of the arrow keys while holding down Control to pick one of the directions, or holding down control and pressing either the left or the right arrow to rotate the view.

[planetmaker]

I've looked for a button or keyboard shorcut for this and couldn't find it, so i assume it isn't present yet; and from what i've seen pretty much all things got an image for each side (or looks the same from any side, or at least ocupies a square area) so it seems like it shouldn't be hard ti make it work.

Everything which is not symmetric has only one look. So you'll need only to provide 3x the amount of the existing sprites for houses, industries, stations and airports. Oh, and some means to handle the case that those graphics are NOT provided by existing newgrfs. A rough estimate tells me that it's a mere few hundrets if not in the thousand sprites.

In any case, can we expect to see at least a start for the missing sprites from the base sets from you soon? If you start with the airports, you'll start with something which the game code already supports for a few months, but no newgrf except one so far even started to implement on the graphics side...

If you use the search function of this forum you'll find multiple threads where this has been proposed before.

[TiagoTiago]

For the stuff that currently doesn't got an image for the opposite side view, use the same image until the new image for it becomes avaiable

[XeryusTC]

What happens to the highly irregular stuff like the coal mine then? That will just plainly look wrong as the graphics don't fit together at all!

[TiagoTiago]

I haven't been playing OTTD for too long, but so far it looks like the orientation of coalmines don't really matter, so having it look backwards when looking from the opposite side while there isn't a opposite side image avaiable wouldn't be much of an issue IMO.

[ChillCore]

The coalmine, and many other sprites, is not one sprite but a few sprites placed together to look as one.

As an example.:
If you look at 'bo' as an industrie composed of two sprites 'b' and 'o' sitting on two tiles next to each other and you just reuse them as is, they will come out as 'ob'. you really need to draw 'od' or it wont work as you say because the tiles will change places in case of a 180 degrees flip of the map.
Additionally neither 'bo' or 'od' can be reused for the 90 degrees turns so two more sprites are needed.

Also as long as there are no sprites ... nobody that can will start coding IMO.

Did that make sence?

[TiagoTiago]

If necessary, when at 180 degrees from original, just draw it like the original (though mirroring the images and their placements would also be an acceptable temporary solution)

[ChillCore]

I see ...
Please demonstrate.

- Each colour is a sprite.
- The red 'feet' are part of each sprite but must remain feet.
- Sprites can not change tile number. (Think carparks within industries where the road connects)
- You may flip each sprite as many times as you want but the shape may not change since you will be reusing sprites.

I made it 'easy', as in, there are no empty tiles within the monument, or whatever you want it to be, and there are no slopes involved.

[TiagoTiago]

Here's the two ways to get it working while propper new tiles aren't made avaiable:



The mirroring could even be done at runtime (i doubt its an expensive procedure with any video card that isn't too old)


This would only be done when there aren't proper tiles for the item or construction in question.

[ChillCore]

The first example does not rotate the view as nothing changed.
The second ... almost but tile 1 and four need to switch places too as the view is rotated not simply flipped on one axis.
Also pretent that we are playing the same game in multiplayer. The left view is mine the right is yours, as you rotated your viewport, if what is on the same tile does not correspond the game desyncs. (example 2 -> yes some industries distribute eg. passengers only from 1 specific tile within the industrie)

ps:
I am not trying to make fun of you, just showing that there is more to it than you think at first sight.

[TiagoTiago]

It would just be a visual thing, a makeshift temporary solution, to allow viewing behind mountains, buildings, trees etc, at first have it disabled by default with a warning that some things my not look correct when you're not in the default viewing angle, and when enough things got the proper images for the 180 degrees tiles enable the funcitonality by default (still keeping a note somewhere to let people know that they might see things wrong when they use older resources etc)


I didn't change the top and bottom tiles because figuring out how a 3D building should look like from behind from just a single isometric view isn't a simple thing, and if all the tiles were simply rotated 180 instead of mirrored, things would look upside down instead of being viewed from the opposite angle, while when mirroring, things do look kinda like they are being viewed from the other side without looking upside down; if you did make things go upside down the world could end up looking quite escherian (kinda like those places on Google Maps/Earth where the airplane(s) photographed neighboring buildings from different angles)

[ChillCore]

I didn't change the top and bottom tiles because figuring out how a 3D building should look like from behind from just a single isometric view isn't a simple thing,

That is the fun part as he who draws gets to decide as long as it fits with the front of course. (in case of openGFX)

while when mirroring, things do look kinda like they are being viewed from the other side without looking upside down;

The problem with simply mirroring is that your tile 1 will not correspond with my tile 1 and desyncs will happen.
If the changes were only visual then there would be a need for many ugly hacks in the code to make things work anyway.
I do not think that devs are ready to massacre the code for that purpose only. (Even if it is temporary.)
Also people will not be happy that what they see is not what they are getting. I mean If I see a bustop I expect a bus to stop there and not a train ...
You would be suprised how many people complain that their game is no longer working after removing grfs. Even if they saw the warning message twenty times while it occupied half their screen and in red.

