Refactoring TCOD's field-of-view algorithms.

[HexDecimal]

I'm mostly making this issue to track the resources I've been collecting:

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Comparative_study_of_field_of_view_algorithms_for_2D_grid_based_worlds Older benchmarks of TCOD, there should be code added to the repository to reproduce these benchmarks. Some notes on FOV quirks but these are minor compared to the other links.

http://www.adammil.net/blog/v125_Roguelike_Vision_Algorithms.html Some benchmarks of common algorithms and a lot of good information on the quirks and artifacts of existing FOV implementations. The custom algorithm here looks decent.

https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8883&context=etd A thesis about field-of-view using examples from TCOD, should be useful for refactoring the existing algorithms and fixing obscure issues. I don't have as much interest in ultra-high resolution 2D FOV algorithms at the moment.

https://www.albertford.com/shadowcasting/ TCOD probably doesn't need a new shadow caster, but this should help with refactoring or making similar algorithms.

There are my long term goals for FOV refactoring:

• [ ] Allow a customized post-process pass, which would allow for things like a POV separate from a light source. This will replace the light_walls parameter for all algorithms.
• [ ] Replace the TCOD_Map class with a more low-level type and make that type standard for all algorithms. Put the transforms for quadrants and octants in a common header.
• [ ] Refactor different algorithms into separate functions with standard parameter types. This could remove unused algorithms in statically linked code. Permissive FOV will take a permissiveness parameter instead of being different enums.
• [ ] Start tracking the performance and capabilities of all FOV algorithms.
• [x] Fix #47 while doing everything else.
• [ ] Accumulation of FOV outputs.
• [x] New algorithms.

I'm not in a hurry to do these. I'm just making sure these resources are saved somewhere.

[Andres6936]

I have succeeded in implementing the Diamond Wall and the Permissive inside my Fork of Libtcod.

Here the links to my implementation.

Diamond Wall Doryen Permissive Doryen

[Andres6936]

For Ray Casting's case, the implementation although successful did not work as expected, so I had to go back to the implementation inherited from Libtcod.

I think the problem must have been in these lines of code:

int xDiff = x2 - origin.X, yDiff = y2 - origin.Y, xLen = Math.Abs(xDiff), yLen = Math.Abs(yDiff);
int xInc = Math.Sign(xDiff), yInc = Math.Sign(yDiff)<<16, index = (origin.Y<<16) + origin.X;

If you do the implementation of this algorithm, try to be careful with this code, which although short, is very misleading.

[HexDecimal]

Unfortunately I've stopped adding C++ implementations into libtcod. It's been too much of a hassle to port C++ implementations to a C API compared to the other way around. The were also runtime dependency issues and issues related to ports to other languages. It's too bad since C++ lambdas were really useful when writing flexible FOV and pathfinder implementations.

Shadow-casting, diamond, and permissive are already implemented, but it doesn't hurt to have another reference implementation.