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Rivers going uphill are nearly impossible to distinguish from flat river #9031

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TrueBrain opened this issue Apr 12, 2021 · 18 comments · Fixed by #11491
Closed

Rivers going uphill are nearly impossible to distinguish from flat river #9031

TrueBrain opened this issue Apr 12, 2021 · 18 comments · Fixed by #11491
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enhancement Issue would be a good enhancement; we accept Pull Requests! good first issue Good for newcomers

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@TrueBrain
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Version of OpenTTD

1.11.0
OpenGFX

(I have no clue if this is OpenTTD graphics of OpenGFX graphics; feel free to move it to OpenGFX if it isn't OpenTTD).

Expected result

To see when my ship won't be able to get to the dock, because it had to go uphill, and I forgot to build a lock.

Ideally, rivers have a better animation which direction they flow. Now they just move a bit, looking like pixel-noise. But it doesn't show me a direction. I have no clue if this is possible at all, just saying what would have helped me out :)
Locks do have animation in the direction they are in btw, maybe helps for inspiration.

Actual result

Be totally confused for 30 minutes why my ship doesn't go to the dock.

Mainly, as ships don't have the greatest feedback they can't find a route: they will go towards the dock, but when it cannot go further, it turns around, drifts for a bit of time, then decides to go to the next order. If you are not closely watching your ship, you totally fail to see what is going on. Especially fun when you are building a big route :D

Steps to reproduce

Well, images say more:
image

image
Yes, this really goes uphill. Did you spot it?

Here it is without the trees:
image

This one got me the most. I have mad respect for people who draw tiles, but this one is just evil :)

@nielsmh
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nielsmh commented Apr 12, 2021

That's OpenGFX graphics... I think. The "original" graphics looks like this. (Transport Tycoon Deluxe did not have rivers. They and canals are a TTDPatch feature adopted by OpenTTD, so the river graphics is new art drawn in Simon Foster's style.)

image

@TrueBrain
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Yeah, that is not a lot better, it seems. Also little indication of direction and that they are uphill.

I was also thinking, adding a path-indicator ships are going would also resolve the issue. I can then spot it cannot reach the dock. Like trains, but for boats :)

@PeterN
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PeterN commented Apr 12, 2021

Yeah, I was playing TTD graphics and it's better than OpenGFX, but not a lot.

@glx22
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glx22 commented Apr 12, 2021

I confirm, original graphics a little better, but some are still very hard to spot
Capture d’écran 2021-04-12 222931
Capture d’écran 2021-04-12 223034
Capture d’écran 2021-04-12 223128

@James103
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Maybe make it so that on the river tile graphics, there are (very clearly visible and distinguishable) rocks on the river tile if and only if the river tile is sloped? That would entail removing any rocks (or what could look like rocks) from the not sloped portions of river graphics (if any), while adding and/or enlarging rocks present on the sloped river tile graphics.

@andythenorth
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andythenorth commented Apr 13, 2021

I can draw new, more visible rocks, and more white (turbulent) water. I don't know when, but it can be done.

@Eddi-z
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Eddi-z commented Apr 13, 2021

I think the main issue here is that there's no shading for the water, like there is for the grass

@auge8472
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For comparision the solution of michael blunck in his rivers NewGRF. The cataracts clearly marks the downhill sections.

mb-rivers

@tendersoft-mjb
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I propose the simplest solution, make the water darker - in the particular examples below it's 14% darker.

I confirm, original graphics a little better, but some are still very hard to spot
Capture d’écran 2021-04-12 222931
openttd-darker-shade-of-sloped-water-01

Capture d’écran 2021-04-12 223034
openttd-darker-shade-of-sloped-water-02

Capture d’écran 2021-04-12 223128
openttd-darker-shade-of-sloped-water-03

@FLHerne
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FLHerne commented Apr 20, 2021

I propose the simplest solution, make the water darker - in the particular examples below it's 14% darker.

Unfortunately this doesn't work straightforwardly with palette animation -- the TTD palettes only contain one water cycle each, which doesn't leave much scope to change the colour while keeping animation. Non-animated slope tiles would look odd when all other water tiles are animated.

@rel1c
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rel1c commented May 21, 2021

I propose the simplest solution, make the water darker - in the particular examples below it's 14% darker.

The water should be lighter in your first example, as the grass is as well when facing northeast.

@2TallTyler 2TallTyler added good first issue Good for newcomers enhancement Issue would be a good enhancement; we accept Pull Requests! labels Oct 19, 2022
@andythenorth
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Request for accuracy: rivers don't go uphill.

