I decided to make a topic on this because im focusing a lot of time on the terrain in my map and i want to know your guy's opinions, and what i should do with it to make it special. Pictures will be added constantly to show my progress.

Here's where i am right now.



Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 15 2009, 7:11 pm by samsizzle.

Pretty smooth and diverse. Maybe more temple?

This terrain is awesome. I am impressed . Keep up the good work.

Very nice work, alot of blending similar to crescent dyne in there, but it does achieve a sort of themed feel in certain areas. Keep it up, but remember that although random stuff does look pretty, players will be confused by terrain that's all over the place.

An Error has Occurred.. You have too many nooks and crannies XD

It's very nice, with lots of blending and stuff, which fits for a jungle style map... but one complaint is that there's yet to be any "organized" or rather .. "patterned" terrain to depict artificial constructions...

Remember this acrynym, which I'm sure many of you know:

CRAP (or carp )
Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximinty.

Because your terrain is so organic.. if u don't have a nice, structural terrain at some point of the map, it would look rather messy.. You need to contrast it in order to emphasize it.

You may also run into some problems with repetition, as your terrain is so crazily different at every single corner (which is awesome).. but confusing too. But all is forgotten if that section of the terrain is the "explore" section... as long as you have cities which aren't crazy awesome and confusing

Amazing bridge blending, not just quality, quantity!

As far as blending goes, it looks great. Really nice. As far as terrain for an rpg, not my style. It's just that, if all the terrain is super-blended like what you have, how are you going to make anything extra-cool looking? I guess my underlying point is that when terrain is ultra-blended like that with no real purpose, it detracts from the parts where you do blend things for a purpose. If those areas are just normal wilderness, they don't look that much better than the standard isometric terrain with a bit of tinkering and sprucing up/doodads. If that's what you want and think is best, or maybe you're just having fun making it, then no worries because it's still pretty cool terrain.

The one thing I find ridiculous is the fact that people can blend 'high dirt' and 'dirt' together with grass separation, and yet they're still the same elevation (mostly backwards ramps). This severely impacts unit vision.

I, too think you need to balance it out more with more isom areas, and perhaps landmarks to help players navigate since I think that I would probably get confused a little bit playing on that terrain for a long time.

Well said.

Your absolutely right. But what you see is organic parts of the map. Remember this is a tiny amount of terrain on the entire map. There will be artificial areas, The main city will be made of temple and ruins with a large field surrounding where big battles take place, And the land that is extremely crazy is where the characters explore.


The wilderness is basically the same thing over and over again in different layouts. There are different "types" of wilderness, for example there will be 2 forests, and there will be the ability to go sailing in lakes and bays and things like that, marshes of course, and cave exploration, so there is quite a variety of things. As for landmarks, there will be recognizable regions like villages and forests and things like that. And besides even if someone did get lost in a srarcraft map it would be great because i dont think anyone has fully acheived a map where players can get lost in the wilderness.

AND here are some more pics.

The North entrance to the mentioned forest.


Coastal wilderness...

Nice blend with the temple statue
Same for the pillars and the temple stairs

Too much of a good thing? Nah.

Basically, for the most part, his terrain is nice.
The problem lies that it loses it's functionality, because people think that high dirt to dirt and then back to high dirt (on the same elevation), is cool.
But this toys with game play because hey. I apparently can't see to the other side to the river, but if I'm in the little middle part, I can see a cliff!

Haha ya that does look goofy sometimes lol.

In game screenshots of the same stuff... just to show off what it looks like ingame.

For some reason, it seems like I've seen this before...Deja Vu?

Anyways, looks awesome so far. I don't mind the clutterness, but now that I have seen some of it in detail, some blends look kind of blocky like one of the jungle to high dirt blends. Some people might not even notice, though .