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That is right

[Solifuge]

To better illustrate how these different displays could be achieved, here are a few display diagrams.



A. is more or less the current system, but to help keep some of the weird transparency effects down, the engine would overlap water tiles like it does with non-transparent tiles and then alpha-blend them as one solid piece. This would keep the water from multiplying with itself, and creating the ugly water fadeout that happens on the edges of tiles.

B. creates the illusion of transparency, by displaying all tiles with edges under the water in a blue-shifted tone, as an overlay that displays on top of the water tiles. The overlay (all the tiles in blue-green), rather than the water, would then get a bit of alpha transparency. This creates a lot of subtle shades of blue on the surfaces, and keeps submerged tiles legible... and I daresay it looks really sharp. However, an elegant solution would need to be found for tiles only partially filled with water... perhaps the engine could create a mask to erase parts of the blue-shifted overlay tile, to match whatever is exposed above? Needs more brainstorming.

C. just for the sake of demonstrating the principle, a similar technique to B. could be used to create a reflective overlay on the surface of water. This could be displayed over other models, but care would need to be taken that the tiles don't get too complicated. Though looking pretty is always nice, making the map easily understandable is the first goal of a graphical display.

[MaximumZero]

MaximumZero cancels Read Stonesense Thread: Head exploded from awesome images

[MaDeR Levap]

Variant B looks for me best...

[Innominate]

I agree that B looks the best there.

The problem with C is three-fold: firstly that it looks very busy visually, secondly that it obscures the underwater geometry, and thirdly that doing decent reflections is incredibly difficult. The first point is kind of the clincher, because the third has some solutions. Given we have a strict isometric perspective, we can work on a simplified reflection scheme. About the only viable option is the one you have, a "first layer only" reflection.The problem is that it won't work well with constructions along the side that are more than one tile tall. And trying to have a proper reflection system ends up with the problem that it is O(n²) complexity (1 time each for n water tiles, searching n additional tiles for a reflection every time), as well as complications with draw order, and the need to have extra sprites for how each reflection looks. It's faster and easier to do reflections with an isometric engine than a 3D one, but it's still a bitch to do (partly because it can't be done easily on the graphics card).

[strich]

Trying to compile Stonesense with VS2008 under Win7 64bit. Compiles fine, but the resulting executable crashes on load - It gets to the title screen. Is there some magic that needs to be done here that isn't obvious in the readme's?

[dyze]

yeah B looks extremely nice

[Rose]

Trying to compile Stonesense with VS2008 under Win7 64bit. Compiles fine, but the resulting executable crashes on load - It gets to the title screen. Is there some magic that needs to be done here that isn't obvious in the readme's?

make sure your doing a release build, and also make sure your using the project file, rather than Cmake

[strich]

Trying to compile Stonesense with VS2008 under Win7 64bit. Compiles fine, but the resulting executable crashes on load - It gets to the title screen. Is there some magic that needs to be done here that isn't obvious in the readme's?

make sure your doing a release build, and also make sure your using the project file, rather than Cmake

Aye, I did use the release build and I was using the project file. It would just crash. Are you running the same environment as myself Japa?

[Rose]

I'm running MSVC 2005, so that could be it.

[strich]

I'm running MSVC 2005, so that could be it.

mmm, it could be. However it is unlikely as the compiler should complain if anything is wrong. Do you remember any specific config's you had to modify in the release build project? Maybe something hasn't been copied over to the VS08 project properly.

[Jayce]

Need the toad to unoffically merge this or get someone else to be able to play it in this mode.

[JanusTwoface]

Need the toad to unoffically merge this or get someone else to be able to play it in this mode.

You already posted that a few days ago. While I personally think that having an interface API would be great, Toady has made it pretty clear that's not going to happen, at least not in the near future.

I'd suggest just getting used to having both open at once. Two monitors or one larger one (easily < $200 for a 24" widescreen if you look) are your friend.

Alternitively, track down an application that can force Stonesense to the foreground while keeping input focus on the DF window. Should be doable, you'll just have to do without the menus or be careful not to cover them.

[strich]

Actually part of the reason I'm trying to getting a working build environment is to take a look at interfacing with DF. I have some ideas and methods in my mind that should be workable, if I could get this thing to build.
On that, has anyone actually tried building the current source? Maybe its F'ed.

[Valathil]

Yeah im running the newest source compiled with mingw32 so source is not F'ed!

[Footkerchief]

The problem with C is three-fold: firstly that it looks very busy visually, secondly that it obscures the underwater geometry, and thirdly that doing decent reflections is incredibly difficult.

Yep.  B is gorgeous.