{"id":3702,"date":"2015-09-05T17:55:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T07:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vectorstorm.org\/?p=3702"},"modified":"2015-09-05T17:55:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T07:55:16","slug":"grid-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/2015\/09\/05\/grid-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Grid view"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/grid_view.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3703\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/grid_view-300x194.png\" alt=\"grid_view\" width=\"300\" height=\"194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/grid_view-300x194.png 300w, https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/grid_view.png 879w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The single most persistent visual problem I&#8217;ve had in this game has been how to make the &#8220;grid&#8221; view visually interesting.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a necessary view;\u00a0 there needs to be a way to see, visually, the layout of your map using color to indicate something other than visible geometry.\u00a0 (In this screenshot, I&#8217;m using it to show level ranges)<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In each of the &#8220;MS&#8221; milestone builds thus far, the grid view has been an ugly, half-built thing, simply because I couldn&#8217;t figure out what it should look like.\u00a0 Well, I think I&#8217;ve finally cracked it;\u00a0 using the existing &#8220;region tint&#8221; functionality I originally implemented for very slightly tinting different regions into different palettes, I can cheaply draw region contents in a completely different shade, making them appear somewhat similar to the solid-fill polygons that I used back in the original MMORPG Tycoon.<\/p>\n<p>Trees (obviously) and buildings (less obviously) aren&#8217;t yet picking up this new type of region recoloring.\u00a0 And I&#8217;m not yet entirely convinced that they even should, but that&#8217;s the next thing on my plate.\u00a0 I think that this approach;\u00a0 incorporating the world geometry itself into the &#8220;vector graphic&#8221; look is entirely the right way to go.<\/p>\n<p>Best bit is that I can now adapt this system to show lots of different types of regional data.\u00a0 I could (for example) highlight regions to show their population density, or their general level of user happiness, or I could even now make a region pulse red when it has crashed, or whatever else might occur to me as useful data to be able to show graphically on the map.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m inordinately pleased.\u00a0 Just one fewer thing for me to solve before the (now rapidly approaching) Greenlight campaign!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The single most persistent visual problem I&#8217;ve had in this game has been how to make the &#8220;grid&#8221; view visually interesting.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a necessary view;\u00a0 there needs to be a way to see, visually, the layout of your map using color to indicate something other than visible geometry.\u00a0 (In this screenshot, I&#8217;m using it to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/grid_view.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9WK-XI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3704,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions\/3704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}