introduce footbridges over water and swamp

[Astuur]

This a feature suggestion for the wiishlist.
It would be nice, if there could be little footbridges built, where roads a passing over 1-tile water and swamp.
The road building routine should therefore realize over what terrain such a 1-tile bridge is necessary and build it unconditionally.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

I think this sounds great. It would look a lot less out of place than the normal roads currently used. An alternative would be to place the carriers in small boats like Settlers 2 did, but that always seemed a bit odd to me. By using footbridges it also makes sense that you can only build across 1-tile sections of water, and not across vast oceans.

For an implementation two parts are needed:
1. Someone needs to create graphics for the bridge itself.
2. Some check in the code for what kind of terrain the road is on. I assume it can be treated like a normal road, just drawn differently if it goes across water/swamp.

Look at this for build17?

[Nicolai Hähnle (nha)]

I like the idea as well. I would consider it to be a purely aesthetic change, i.e. whenever you build a road that crosses water in the way described, the road is automatically drawn differently, but nothing else changes.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Purely aesthetic, right.
In the light of different roadsets to come for the different worlds,
it may be nice to have different graphics for footbridges, too.

I wondered whether they need to be totally flat.
Guess an arch-type footbridge would cause trouble, right?

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

I like the idea, too, and Astuur is probably correct about the arch-type footbridge. The bob locomotion in the game is always in straight lines. I can only imagine that to alter that would be a major undertaking as it goes to the root of the gameboard layout and mechanics.

There would of necessity need to be 6 images of any bridge given its potential orientation (i.e. NE, E, SE, SW, W, NW) and conceivably different bridge styles for different tribes. Maybe we could construct the bridges like a building, requiring a builder worker, cost in wares and even a construction animation.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

I am starting to wonder whether this can be done easily.
It's not just the orientation. Depending on the elevation change of the terrain,
these footbridges vary a lot in length, angle and perspective.
We may not be able to simply use a bitmap - unless it can be elongated and distorted
as part of the road building process.
That seems too much effort for the benefit.

I don't know how road patterns (normal and busy) are drawn, but
maybe it would already help to have an extra brownish pattern that
replaces the normal one, if the program determines a passing over certain terrain
 like water, swamp etc.

Another problem may be the flags at one or both ends of the 1-tile footbridges.

As for Chuck's idea in #4, I am against it. It may well be nice to look at, but
I don''t think we should punish players with an extra construction time and material requirement,
if they built in such a terrain.

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

Astuur wrote: "As for Chuck's idea in #4, I am against it. It may well be nice to look at, but I don't think we should punish players with an extra construction time and material requirement, if they built in such a terrain."

I agree that the player should not be penalized for building a road over one tile of water/swamp. I was just doing a little brain storming. :) However, if we ever opt to bridge MORE than one tile of water (i.e. an expanse such as cannot currently be traversed with a road), then I think such ambitious ideas should carry a cost (and a nice image reward.) In such cases, though, we will more likely implement something like row boats instead of bridges.

Using a different road pattern and/or flags to denote the footbridge certainly seems more easily achieved and would certainly be more adaptable to a particular terrain.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

I'm with you in the matter of cost for longer bridges.
Chuck, are not currently designing better visibile road patterns?
I had hoped for some info about how to (as PM or in the Forum)
Also I am kindly asking the coders for some clues about the limitations
of the initial idea - especially about the terrain height problem.
Real or imagined?

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>the terrain height problem.
>Real or imagined?

I haven't checked thoroughly, but aren't most rivers "flat" so that thnere will be no difference in height from one side to the other. Though, on the other hand there may be cases where the terrain height differs... But I am not sure if this is something where we can reach a conclusion simply by discussing or reasoning. It may be more useful to have it added to the game (even with some simple placeholder art) and then see if there are cases where it looks more out of place than the current.

