Re: [Wesnoth-dev] terrain review

[Richard Kettering]

> Sanna pointed out that since most villages are aliased to two terrains
> (village as well as their base terrain), it doesn't make sense to call
> them all "Village".  They should rather be named more descriptively.

Frame and my plans for the villages were to make race-specific  
villages, with several variations for terrain.

There would be elven villages, human villages, and a set of  
"primitive" dwellings, suitable for orcs and otherwise.
Dwarves underground would continue to use their current villages, but  
above ground would live in human buildings.
Elves would have at least the following special terrain  
permutations:  village-forest
Humans would have at least the following special terrain  
permutations: village-swamp, village-mountains, village-desert

Note that for all base terrains which can become snowed, there will  
be snow versions of those villages.


What does this have to do with naming?  Elven villages should only be  
used when elves actually occupy the villages, storywise.  This will  
require a relatively easy bit of map rewriting (find and replace on  
many maps).  Thus, elven villages should bear that fact in their name  
- the name should say "elven village".

Human villages, however, are our new "generic catch-all" villages,  
and shouldn't be named "human village," in my opinion.  I think they  
should simply be called village, so that they can be used regardless  
of who occupies them.

The "primitive" villages might want for a name indicating that -  
"Crude village"  "Primitive Village" "Hovel"  - or something to that  
effect.  Who knows.

> Further, the coastal village is only aliased to shallow water, so  
> eg. a
> spearman on a coastal village will only have 20% defence.  Is this
> intentional?  The base and elven villages are just villages, but every
> other village type has both its terrain and the village type as  
> aliases.

I assume by this you mean the "Merman Village" - that rocky-looking  
thing that juts out of the water.
To the best of my knowledge, yes, that is intentional, and I hope it  
remains so.  The idea is that the mermen who live there can tend to  
their allies, healing them, and can also provide support, giving the  
ally income.  However, the terrain is still very bad for a "land- 
lubber" to fight on.

Some sort of village-on-wooden-poles would work well as an additional  
type of village that *would* be good for a land-based unit, and would  
grant them full defense.  In making the new swamp village, I hope to  
make a graphic that can be superimposed on any type of watery terrain  
- hopefully this should make that possible.

On a side note, I wouldn't mind seeing the current "Coastal Village"  
renamed to "Grotto".