New map format

[sashman]

_this task is strongly related to issue #14 in terraingenerator

Background

Currently the maps are created and rendered on tile by tile basis. This is fine providing only one submap needs to be loaded at a time. However for smooth map transition, multiple submaps need to be loaded at time, giving a very long load time. The number of created entities needs to be reduced.

What needs to be done

New graphical assets need to be created.

A new map format need to be implemented and received from the terrain generator. The map parsing needs to be changed and the entity creation needs to be re-implemented to accommodate the new format.

How to do it

This is still subject to change. But the proposed way is to have:

• The background grass/other tiles should be made to the size of roughly 4x4 of the original size.
• For biome boundaries (water meeting grass for example), the tiles should be shrank back down to the original size to provide for detail. Think a biome border cutting diagonally through a large tile.
• The terrain generator should provide map content based on entities to be created instead of tile by tile grid
• The cliffs and terrain detail would be rendered as entities on a higher z level than the background grass/water tiles. This should allow for a more precise look when collision detection occurs with non passable terrain.

[sashman]

New cliff assets have been added img/terrain/packing

[sashman]

The client now renders the new map format, but the extra map assets are required to fill emerging gaps. Will make a new issue to fix this.