Changing apearance of farmable land

[NoSpin]

It would really make the game easier to learn if we changed the apearance of all land within 15 squares of water. Just add a few shades of green to it so that all players can quickly determine where wheat and trees can and cannot grow.

[Elvish Pillager]

15 is technically the maximum distance, but wheat really doesn't grow hardly at all past ~10 squares from water. It's a gradient, not just some cut-off.

[NoSpin]

i didn't know that. Either way it is a little confusing. Also it is really annoying trying to farm where it will not grow. Some maps place wheat where it will not regrow and several times i was attempting to use farming techniques and spent a good two or three minutes watching to see if it is regrowing slowly or not at all.

If it is a gradient maybe there is some way to reflect that. Maybe the closer to water it is the greener it is, and areas that are not growable are a distintive different shade. Or just show it as growable or not growable regardless of the speed it will regrow. At least that will give some information. Or two different levels, one for close and another one for far. Of course that would not completly demonstrate the gradient but it would be more informative

[Genixpro]

I think I might do this. In the cvs version, I have implemented a sort of visual overlay that shows where there are the highest and lowest concentrations of starving or wounded globules, or turrets, are by painting a semitransparent colour directly on the screen.

I could probably do the same for water, to help show where food grows and where it doesn't.

[Donkyhotay]

That would be a good idea and shouldn't be too hard. Depending on how the gradient is programmed we should be able to tie it's output over into the new map overlays and create a new overlay that shows likely-hood of growing wheat or trees.

[NoSpin]

has there been any progress on this?

[Donkyhotay]

not that I know of

[Giszmo]

there has been progress in that you can switch on/off a fertility gradient from within the game.

as there are clear signs of when a player knows of this and when not this would make for good triggers for a tutorial mode:
http://cofundos.org/project.php?id=47

if an inn is being built at 20 paces from the shore, explain things to the user.
if wheat gets painted checkered forbidden further in land than 10 paces ...

Greetings, Giszmo

[quinnteh]

What is so hard about using that same gradient to apply the colour green to a tile? It will probably look better too, tiles that are very far inland will have a desert-like appearance.