Tiles Tutorial

Normal Tiles

Normal tiles consist of a set of 72x72 tiles which are the variants used for a given terrain type. The probability for showing the different variants are given in terrain-graphics.cfg. In addition each terrain type has a set of transition tiles:

• 6 basic transitions: n, ne, se, s, sw, nw
• 6 "2-side trans": n-ne, ne-se, se-s, s-sw, sw-nw, nw-n
• 6 "3-side trans": n-ne-se, ne-se-s, se-s-sw, s-sw-nw, sw-nw-n, nw-n-ne
• 6 "4-side trans": n-ne-se-s, ne-se-s, se-s-sw-nw, s-sw-nw-nw, sw-nw-n-ne, nw-n-ne-se

Far from all terrain types uses all these possible transitions, if any.

There is possible to make several transitions and use different ones depending on which terrain type is adjacent. There are also need for some special trans with some terrain when they are adjacent to fx castle.

Transitions are drawn around tiles according to a what is defined in terrain-graphics.cfg. Each terrain is placed in a given layer. This defines which terrain will draw their transition when adjacent to another. Meaning that the one which are layered the "highest" will draw their transitions on top of terrain layered further down.

Each of these transitions are stored in seperate files.

Example 1.

1 tile + the 6 basic transitions:

Example 2.

1 tile + 2 x nw trans and a sw-nw-n trans. (This might seem strange, but the trans are named after where the trans is drawn in the trans tile itself, not where it's "attached" to the terrain tile).

Multihex tiles

Multihex tiles work differently. They don't have seperate transitions. One could say the trans are attached to the tile itself. They also behave differently. While normal tiles draw their trans according to the layering a multihex tile will rather overlap terrain either vertically and/or horizontally. This means fx that mountain tops will extend into tiles above removing the need for a special transition. for other sorts of terrain like grassland and other flat ones this must be done in a way that will allow them to mesh into each other. Of course multihex is not neccesarily ideal for all terrain types.

Examples

Note on overlay tiles: you define a background tile which gets drawn first underneat them using the regular layering rules for that particual terrain type.