Re: Mountains for default tileset

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr@xxxxxxx>]

On 23.02.2005 18:52, Matthias Grimm wrote:
> The point here is that I spent a lot of time creating these tiles. They
> are not perfect but quite usable and they might be improved later. So I
> thought it would be a nice idea to complete the default tileset and
> sent it to the list.
> 
> And then I read as your very first reaction that the new tiles doesn't
> fit in the default tileset and that I should remove (you said replace)
> all of them. I don't think that it was your intention but this
> sounds to me like: "Your work is not worth to be part of my project.
> What the hell are you doing?". I missed the respect for the time and
> work every contributor deserves I think. Contributors to my projects
> always got this respect from me alone for the fact that they tried to
> participate. It's a question of motivation.

If that was how it sounded to you, I apologize. That was certainly not
what I meant to say. I do appreciate the effort of everyone involved.
It also looks to me like part of the problem was a simple
misunderstanding. More of that below.

> After we clarified this let us come to some project issues.
> 1. The big mountain looks a little bit smooth, I know and I wasn't
> completely confident with it. But I haven't another one yet and other
> tiles have to be drawn first.
> 
> 2. The medium mountain doesn't look odd. The form is forced by the
> hexagon form of the tiles. See it as crest with a main summit and two
> smaller peaks.

I agree the hex outline sometimes requires compromises, but I still
maintain it looks a bit odd. However, it's not such a big deal.

> 3. The mountains fit very well in the default tileset. Grass has to be
> green, mountains have to be brown with snow cap. You can read this in
> every childrens book. :-)

I can't completely disagree, but as I said I think the smaller mountains
(especially some of those you had in your other set) would make very
nice hills with a few (probably minor) changes. My fear was (and still
is) that this would make the mountains not very distinguishable. On
the other hand, maybe the hills could be made of a somewhat greener
variety which would make this point a non-issue.
At this point I'd like to suggest another improvement: Try to get rid
of as much as possible of the grass at the foot of the mountain. Ideally,
there would be no green at all. Currently, if several mountains are next
to each other they look like, well, some mountains next to each other,
not like a continuous mountain range.

> 4. There are no mountains in the default tileset yet. I think it's much
> better to have not fully perfect mountains than no mountains in the
> tileset.

And this is pretty much at the heart of it all. What gave you the idea
there are no mountains in the default set? There are. Actually, it's
only one because the others are just placeholders, but nevertheless.
When I said "remove all of them" I was talking about the current ones,
not the ones you proposed. I think there can be no doubt that those
two styles don't fit so one needs to go. As I like yours better the
old one should be dropped. So, as you see, we weren't quite as far
apart as it seemed. It would be great if you could improve them
further but IMO your mountains could go in now. (Just in case there
will be future changes, I like patches better than the entire file)

Again, I apologize if I seemed ungrateful and I hope this cleared
things up.

Jens