Territory Effects Assets (2.0) #5104
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This PR adds the territory effect images to the assets repository: triplea-game/assets#35 While at it, I moved all game-headed assets to the assets repository so it's more consistent, so both PRs are relatively large but do include the 'territoryEffects' posted here. @Cernelius there is a new 'accredited to' section in the "Help > About" menu. Should accreditation be provided for these images?
There are certainly different kinds of forests. Old growth forests that have burned, after a year or two are extremely easy to move through. Wagons and larger vehicles do not have much trouble passing through. In the SouthWest of the USA, there are forests that almost may as well be jungles and travel on foot is just a kilometer per hour. Generally jungle is just extremely thick and/or thick tropical forest. Regardless of the semantic difference, some maps might want jungle to represent 'thick' forest. I've played some games where if units are stationed in jungle for too long they can get penalties, get sick, etc... On the plus side FWIW, adding the image file is a matter of adding the file to the 'assets' repository: https://github.com/triplea-game/assets and then updating the download list in game-headed/build.gradle Given these territory effect files are very small, just a few KB, my preference would be to prefer to accept more of the images and allow map makers to use the ones they want rather that not include them and put more burden on map creation. All these files do make the game download larger, the total sum of the territory effects is small, so it's not a problem to include it. |
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Well, actually, tickness is already covered, if wanted, I think. Traditionally, the term "forest" doesn't necessarily mean a land with many trees, but it may mean only a particularly dense or wild one at that. From Wikipedia: So, I think that if a mapmaker wants to differentiate "forests" based on thickness, he can already do it by having both "forests" and "woodlands" (in that case adopting the definition of forest as a wilderness densely populated with trees). Of course, canopy cover doesn't mean much (beside hiding you from aircrafts), as what actually makes really a difference is the amount of undergrowth in the forest. And, actually, if you have a canopy cover close to 100%, the light that reaches the ground is so scarce to make the forest naturally very clean of both underbrush and low branches. So, being tick may easily mean being absolutely effortless to traverse on foot (and you also get a nice sun cover). Anyways, if preferred, you can just change "woodlands" to "thin_forest" (or "sparse_forest") and "forest" to "thick_forest" (or "dense_forest"). That would be fine with the images too. In this case, a "tick_forest" would, of course, cover jungles too.
Right.
"Thick tropical forest" is actually not a very good definition of jungle, as "tropical" definitely doesn't imply that you get a lot of water, and actually the tropics are arid more often than wet. An example are the forests of western Mexico, that are similar to Mediterranean pines (of course, you are never going to fight in there, in any sensible WW2 games).
Yeah, probably the main element that sets a jungle apart is not really its thickness, but the fact that the climate is very debilitating, and a formidable vehicle for diseases, especially malaria. Not sure how much that can be well covered by terrain maluses alone. So, as I said, my thought was just to have forests representing any kind of major forests, comprising jungles, then also providing a woodland alternative, in case one would want to differentiate between thick and thin forests. If wanted to quite specifically represent jungles for their characteristics (and, in this case, I would say a swampy forest of Louisiana or Texas, for example, should rather count as a jungle too), I don't think that is really feasible, in the sense of having a territory effect for the jungles and another territory effect for any other kind of forests. In this case, I would call the jungles as "moist_forests", but I don't think there is a simple term to lump together all the other ones, beside calling them "non-moist_forests". I guess dividing forests between jungles and non-jungles was what @Heppisorus had in mind, by having "forest" and "jungle", but that is just semantically wrong, as it is practically saying that a jungle is not a forest (maybe it is more so for me, as, for example, in my language you would typically say "Amazon Forest", but you would not usually say "Amazon Jungle"). If wanted to really go fine grain with forests, we may divide "forests" into four main types: respectively representing mainly: There is another pretty major type of forests, namely the temperate coniferous forests: Let me point out that I know the term "moist forests" is not very common, as jungles are rather often defined as "rainforests", tho I think that "moist forests" gives a better idea, while rainforests can be temperate too. Dry forests and moist forests are supposed to be mostly tropical, but I've skipped that for brevity (calling a jungle as "tropical_and_subtropical_moist_broadleaf_forest" would be perfect, but this is a game, so brevity has a value). On this list, the "boreal_forests" would be good for representing the terrains of Finland, Karelia and northern Russia, that were so important in making those zones very hard to invade. Of course, they would represent all or almost all of the Canadian forests too (mostly depending if the mountains are going to already include their forests), tho that would be there just for completeness, as you don't go fighting there, in a WW2 scenario. The "moist_forests" would be good at representing the jungles of south-eastern Asia. I guess the "temperate_forests" can represent the Ardennes, at least, but the map would need to be very detailed, as all temperate forests are in areas of high human presence, so most of them are gone or reduced to irrelevance. So, this would be my proposal if we want to be so much specific about forests as having jungles as their own thing, but, for this, I would need additional images for the "temperate_forests" and the "dry_forests", and there is the issue that dry forests and boreal forests look very similar, both being made up of conifers. You could lump "boreal forests" and "dry forests" together as "conifer forests", but this would have the issue of being less exact (as temperate forests can be conifer too, and often mixed), and, in the moment you want to differentiate forests, I guess you don't want to have the same deal for the forests of Finland and of Mexico. So, this is a possibility to get in jungles in a sensible way, calling them "moist_forests", but, for this, if liked, we would need someone to provide two additional images, of similar quality as the current normal ones (I guess I can make the large ones, as they are very simple). In this case, I would also leave a terrain called just "forests", having the same image as "temperate_forests", for games that prefer having a single territory effect for any kind of forests. "Woodlands" can be kept too, as it is, I suppose. All this is of course a moot point, unless someone provides the needed normal images (I'm not attempting at it) (currently I would have images only for the "boreal_forests" and the "moist_forests"). Anyways, as I said, I still believe that for the TripleA assets having just "forests", for representing any kind of forests, is good enough. |
