Master of Magic - Implode's Multiplayer Edition

I think one way to enhance the game without greatly altering it
would be to be relace the simple bmp icons for terrain with anim gif files
simple 3 or 4 sequence anim with same grahics style so that the map
would come to life a tad more. making several different sets for each terrain type would insure variety of anim movements without having to script the terrain..
problem would be the file size even if in compressed format would be larger than a bmp assuming same relative size
if you truely have created a new engine for game that isnt a problem at all
if you are enhancing the retail game then the MOM.exe will still be looking for orig sized and properly constructed lbx files so then it would be more of a challenge

you could
A) still use bmp icons and have the game use a different LBX to render terrain periodically this could be a seasonal event
say we have terrain0.lbx as miain file
we create terrain1-4 with seasonal icons
a seasonal event copies terrain 1-4 depending on season ie
1= spring 2 = summer 3 = fall and 4 = winter for this example
say its fall ending and winter beginnng the game overwrites terrain0.lbx with terrain4.lbx and there ya go seasonal map changes
however this doesnt really animate the terrain it works around limits of the map by changing the icons with the seasons.
B) using the above method you could create multiple lbx files that have different frames of the terrain animation and thus changing the reference terrain.lbx and create slow animation changes to terrain

HOWEVER the original game did not have this feature so assume that
a forced rerender of map would be required for changes to become visable. This in itself maybe a negative to game performance

I return to my original suggestion Animated icons would produce the desired results grassland with grass growing and blowing in the wind
changing to brown and fasing away as snow starts falling etc
remember an animation gif has frame transition timers so much could be done with simple graphics however once again lack of detailed knowledge of the way this modified version renders terrain makes these all what if type suggestions
I will attempt to create a demo of my idea sometime a picture is worth a thousand words.. um yeah I can spout off 1,000 words quickly :)

Some of the terrain already is animated - you can see waves washing up against the shoreline - its like this in the original MoM too.

Currently (0.8.9) about 40% of the terrain graphics are configurable in the graphics XML file, and this doesn't support animation. However the way the graphics XML file generally works is that you can either pick a specific image (say, image 612 from terrain.lbx) or pick an animation, also defined in the XML file. Animations are set up as a collection of images, and you can set the number of frames per second the animation displays at.

I'll finish this for 0.9.0, so that a) the customizable terrain graphics allow picking animations as well as static images, and b) so that 100% of the terrain graphics are read from the graphics XML file. When that's done, you'll be able to completely redo all the terrain graphics as you see fit, making animated grass blowing in the wind, etc. etc.

The problem I think will be simply *drawing* all these! There's a massive number of terrain tiles in MoM, and I know I'm personally no good at drawing things from scratch. But if you wanted to take a shot at it... :)

Implode.