ORIGINAL: Froonp
Hello,
About the weather effect on the MWiF map, I don't remember what the design decision is.
Will it be an overlay to the existing graphic, or will it be new graphics ?
I though about this last night, and thought that a new graphics for each terrain for each weather effect would be great.
I also thought that it could even allow to make visible the changes that the weather sometimes makes to terrain, such as the Swamp becoming forest under Snow & Blizzard weather.
The Snowy graphics would be basically the same as the normal ones, with patches of white added.
The Blizzard graphics would be the same as snow, with even more white added.
The Rainy graphics would be the same as the normal ones, with patches of brown showing mud. I'm not an artist, mud is all I could think about when thinking about rain. Maybe another grahic effect can give a better impression about the Rain effect.
The Blizzard graphics would be the same as Rain, with even more brown.
The Snowy Swamp graphic could be a mix between the forest (for the treecover) and a little of the swamp (for the water density) with patches of white added (for the snow), thus showing that the swamps in Snow or Blizzard are treated as forests.
The Snowy or Rainy Desert Graphic would be exactly the same as the desert graphic, thus showing the effects of rain & snow weather in desert hexes, that is : no effect.
The Blizzard or Storm Desert Graphic would be the same as it would be if it was a non desert hex with snow or rain only, that is less white.
The Lakes hexes and hexsides could also change color when they freeze, being white with cracks on them to show they are frozen.
Same for example for Frozen ports. The Sea could get white around them, with cracks as in ice, to even better show that the ports are unusable because they are Frozen.
Well, the computer allow for lots of variations about the effects.
The weather effects could also be some sort of animated transparent layer added on the top of the normal map graphics, showing falling rain, or falling snow, lightly or severely falling to differenciate between rain & storm and snow & blizzard.
There could also be a sound effects for the weather, accompanying the game, rain dropping, wind howling, snow falling, gusts of blizzard blowing... Those sound effects would be on top of the normal game sounds & music.
Yeah, well ...
"Transparent overlay/layer - not animated" is where I am at present. Animation gets old after about 17 seconds. Diagonal black and white dashed lines are what I am going for with density showing intensity. These will overlie the terrain (including icons) but not the units. There is enough of the hex showing around the unit for the player to see the weather and putting the weather over the unit would make them too hard to read.
I like turning the swamp into forest (visually) but I am not so sure about changing the water into ice. There are technical difficulties to overcome for the latter. Your ideas on the effect of weather in the desert seem good to me at first glance, but I want to think about it some more.
I think the easiest/simplest is best for the ocean/sea hexes - use the same weather overlays as on land.
