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Topic: Trees and Terrains

kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2016-02-26, 17:05

I think if you provide new values it would be welcome face-smile.png

For testing purposes the files to modify lives now in path/to/widelandsdata/data/world/immovables/trees/TREENAME/init.lua


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einstein13
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Posted at: 2016-02-26, 20:03

I vote for providing new values. In a few weeks time I will try to explain more about trees on our Wiki (now I am working on Single Player manual) and I would like to know current values and behaviour. Also I would like to know that those values will be unchanged for a long time face-smile.png That would be perfect! face-smile.png


einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 14:42

+1 for new values before Build 19 face-smile.png

Edited: 2016-02-27, 14:43

Busy indexing nil values

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 16:17

ok, problems and proposed changes:

P.S. For convenience, I'm defining the higher growing probability of a terrain as the growth probability of the tree with the best chances on it, and I will use the acronym HGP for it.

  • the two ashes terrains look similar and have the same name, but one has HGP of 67%, the other has 34%; they were intended to have 50-60% HGP. Solution: raise ashes 2 humidity from 0.1 to 0.13.
  • hard ground 2 and 4 only have HGP around 70%, when they are intended as main fertile terrain. Solution: modify the red umbrella tree, that lacks a good habitat anyway, with the following preferred values: 90 0.15 0.8, pickiness 0.8. Possible problem: make sure it doesn't grow over 50% in ashes 1.
  • igneous rock, as the sterile buildable terrain of wasteland, has HGP of 10%, against a 5% of similar terrains of other biomes (desert 4, barren steppe, snow). Solution: lower fertility from 0.25 to 0.2.
  • meadow 3 has HGP of only 55% despite being a main fertile terrain. Solution: modify the maple tree, that has few good habitats anyway, reducing its preferred humidity from 0.7 to 0.55
  • summer mountain meadow has a HGP of 95% when it was targeted for 70%. Proposed solution: lower temperature from 85 to 75. It will also encourage coniferous trees, we want it to look like a subalpine environment. Possible problem: make sure spruce doesn't grow over 70% on it, we don't want coniferous to completely take over.
  • tundra 00 has HGP just a bit too low for a main terrain. Proposed solution: raise temperature from 45 to 50. Take care: unlike other terrains, where their place in the help is determined by the alphabetical order, tundra 00 comes after the other tundras, even if it is first in the terrain tool; it is the whiter ones of the three tundras. Really, it would be much easier to discuss terrains if they still had their number as part of the name in the editor, so that one could just read "meadow 2" instead of being forced to check for the small details in the various textures. I asked for it to be reintroduced, and was told that the numbers were removed from the names after a discussion among users who didn't like them. I don't want to try to subvert a democratic process, but I can at least question the wisdom of the decision.

Those are the problems I saw. There were a few things I wanted to improve about trees too, but the proposed fixes should cover it.

Before implementing the new values in the public build, I suggest someone tries to implement them and recalculate the values of HGP (I hope the whole process of calculating the percentages for the editor help was done automatically, I don't want to ask someone to lose days to recalculate) to check if the proposed changes have the intended effect.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 19:40

You have convinced me - I'll put the terrain numbers back in.


Busy indexing nil values

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einstein13
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 19:42

I am convinced too face-smile.png Both numbers & arguments


einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 20:00

by the way, I notice that there is a lack of buildable terrains with HGP around 30%, what I think as "C class" terrains. Only two terrains, dry soil and taiga, have that. Every biome has thhe main terrains with HGP close to 100% (class A), then there are a couple with HGP around 60% (class B), and one around 5% (class D), but only desert and winter have a class C. On the plus side, dry soil fits thematically with summer and wasteland terrains, so we still have a C class terrain we can use for every environment. I don't think there is a real problem for that. Considering that there are only a couple of B soils for every environment that either are almost indistinguishably similar (ashes) or have a theme suggesting different uses (summer steppe and summer mountain meadow), I think we are better off keeping the different B classes for the various biomes and using dry soil if we want a C class in a summer map.

I also was working on a datasheet to provide easily readable access, but I have no idea how to post it. I think last time I made one I emailed it to someone, but i can update it with the real values now.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 21:32

You could make a new bug report on launchpad and attach your datasheet onto it face-smile.png


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einstein13
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Posted at: 2016-02-27, 22:52

I would prefer new types of terrain (like treelike mountains). Why? Because some maps can change drastically. Better is to create some new terrains (at the latest for build 20) and make better maps in the future face-smile.png


einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2016-02-28, 09:26

Well, we do have "forested mountain" now face-smile.png

As to the datasheets, how much of that could be autogenerated from the code (like we do for the in-game help)? I have started fixing the encyclopedia on the website, and once we have Build 19 out, I could start expanding that to add some trees and terrains information.


Busy indexing nil values

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