Transport equivalent for ironclads

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
XYZ
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Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by XYZ »

A steampowered transport ship as equivalent to ironclads would be a good thing. The technological gap between galleons and modern transports is in my view to big.
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VladimirSlavik
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by VladimirSlavik »

What kind of ship would that be?
XYZ
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by XYZ »

Something like this one.
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SS_California_Poster_Sharpened.jpg
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VladimirSlavik
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by VladimirSlavik »

Does this float your boat?

GPL2 because cruiser water and frigate flags.
Attachments
steamer-transp_smoke.png
steamer-transp_smoke.png (2.12 KiB) Viewed 8519 times
steamer_transp_nosmoke.png
steamer_transp_nosmoke.png (1.73 KiB) Viewed 8519 times
steamer_water_preview.png
steamer_water_preview.png (9.2 KiB) Viewed 8519 times
XYZ
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by XYZ »

Nice! This is super cool! :D
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by XYZ »

Can you produce more units I regard essential to improve the game?

Here my list:

-Early fighter (WWI bi- or triplane)
-Early tank (Mark I-IV)
-Zeppelins
-Tactical bomber
-transport chopter (chinook)


--A WWI bi- or triplane as the first evolutionary step to modern era jets. The current jet looks like a WWII plane.
--A WWI-tank would really mark the evolution between a WWI and a WWII tank wich was huge.
--I outlined the idea of Zeppelins here: http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=767
--Transport chopter to be able to mount air assault (vertical take-off and landing) and see the chopter current chopter more as an attack weapon.
--Tactical bomber to different in future between strategic bombers for destroying city structures and killing population, fighters to destroy enemy planes and tactical fighters to destroy enemy ground units and infrastructure like rail.
Attachments
A-24_diving.jpg
FokkerD.VII1920NewYork.png
Chinook_hc2_za682_arp.jpg
British_Mark_IV_Tadpole_tank.jpg
USS_Los_Angeles_moored_to_USS_Patoka,_1931.jpg
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JTN
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by JTN »

To get a unit into rulesets for Freeciv proper requires unit art in three basic styles, to support all shipping tilesets:
  • Amplio(2), as above (=> Hexemplio) (GriffonSpade's AmplioHexBig XU has some extra units in this style that we might be able to plunder)
  • Trident (=> isotrident, isophex, hex2t) (this is a distinctive isometric style and I would like to keep new contributions in keeping with that)
  • Cimpletoon (3D, oriented) (rendered, Blender sources) (=> toonhex) -- in the past the author "yd" has been amenable to filling gaps here on request, don't know if that's still the case
Providing a subset of these leaves us in the awkward situation where a ruleset would require certain tilesets/topologies, so the unit is unlikely to go in.

(I appreciate this is a pretty high bar, and it's acting as an annoying brake on adding any new units, but that is the current situation.)

Wikipedia is surprisingly unhelpful on the detailed history of cargo shipping. Anyone got a good online summary reference for the historical evolution of ocean freight?
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VladimirSlavik
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by VladimirSlavik »

XYZ:

The ideas are intriguing. There's some overlap with the stuff GriffonSpade asked for elsewhere, so chances are that these graphics might materialize. At my geological speed, that is! See http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=675


JTN:

If there is a chance of having this in as an actual contribution, let's try against the odds :)

The shipping history is rather opaque online. I gather that sails were more economical than steam until (very) late 19th century, unless you needed reliable speed, where steam got its place. The famed high-speed clippers were exclusively sailing though... So it's also a question of "what kind of ship is that". In the end I decided to just go with the original picture NOW and not worry too much about historical accuracy. Also, https://www-labs.iro.umontreal.ca/~vauc ... ips_19thC/

Still, as to the ruleset/tileset conundrum - why?
  • Amplio-alikes and Cimpletoon require a wildly different skillset. You either have to get two contributors, or one who is very proficient.
  • Did you notice that the hard dependency between tilesets and rulesets translates to O(n^2) complexity?
  • Neither the current mainstream client (gtk) nor the next one (fc-web) offer user-visible controls to get something else than amplio2 on squares.
It might be worth rethinking where and what kind of lines are drawn. Apparently the rules for rulesets and tilesets are set as if Freeciv was a polished monolith, finished and not to be touched. But the recent volume of improvements to ruleset definitions totally defeats that. New features need new graphics. But you can't expect people to whip up graphics multiple times if they realistically won't ever get use them. That's just a turnoff.

Sure, it's all a non-argument for this particular unit... hence just resigning to go through the motions anyway.

EDIT: Aaaaand look, here's the Trident version.
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steamer-trident-transp.png
steamer-trident-transp.png (1.06 KiB) Viewed 8437 times
XYZ
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by XYZ »

@JTN: how can we contact yd? If we get the cimpletoon grafics, can the new unit get into the next version of Freeciv? (sorry if I ask, I got not much knowledge of these things...)

Again: nice work on the trident steamer! :D Its really a joy!

We could call the new unit steamship (because of the size).

