Re: [Glob2-ideas] non-flat terrain

[Stéphane Magnenat]

On Sunday 20 July 2008 20:56:58 Quinn Yee Qin Teh wrote:
> How about having different height values for the terrain so that there are
> hills (and maybe cliffs)?

The idea is nice. One technical (but solvable) issue is that units should take 
terrain altitudes into account while pathfinding and thus the pathfinding 
memory should be bumped to 16 bits per tile (to add precision to cope with 
various types of slopes). This is not a big deal but it would slow down 
pathfinding (but to which extend I cannot estimate, maybe it is negligible, 
maybe not).

For terrain graphics, I think it is not so undoable. A long time ago (around 
2000), between glob 1 and glob 2, I did various 3d isometric tests, one of 
which is linked below. At the time I dropped the idea because it was 
too slow but I think that now it may be ok. See:
http://cp.magnenat.net/%7Enct/glob1.8.test.png
http://cp.magnenat.net/%7Enct/glob1.8.test.zip

Feel have a look and give your feelings about that.

Have a nice day,

Steph

-- 
http://stephane.magnenat.net