===[COMMITTED]=== Farm Beautification

[LordGood]

Would be nice if they were a bit 'themed', either according to civ or to the map. Lush fields don't fit in a desert (unless you also add irrigation channels on the side, which would look nice as well).

Many things to consider lots of extra work...

From what Sander told me this is would be a huge pain in the butt. There's no way of taking biome tags and using them to alter models just yet

[Stan`]

Couldn't that just be adding a code in the map file format ? and then depending on that, in the xmls using one or another ? Also that would allow snow textures.

[sanderd17]

It's going to look a little messy, I doubt the ancients could plow mechanically straight rows and have even yield throughout without tractors or fertilizer

We still have plow competitions here, where you have to plow your rows as straight as possible with a horse and a single plow. It ends up pretty straight. Though for sure, not everyone plowed like that, and you still have the fertilizer influence.

And about that per biome field, I said it would be difficult, not a huge pain in the but. But you probably won't find someone to work on it very soon.

[LordGood]

Plow competitions? Never heard of that. Actually sounds pretty neat

I got the barley to behave a little better, and have straight path decals

[Mythos_Ruler]

Those don't look good. They would seriously clutter up the look of a base.

[sanderd17]

Plow competitions? Never heard of that.

Example of such a competition (it was pretty hard to find something decent, most of the images and videos are purely amateur work):

[LordGood]

Those don't look good. They would seriously clutter up the look of a base.

Then don't put them in your base, isn't that the point?

You're being a bit blunt Micheal, why don't you tell me what you want instead of telling me they look ugly? There's only so much I can do with low poly wheat.

[LordGood]

Example of such a competition (it was pretty hard to find something decent, most of the images and videos are purely amateur work):

Amateur? ahah that's pretty straight!

[GunChleoc]

I think he was talking about the quality of the video, not the quality of the plowing

[Mythos_Ruler]

You're being a bit blunt Micheal, why don't you tell me what you want instead of telling me they look ugly? There's only so much I can do with low poly wheat.

I think the approach currently in the game is the best approach right now because of the exact point that there is only so much you can do with low poly wheat.

Having said that though, I encourage you to keep experimenting if you wish and including more "detailed" or "varied" farms in the editor is definitely an option and good for hand-crafted scenarios.

[idanwin]

Most fields would still look normal, wouldn't they? With these new ones adding variation?
I don't think they would clutter up your base that much then.

The greyish-green field (bottom) looks most cluttered, possibly because the texture of the plants is too similar to the texture of the decal (I, for one, can't really tell which pixels are part of the decal and which ones are models).

Anyway I think these variations are going to make large areas of fields look much better!

[LordGood]

So the bush and shrub farms are fine? I don't want grain to be included only every once in a while; it would just look even more out of place. I really want there to be grain fields though, especially considering the field icon is two bundles of wheat xP

I'll see if I can't edit the wheat and barley textures to better suit the terrain

[wraitii]

LordGood: I'll agree with Mythos that if building fields results in your above screenshots, it's ugly.

Just pick one kind per civ, and make it simple (in particular for wheat, I'd like the "with cart" variation to happen like one in ten times).

[Yves]

One good thing about the current farm fields is that if you place multiple connected fields, it looks like one big acre.

I think the best would be if it's possible to keep that and still add more variation. Maybe not using different sorts of plants but variations of the same plant.

The sorts of plants could be civ-specific.

The problem of the other props is that they need to make sense visually no matter if the field is surrounded by other fields or if it's a single field or a field on the side.

[LordGood]

Alright, I can work with this

Cart & scarecrow : plain

1:3

barley

Same as above, wheat

temperate biome

[LordGood]

Foliage bush and dry bush separate, and then together like is currently in game

[LordGood]

and the mish-mash of everything

[wraitii]

I think there's too many that have that alley on that field (also it's somewhat dark for wheat imo, there's something weird with the shadows)

[LordGood]

ah, plain alley:prop alley:plain meander:prop meander

3:1:6:2

There isnt much I can do about the shadows

[idanwin]

It's not that I don't want wheat, it's that the wheat doesn't look very good as it is now. As wraitii said, a bit too dark.

[LordGood]

It's not that I don't want wheat, it's that the wheat doesn't look very good as it is now. As wraitii said, a bit too dark.

Is it the wheat or the barley? The barley is the darker of the two cereals

[idanwin]

(the one that doesn't look good is too dark imo) (probably because of the shadows) (exaggerating the colour a bit might lessen this maybe)

Edited January 22, 2014 by idanwin

[Lion.Kanzen]

Ok some references.

I was thinking about take game grass and modify to convert it into wheat

[LordGood]

Color saturated the wheat and barley

[LordGood]

on the carthaginian set

(havent versioned the farms to lose the carts on them just yet)