I looked at the graphics and you already got the biplane I asked! You also got a WWII sherman tank (its not my favourite tank but it clearly looks like WWII). The current Freeciv tank looks modern to me so with one WWI tank more we could cover the whole 3-step evolution of the tank! Also, I saw you have a "Hetzer"-like tank wich is a tank destroyer. It is a cheap tank with little protection. It could be introduced as a new unit with those properties.
There is also a grey jet plane that looks like a Cold War B-52 bomber, it could be a successor of the current WWII-looking bomber and a step to the modern Northrop B-2 stealth bomber.
The more modern looking marksmen (looks like from the american civil war to me) could be put in between the musketeer and the rifleman. The musketeer looks more like from the 18th century (with a muzzle-loading gun) meanwhile the rifleman looks more like a WWI trench warfare soldier who would use a machine gun. Maybe call the unit simply marksmen? It would mark the shift from muzzle-loading guns to breech-loading guns wich occured around 1850.

I know Im overreaching now, but what about an evolutionary step of the archer to a new crossbowman unit? A Samurai would also be interesting as some sort of knight on foot or horse. It could be the successor of the current swordman.
Attachments
Tank destroyer.GIF
Tank destroyer.GIF (5.19 KiB) Viewed 8410 times
Sherman.GIF
Sherman.GIF (6.4 KiB) Viewed 8410 times
Marksman.GIF
Marksman.GIF (3.19 KiB) Viewed 8410 times
Biplane.GIF
Biplane.GIF (16.12 KiB) Viewed 8410 times
B-52.GIF
B-52.GIF (5.22 KiB) Viewed 8410 times
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GriffonSpade
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Re: Transport equivalent for ironclads

Post by GriffonSpade »

VladimirSlavik wrote:XYZ:

The ideas are intriguing. There's some overlap with the stuff GriffonSpade asked for elsewhere, so chances are that these graphics might materialize. At my geological speed, that is! See http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=675


JTN:

If there is a chance of having this in as an actual contribution, let's try against the odds :)

The shipping history is rather opaque online. I gather that sails were more economical than steam until (very) late 19th century, unless you needed reliable speed, where steam got its place. The famed high-speed clippers were exclusively sailing though... So it's also a question of "what kind of ship is that". In the end I decided to just go with the original picture NOW and not worry too much about historical accuracy. Also, https://www-labs.iro.umontreal.ca/~vauc ... ips_19thC/

Still, as to the ruleset/tileset conundrum - why?
  • Amplio-alikes and Cimpletoon require a wildly different skillset. You either have to get two contributors, or one who is very proficient.
  • Did you notice that the hard dependency between tilesets and rulesets translates to O(n^2) complexity?
  • Neither the current mainstream client (gtk) nor the next one (fc-web) offer user-visible controls to get something else than amplio2 on squares.
It might be worth rethinking where and what kind of lines are drawn. Apparently the rules for rulesets and tilesets are set as if Freeciv was a polished monolith, finished and not to be touched. But the recent volume of improvements to ruleset definitions totally defeats that. New features need new graphics. But you can't expect people to whip up graphics multiple times if they realistically won't ever get use them. That's just a turnoff.

Sure, it's all a non-argument for this particular unit... hence just resigning to go through the motions anyway.

EDIT: Aaaaand look, here's the Trident version.
Well, it's important to remember that these heavy requirements only go for things shipped with core freeciv, which IS intended to be rather monolithic. Addons for freeciv, however, have no such restriction. That's one of the reasons I started making the expanded stuff for AmplioHexBig: it gives people the ability to make rulesets with tiles not actually present in the default release.

Also, GTK (and QT as well) is very much able to load other tilesets, so I don't know what you mean?
XYZ wrote:@JTN: how can we contact yd? If we get the cimpletoon grafics, can the new unit get into the next version of Freeciv? (sorry if I ask, I got not much knowledge of these things...)

Again: nice work on the trident steamer! :D Its really a joy!

We could call the new unit steamship (because of the size).

I looked at the graphics and you already got the biplane I asked! You also got a WWII sherman tank (its not my favourite tank but it clearly looks like WWII). The current Freeciv tank looks modern to me so with one WWI tank more we could cover the whole 3-step evolution of the tank! Also, I saw you have a "Hetzer"-like tank wich is a tank destroyer. It is a cheap tank with little protection. It could be introduced as a new unit with those properties.
There is also a grey jet plane that looks like a Cold War B-52 bomber, it could be a successor of the current WWII-looking bomber and a step to the modern Northrop B-2 stealth bomber.
The more modern looking marksmen (looks like from the american civil war to me) could be put in between the musketeer and the rifleman. The musketeer looks more like from the 18th century (with a muzzle-loading gun) meanwhile the rifleman looks more like a WWI trench warfare soldier who would use a machine gun. Maybe call the unit simply marksmen? It would mark the shift from muzzle-loading guns to breech-loading guns wich occured around 1850.

I know Im overreaching now, but what about an evolutionary step of the archer to a new crossbowman unit? A Samurai would also be interesting as some sort of knight on foot or horse. It could be the successor of the current swordman.
Note that those aren't part of a core freeciv tileset, but AmplioHexBig units: they are actually modified amplio2 units that I whipped up to be able to cover other roles I felt were missing. Obviously, quality varies a lot due to my lack of skill (which is more mix-matching and palette swaps than actual art), and there are some I just wasn't able to do anything at all with. Vladimir's units are pretty top-notch, though. They mostly just need shadows with the right level of transparency.
That blue riflemen unit was indeed intended to be a Steam-era Riflemen unit to be placed at the same tech level as Cavalry(which is why it uses the same colors and part of the hat), between Gunpowder-era Musketeers/Dragoons and Electric-era Infantry/Tanks. I think it's probably one of the better looking ones.
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