The single most persistent visual problem I’ve had in this game has been how to make the “grid” view visually interesting.  It’s a necessary view;  there needs to be a way to see, visually, the layout of your map using color to indicate something other than visible geometry.  (In this screenshot, I’m using it to show level ranges)

In each of the “MS” milestone builds thus far, the grid view has been an ugly, half-built thing, simply because I couldn’t figure out what it should look like.  Well, I think I’ve finally cracked it;  using the existing “region tint” 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.

Trees (obviously) and buildings (less obviously) aren’t yet picking up this new type of region recoloring.  And I’m not yet entirely convinced that they even should, but that’s the next thing on my plate.  I think that this approach;  incorporating the world geometry itself into the “vector graphic” look is entirely the right way to go.

Best bit is that I can now adapt this system to show lots of different types of regional data.  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.

So I’m inordinately pleased.  Just one fewer thing for me to solve before the (now rapidly approaching) Greenlight campaign!