As for the longer/building bridges I am against it. I think longer bridges from getting from A to B over several tiles of water would solve much of the same problems which ships is supposed to address, so I suggest we put that on ice until ships have included to see if there is still a need. Oh, and they should probably be filed as a separate report, as this mainly covers the visual representation of the existing roads over water.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

>but aren't most rivers "flat" so that thnere will be no difference in height from one side to the other.

The initial idea was to replace the normal 1-tile roads whereever they span "unpassable" terrain.
So we are dealing with swamp, ice and even lava (maybe) as well.
And the latter typically are not so flat.

I was having a go already at some mockup (creating a bitmap as an SE->NW-footbridge) and
pasting that over a screenshot.
So far I could not come up with anything convincing, but we'd need to see a worker actually pass
such a footbridge.
So, if someone could program the game logic with a placeholder (make that 6 placeholders!)
I would have a much better chance to find something that works graphically (hopefully).

When speaking about a "longer bridge", I was thinking about 2-5 or 6 tiles.
I do no know what the progress is for seafaring - but I think Nasenbaer works
mostly on "intercontinental" ships, not on small rowing boats.
If we get such small boats, I'd vote for limiting "longer footbridges" to 3 tiles (or even drop them altogether)
If not, we may want longer ones.
We should all be aware of the fact that (rowing) boats and footbridges may ruin the mapmakers' intentions
for some maps, by granting access that is not intended.
So, it may a wise move to think of counter measures that can be used to repair the maps.
(Cliffs, or extended bogs that prevent footbridges _and_ getting in/out of rowing boats.)

[SirVer (sirver)]

Setting to incomplete for bug sweeping.

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

I would really like to see this implemented. It currently looks quite odd when you have a raod that crosses a river and seemingly ignores that it is "built" on water. I think it would be more logical (and an eye candy) to have small bridges.
Different bridges for the different tribes would be really nice, though I do not know if the current code supports it. (Maybe this can be added later.)
In total, we would need three (for the directions) or nine (if we differ between the tribes) different images, plus some coding (if both adjacent triangles are water or swamp -> build a bridge).
(This bug will not expire because it affects two projects and it is only set to incomplete for one of them.)

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

I forgot: The bridge should be big enough so that a transporting animal standing on it does not look weird (e.g. an ox grassing in the water although the bridge has a balustrade).

[SirVer (sirver)]

Setting to incomplete for bug sweeping.

[Benedikt Straub (nordfriese)]

I´ll implement that roads where both adjacent triangles are unwalkable will be drawn as bridges. I´ll also try to give the bridges a height, and bobs walking over the bridge will be seen with some y offset so it looks real.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

Thanks Benedict, thats awesome!

[Benedikt Straub (nordfriese)]

A first screenshot (the bridge design will still be improved of course)

[kaputtnik (franku)]

Hm, i think they are too big. Btw, i think the frisians buildings are also too big.

I just attach my attempt which can be used just like roads.

[Benedikt Straub (nordfriese)]

How about something like this?

I don´t want to use flat bridges, that is, merely roads that look different. I like to see the bobs walking over a bridge that actually has a height – this feature is supposed to be eyecandy, isn´t it ;)

[Toni Förster (stonerl)]

Would every tribe get it own unique bridge design? Stonebridge would fit the barbarians overall aesthetics, IMHO.

I think your suggestion would fit the atlantians and the empire, though. I also like the idea to introduce height.

[Toni Förster (stonerl)]

I meant to say that stonebridges would NOT fit the barabians design.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

IMHO we need also equivalents for normal and busy roads...

The image in #19 looks better :-)

[Benedikt Straub (nordfriese)]

> Would every tribe get it own unique bridge design?
That´s the plan :)
The design above is intended for the empire. Barbarians will get a wood construction, atlanteans something with their typical brownish-greyish material. The frisian bridges will be built from brick and wood.

> IMHO we need also equivalents for normal and busy roads
OK, I´ll implement that as well…

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Migrated to https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/1867