Missed you 😸

@andythenorth
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andythenorth commented Dec 4, 2022

These are photoshop mockups showing we need to match land tile shading for various slope angles. Other graphical tricks (rocks etc) aren't sufficient to work around this, OpenTTD land relies on shading to show slope.

To do this, we need more animated blue ranges. The current 'darker' water cycle has 5 steps. We need 'even darker water' and 'light water'. There are 12 unused indexes (pink) in the DOS palette, so we could redefine the palette and use those (or generate a new one to avoid compatibility issues).

Or some tricks to approximate that using 32bpp with a restricted set of pre-defined extra colours, maybe with some pre-processing step where the actual sprite could use DOS palette and then request the blue is shaded / tinted ~40%.

image
image

I did try both adding more rocks, and using OpenGFX lock water slope, which has directional 'flow' animation downhill. Neither were sufficient.

@zephyris
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I'm pretty sure theres's a solution using 32bpp and a mask image: You can use animated palette entries in the mask image, overlaid on shades of gray to brighten and darken them. The mask sprite can be the existing 8bpp water slope sprites. The 32bpp sprite needs to be a single shade of gray - 128,128,128 for flat tiles (unchanged brightness), say 90,90,90 for the darker slopes and say 170,170,170 for the lighter slopes.

I haven't tested this, but I'm pretty sure it'll work. I'll try to bash together a demo newgrf.

@zephyris
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The result (and yes, it is animated):
screenie

The implementation:

//Template: water slopes
template template_waterslopes(x, y) {
	//Flat tile
	[ 322+x, 1+y, 64, 32-1, -31,  0 ]
	//Sloped tiles
	[  81+x, 1+y, 64, 24-1, -31,  0 ]
	[ 241+x, 1+y, 64, 40-1, -31, -8 ]
	[   1+x, 1+y, 64, 24-1, -31,  0 ]
	[ 161+x, 1+y, 64, 40-1, -31, -8 ]
}

spriteset (waterfeature_waterslopes, "watertiles_8bpp.png") { template_waterslopes(80, 0) }
alternative_sprites(waterfeature_waterslopes, ZOOM_LEVEL_NORMAL, BIT_DEPTH_32BPP, "watertiles_true32bpp.png", "watertiles_8bpp.png") { template_waterslopes(80, 0) }

item(FEAT_CANALS, waterfeature_canal_slopes, WF_WATERCLIFFS) {
	property { graphic_flags: bitmask(WATERFEATURE_ALTERNATIVE_SPRITES); }
	graphics { default: waterfeature_waterslopes; }
}

item(FEAT_CANALS, waterfeature_river_slopes, WF_RIVER_SLOPE) {
	property { graphic_flags: bitmask(WATERFEATURE_ALTERNATIVE_SPRITES); }
	graphics { default: waterfeature_waterslopes; }
}

watertiles_8bpp.png
watertiles_8bpp

watertiles_true32bpp.png
watertiles_true32bpp

@zephyris
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opengfx2_rockriver
My suggestion, with shaded water, rocks and white water on the cascades. Multiple strong indications of impassability for ships, for maximum new user-friendliness. This is what I've put into my OpenGFX2.

@George-VB
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I'd suggest to provide other solution. It would be much better if sloped river tiles would not require locks, but allow ships to go up and down the hills like trains do. That would not only solve the routing issue of the topicstarter, but provide a new strategy for the beginning of the game with the cheap ship routes (because you build only dock and ship, and the route already exists)

zephyris added a commit to zephyris/OpenTTD that referenced this issue Nov 25, 2023
Adds a 32bpp shading to the river rapids/slopes to make them more visible. Requires a bump of original graphics grfs to use container version 2. Fixes OpenTTD#9031
@zephyris
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slopeshadig
IMO this fixes this issue sufficiently for original graphics: #11491

zephyris added a commit to zephyris/OpenTTD that referenced this issue Nov 26, 2023
Adds a 32bpp shading to the river rapids/slopes to make them more visible. Requires a bump of original graphics grfs to use container version 2. Fixes OpenTTD#9031
zephyris added a commit to zephyris/OpenTTD that referenced this issue Nov 26, 2023
Adds a 32bpp shading to the river rapids/slopes to make them more visible. Requires a bump of original graphics grfs to use container version 2. Fixes OpenTTD#9031
rubidium42 pushed a commit that referenced this issue Nov 26, 2023
Adds a 32bpp shading to the river rapids/slopes to make them more visible. Requires a bump of original graphics grfs to use container version 2. Fixes #9031
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