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Topic: Design decision - Rivers - In square or on edge of square? |  |
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Mark_Everson
Clash of Civilizations
Project Lead
Canton, MI, USA
b.02-15-99
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posted April 18, 2001 12:20
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Where rivers go has come up in a couple of threads recently. I have reviewed what's in the old threads as well as the new ones. (If you want to do so also, just search on 'river'. The OO modeling thread is especially rich on this topic.I think that the majority of opinion in the past was on the side of rivers being in a square, as they are in Civ2. In-square benefits:
Simpler for all square-based modeling / coding Including Ecology, Economy (cities are frequently built on rivers and its simpler to have a city in a single square), and the current coding architecture in which rivers are associtated with Terrain of a particular square. Between-square benefits:
Military - attacking across a river implemented
Borders - using river for country borders is a natural Some proponents for each side think theirs looks better  I think we should make rivers in-square (the way it has been assumed for quite some time) based on the many benefits of that approach for a wide variety of models. But since we all have a stake in Clash I wanted to give people room for commenting on it before we lock in this finally. Please put your comments in below, and feel free to copy your posts from other threads to further the discussion! |
Richard Bruns
King
NC, USA
Nov 1999
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posted April 18, 2001 13:57
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I think that we should make the models flexible enough to handle both cases, if possible. With hexagonal tiles, having rivers run between the squares is a very good way to go. (Of course, that assumes that we will have the option to use hexes.) I always liked the structure of hexagonal wargame maps with rivers between tiles and roads in tiles. That way, natural barriers and the importance of bridges can be modeled much better, and the graphics look good.But I have been convinced that with square tiles, it would not be as good. All of the bends are 90 degrees and they can flow in only four directions. But if they are in the tile, they can go eight directions and they can be made to look better. The modeling aspect isn't really too hard. We can simply assume that any tile bordering the river has a river inside it. |
Lord God Jinnai
Prince
Arnold, Mo 63010
Sep 1999
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posted April 18, 2001 17:57
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I say in square, mainly because it allows for more natural looking rivers since we will be using square tiles. |
LDiCesare
Chieftain
La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
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posted April 19, 2001 03:40
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quote:
Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 04-18-2001 12:20 PMBetween-square benefits:
Military - attacking across a river implemented
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Actually, I can as (if not more) easily implement this with in-square rivers: It gives a terrain bonus to defense. Neat and simple.
I'm in favor of in-square because so many cities are built on rivers (Paris even is represented by a boat in heraldry although it is far from any sea for instance). |
Mark_Everson
Clash of Civilizations
Project Lead
Canton, MI, USA
b.02-15-99
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posted April 19, 2001 07:30
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Hi Laurent:The problem with in-square rivers giving a terrain bonus to defense is that a city on a river always gets the bonus no matter what side of the river the city is on, which doesn't make any sense. If one kept track of where the city actually was, it should FE only get a bonus for troops attacking from the west, but not the east. But I don't think this lack of reality in the system is a big problem. Just one of the many trade-offs needed to make a game  |
Simon Loverix
Settler
Tongeren, Belgium
Apr 2001
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posted April 19, 2001 11:58
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Maybe we could have a special combat mode, like Master of Magic, Imperialism and (I think) CtP. There we could put the rivers on edges.On the main map I would rather treat rivers like roads, because people use them as main traffic channels when no roads are present fe middle age Europe. Even then we could place a city relative to rivers in a square by dividing the square in eight quadrants and storing the appr. number.. But that probably is more work than it's worth.
[This message has been edited by Simon Loverix (edited April 20, 2001).]
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Gary Thomas
Chieftain
New Zealand
Mar 2001
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posted April 20, 2001 07:56
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In view of the size of a map square, any rivers that appear would be rather major ones. From where I live, crossing a map square, a spread of 65km I understand, would involve crossing about five rivers large enough that you could not wade them.Hence one would assume that every map square (apart from pathological terrain like desert) would have quite a few rivers in it. If, in a transect across our map, one square in five (say) had a river, we are effectively selecting the largest 4% of rivers to show on the map. I suppose a study of physical geography would indicate the expected size of such a river, but I rather suspect that it would fill most of a square, allowing for tributaries, meanderings, and related lagoons. If that is the case, the problem goes away - rivers fill the square as far as movement and so forth is concerned. So they are in the middle and on the edges. Of course for aesthetic reasons they wouldn't look like that in the actual representation, there would be a bit of land at the edges. Cheers
[This message has been edited by Gary Thomas (edited April 20, 2001).] |
axi
Prince
Athens Greece
Sep 1999
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posted April 20, 2001 08:46
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I'm for rivers inside squares. I also feel that some rivers should be navigable for some length and the navigable parts have different graphics than the other ones. This way we may eventually have the option of players building canals. These squares should be like coastal squares and allow for both land and naval TFs to move on them.------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell |
Mark_Everson
Clash of Civilizations
Project Lead
Canton, MI, USA
b.02-15-99
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posted April 21, 2001 10:51
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OK, thanks everyone. I believe this is a reasonbly strong concensus for in-square rivers. We can possibly put in the options that Richard mentioned for between-square rivers in Clash 2.3 . |
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