Instead it should be done the other way round.
Make lots of graphics. Find somebody that will write a patch and when almost done and tested a lot present code and graphics to the devs.
When OpenGFX was almost done it was distributed with the last remaing sprites that had to be done replaced by black squares. It worked and now it is done and people still improve graphics or code from time to time.

[TiagoTiago]

The actual tiles will still match, as long as everyone got the same stuff; the only thing that is changing is how they are rendered on screen, like on a first person shooters, the objects/entities/whatever and the map are the same on both ends, but on each machine they are put on screen to fit the respective camera positions. Things like depots, stations, vehicles etc already got the necessary additional tiles, but except for backwards text (and perhaps contradictory shadows) here and there, they wouldn't look much different if they only had half of them.


Could you gimme another drawing showing where the problems you are expecting would manifest please so i can either see what you mean or respond with another drawing showing how i picture it happening?

[ChillCore]

Sure, here you go.
Each color is a different industrie. Just the layout as you get the idea.

For more examples of possible layouts have a looksie at Firs, which has industries that drape themselves over the landscape, or try George's ECS vectors.
Also you can imagine some non square station layouts. As crazy as you can build them ...

I need a napsie now.
It is a bit late here. Or early if you look from the 'other' side. Lol

Before I forget,
Welcome to the forums.

[TiagoTiago]

I don't see the problem with the middle one, mirroring each tile and also their placement, horizontally, it should work just fine.

Now the other two things you drew:


The yellow T, does it always show with the topside pointing towards the bottom right corner of the screen?

And the red L, does it always come with the bottom side pointing towards the bottom left corner of the screen?


And the stuff that follows terrain, do they also always get drawn with each individual wall always pointing the same direction?

[ChillCore]

There is no middle one.
Yellow is one but with some clear tiles in the middle so someone can build a station there or a road. Orange is one.
I made up the layouts and you may rotate them however you want to start. As long as you keep to the rule that if you rotate the viewport your 'tile 1' is my 'tile 1'.
You can even make up some layouts yourself if you want ... they are just examples.

As for the FIRS layouts may I suggest you download it from the download content and generate a few games. Set the indusrie count to high and you will see many different layouts ... forest, farms and oil wells amongst others follow the terrain.

[planetmaker]

The actual tiles will still match, as long as everyone got the same stuff; the only thing that is changing is how they are rendered on screen, like on a first person shooters, the objects/entities/whatever and the map are the same on both ends, but on each machine they are put on screen to fit the respective camera positions. Things like depots, stations, vehicles etc already got the necessary additional tiles, but except for backwards text (and perhaps contradictory shadows) here and there, they wouldn't look much different if they only had half of them.

Take a simple two-tile building: the things with blue background are the actual graphics of this game. The pieces on white background are what is drawn ingame and what would be drawn for a 90° rotation clockwise and counterclockwise according to your ideas. Acceptable?

<edit>
There are many more nice things to take care of, for example there are animated tiles. Not only those graphics need adoption, but also the screen coordinates for the animation, e.g. look at the toy factory and its sprites - the animation offsets are relative to other sprites, so rotating them cannot even be done on a per-tile basis.
Chillcore's yellow industry layout is another nice case which surely will create headaches.
</edit>

You talk of "rendering". This game has no rendering engine nor is any of the graphics rendered. No 3D model for anything exists. It's all 2D sprites - which is a huge technical difference.

Still, let's assume people draw sprites for the base graphics for everything (it took about two years to get a complete set of sprites) so that rotation works: what do we do about 3rd-party graphics? We surely cannot forbid people to use these. So... disable rotation when they're in use? Then they'll complain, too. Or... see below.

Now... I propose less discussion about what would or should be all so easy but actually _show_ us that it IS indeed that easy. You find all graphics for the base set in its repository; the project's main page is http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/opengfx. And as said above: best start with the airports as that will be useful in any case, whether rotation will be implemented or not.

[TiagoTiago]

Ok, while working with that building i realized that mirroring won't work for non-square things (the result kinda looks like 90 degrees rotation instead of 180), then just keep those cases like the original until the proper images are avaiable, it wouldn't be the correct representation of seeing the building from behind, but at least with the building, i don't see how that would be an issue, i mean, it wouldn't look right but wouldn't get in the way of gameplay and the mechanics of things.

[belugas]

i don't see how that would be an issue, i mean, it wouldn't look right

One thing to always remember:
If you have to do it, do it right. No approximations.
Those approximations will get into the eyes of regular users, and they'll be more than happy to provide truck loads of bug reports.

[TiagoTiago]

But creating additional images for all current objects is quite a big project, not to mention all the content that doesn't come with the game by default; if you start the infrastructure to both accept additional images when avaiable and already offer a rudimentary functionality that gives a taste of how things could be with the additional content, people would already have the functionality avaiable if they are willing to tolerate visual inconsistencies and would also stimulate the creation of the additional content required for general public usage of the functionality.