Today I’m going to explain how overlays are intended to work in NextGame. In NG terrain consists of 3D tiles that are morphed to follow the heightmap. Overlays are 3D models of special tiles “upgrades”. They are morphed too and are placed on top of the ordinary tile. Another important aspect is that they are aware of neighbor tiles and automatically select best shape to combine with each other.
There are several categories of overlays and each one consists of several items. For now these are the same as before, but we might add/remove some types later in development. There are:
Digging sites: 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%.
Roadworks: Road, Corn field, Wine field.
Fenced areas: House fence.
Players plans: Road, Field, House.
The idea is that the tile can have combination of said overlays. For example – corn field, on top of which road was started (dug up to 50%), but the worker was killed, and now there’s house plan in progress (house fence). Now, given that we need to figure out which overlays can combine and which are mutually exclusive. All Digs are mutually exclusive, but can combine with anything else. All roadworks are the same(mutually exclusive, combine with anything). Tricky part comes with the fences – is it possible that the field has no fence around it? One possible case when that might happen is when a house plan was placed and started on top of the field. When the house plan gets cancelled – how’s the field looking, does it regain it’s fence? Maybe we need few more overlays for fence-less fields.
To the progress side: I’ve made and rigged some road overlays, which look quite nice in game when combined together:
I don’t know if I understood everything in this subject, but from my point of view, construction of fields with the fence is bringing behind itself certain problems technical. In KM the field was created after digging – leveling the grass by the builder, in this version with the fence the first question on the tail it will be necessary to carry wood in order to create fields? And the second question, if on first we will answer yes, all fields will need wood since the fence will be only on his edge? I think that the way with stones on the edge of field was a better solution, stones were get from the earth at digging and they were being laid on the edge of field.
Those problems are not technical, but purely aesthetic. Take a look at house area fencing for example – it is made out of wood, yet we don’t require additional wood to be delivered to construct that fence.
So that’s true and it is also necessary to do some work on it perhaps, on the peak of sides and over the centre is possible to insert classical stakes (with ropes? between them) instead of this fence, and for enclosed fields I am not convinced.