The Mana World Forums

just thought i'd throw this out there ... i think a tileset should run tiles of different types vertically while special variations of a tile should go horizontally. what are these special variations: let's take grass as an example of a type ... grass will have variations like grass at night, or in different seasons. that way we can add day and night cycles and season cycles (defineable by the server's config file i.e. how many seasons, how long is daylight or nighttime, how long is each season, etc.)

I think this has been suggested before. However, it's not a good idea since it increases the workload tremendeously. Day/night effects, when we will ever have that, will probably be done using overlay effects are not by using different tile graphics. I don't think we'll ever have dynamic seasons, but if we do I still think it's better to just draw alternative tiles for some things and leave most of the stuff the same. Certainly it wouldn't make sense to demand all these variations to be drawn for all tiles. There's more flexible ways to define season themes than to build it into the structure of the tileset image.