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@Cernelius perhaps an American'ism, 'thick' forests usually refers to the tree density and undergrowth. This question is for you to answer please @Cernelius
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For the large images, they were the ones in TripleA 1.8.0.9 assets, modified by me, plus some made by me. For whatever I did, I declare it public domains (besides, those are all very simple, taking like 2 minutes each one to draw, with hardly any skills). All the standard images are all by @Heppisorus:
Since he didn't request to be credited, I guess you don't have to, but I'm not sure, so your call. Not like I'm seeing a clear copyright statement, and I would be curious what is the implied one for posting in that forum, if anything. |
So how about a forest with very high tree density and close to 100% canopy cover, but almost no undergrowth at all, or, instead, a forest with low tree density but absolutely impassable undergrowth? |
Both of those would fit the definition I gave, tree density or undergrowth. We're getting into semantics, not sure if also in the UK, thick is perhaps more simply referred to how well you can travel. Lots of undergrowth or really dense trees make it thick. |
If the image does not have a public license we simply can't use it. Since you're modifying existing public images and providing them here, it's assumed you're not claiming a copyright. The accreditation of these images is more nice to have so that it's in the game and not just in release notes somewhere. |
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@Cernelius given we just removed all unused images, the territory effects posted can be found at: https://github.com/triplea-game/map-maker-assets/tree/master/territoryEffects In the future please feel free to upload files there directly, I think this will be the last time that I do so unless I've an image or sound asset to contribute personally. The rename of territory effects is perhaps a good move so that existing maps will pick up the images, but I have not scoped the impact. Hence, I removed the renamed territory effects from the assets repo, so the game engine no longer has any included territory effect images. |
Before releasing the new stable, I suggest adding (again) in assets a "territoryEffects" folder, having a series of likely common terrains, that would furnish the TripleA defaults for them, as well as being an easily accessible fount of resources for mapmakers.
Here it is a zip of the integral folder I suggest to be added (and that, once installed, should figure as TripleA/assets/territoryEffects):
territoryEffects.zip
All normal images are 32 per 32 pixels. All large images are 64 per 48 pixels. All entries have normal images, but only some have large images.
This is all the requests at this issue. It would be good to have this addition before releasing the new stable. Thank you.
The main reasons why I'm pushing this is supporting new mapmakers that want to have some territory effects, possibly introducing some standardization in the way territory effects are called, and making the TripleA assets more complete.
What follows is merely additional unnecessary information.
Presentation
Here are the normal and large versions of the terrains, with some of them missing the large version (most names are plural, for consistency and in accordance with the typical "grand strategic" focus of TripleA) (alternatively, most terrain names could be adjective, as in between parentheses).
coastal
coastal_sea
deserts (barren)
dunes (sandy)
forests (foresty)
high_sea
hills (hilly)
island
mires (boggy)
mountains (mountainous)
plains (plain)
river (rivery)
steppes (grassy)
tundras (frosty)
urban (urbanized)
woodlands (woody)
Credits
The normal version of the terrains has been taken, from what liberally offered by @Heppisorus at the following topic:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/918/map-maker-resources?page=1
Except that I've sometimes renamed them.
(16 of the 22 offered images have been taken)
The large versions of the images are from the TripleA 1.8.0.9 assets:
https://triplea-game.org/old_downloads/
Except that I cropped them all to 64x48 pixels, then sometimes renamed them.
Except the plains, river, steppes, tundras and woodlands, that I've made or modified myself.
Clarifications
The terrains missing the large version are only coast, coastal, high, island, urban. The reasoning for that is that such terrains may not require an image for board display, because of the following reasons:
Names have been picked with the main aim of correctness, also with each other (meaning it should make sense for a game to have all of them), but in so far to have them as single words, and with an eye for World War 2 consistency.
Maybe the only exception is the term "deserts". The word desert normally includes both plain (often rocky) and sandy deserts. Since sandy deserts are given as "dunes", non-sandy deserts (most deserts are not "sand seas") would be more correctly called as "wastelands" or "badlands", but I believe they were just called "desert", during world war II, while the portions of them covered with sands or salt marshes (sometimes in turn concealed under salt pans) were simply virtually impassable.
Regarding the forest terrain, the two most extreme cases of forests would likely be the "boreal_forest" and the "moist_forest" (also known, and at least mostly covered, as "taiga" and "jungle", tho these terms are arguably less covering and correct, and the last one was actually a misnomer), and there may be an interest in defining them specifically, even tho this would require to reword the term "forest" as to indicate something that is a forest while not being boreal/taiga nor moist/jungle, and I don't think there is a simple term for it (it would be mostly the "temperate forest", which in turn is mostly deciduous and broadleaved) (I don't actually think that would be a main miss for a strategic global game, as these forests are mostly in zones of intense human exploitation, so they don't really matter but at an operational level).
I see that, in his proposals, @Heppisorus has both "forest" and "jungle" terrains, but I would be against such a classification for a same game, since the jungle is definitely a forest, so it would make no sense having both "forest" and "jungle" terrains for the same map. That would require at least renaming forest with a term that excludes it possibly being a jungle. So I just skipped the "jungle" terrain, due to these naming issues (as well as lack of a large image), tho I can see it may look particularly strange having the forests of Birmania displayed with images of coniferous trees; so this may be an item of consideration.
So, this is the main reason why I didn't take the "jungle" image (that I would rather prefer calling "moist_forest"), as I cannot think of a good way, then, to rename the "forest" to indicate a non-jungle kind of forest.
Anyway, since TripleA assets are supposed to be basic items, I think comprising the jungle in what is more generally identified as "forest" may be just fine.
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