showcasing randomly generated terrain and requesting criticism\suggestions

[diosilva16]

http://i.imgur.com/xz7f9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zf17O.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/34VTP.jpg

[Maker]

It actually looks ok being randomly generated.

You should experiment with tile order. Advanced - Edit tileset.

Try shifting dirt to left for example.

Put the images in tags.

[diosilva16]

You should experiment with tile order. Advanced - Edit tileset.

Try shifting dirt to left for example.

what does that do?

[Maker]

It changes how the tiles overlay each other.

[diosilva16]

hmm... i'm not sure it will work, or if i can do it that way, you see, the terrain is textured via triggers using tiles that are not defined in the advanced>tileset menu. it doesnt care which tiles are allowed and which ones aren't, it let's me place any texture i want, so i'm not sure it will respect the defined tile order.
i'll try, though, and report back my findings

[diosilva16]

it does work, and makes some subtler transitions with the rough dirt and vines tiles.

any more suggestions? what would you advise me if this wasn't a random terrain? treat it as if it was man made

[fladdermasken]

what would you advise me if this wasn't a random terrain?
I'd advise you to be more methodical.

[diosilva16]

what do you mean? please be specific enough that a computer program(for example, warcraft 3) could understand

[Narogog]

it would be look better if it wasn't so random, like creating occasional clusters of terrain/trees etc.. having just one dot of rock doesn't look good.
Was the river randomly generated? It looks good, and if its randomly generated... I am really impressed, it might be better, if you made your random generator have a set of doodads it uses on different terrain types, a couple of generated water lilies/cattails on the edge of the river would be look good.

[diosilva16]

it was randomly generated, yes. i'm not too satisfied with the rocks there, so i might change that
i've experimented with clusters of trees, and i don't think it looks that good, i prefer them more evenly spaced on forest areas.
i agree with you that the occasional dots of rock and exotic tile sets like the leaves and vines don't look that good, i might limit my palette to various shades of dirt and grassy dirt, it looks better with the realistic look i'm going for

[Keiji]

what do you mean? please be specific enough that a computer program(for example, warcraft 3) could understand

The irony here is that more straight to the point and specific than what fladdermasken is, is practically impossible.
A more blown up version of what fladder tries to say might well be: Don't do randomly generated terrains, do them by yourself.

[diosilva16]

i can't, i need for the map to be randomly generated so the players can migrate in winter

[Belgarath]

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/general-mapping-tutorials-278/terrain-overgoes-small-guide-145182/
here for details on the overlaps

I would use better tiles. In methodical ways that can be triggered (methodical isn't self made). For example, specify random regions as forest or as steppes or whatever.
Ill go through a forest. I would use grassy dirt as the main tile, normal grass as the second one, lumpy grass as slightly less numerous and leaves as the least numerous, however, also put leaves under every generated tree. Proper, actual trees, not your weird bushes. All those tiles are from the ashenvale tileset. Then add randomly generated destructible "doodads" - flowers, shrubs, maybe rocks. Just copy the values from the doodad versions, make them into destructibles and give them no pathing. They will still lock to the grid but it looks better than nothing.
Then you need to add secondary working. Paths for example, from animals I guess. Using the lordaeron rough dirt tile, set up path patterns by connecting random points within the forest regions, then have a 75 or 80 percent chance of making a dirt tile per spacing. So that it's not just a completely thorough line. You can also add small amounts of height variation. After paths, add ponds, groves, all sorts of stuff. You just need to get one triggered right and then you can randomly locate them so long as they don't interfer with one another, just trigger them apart if they do. It's all entirely possible to do :)

[diosilva16]

i'm actually pretty satisfied with my "weird bushes", i find them to be the best compromise between realism and low enough polys that i can place a few thousand of them with little performance penalties, i also think they're more realistic than most high definition tree models around here, which tend to be too solid and often unrealistically proportioned
as for the rest of your post, that's precisely the kind of advice i was looking for, and that tutorial is quite helpful, thanks.

i already have two different regions, the default region is sparsely vegetated, with one to three trees per screen, while some other regions have much denser clusters of trees, as seen on the screenshots. they have a much greater chance of spawning in the proximity of an invisible "Forest" unit, which itself has a greater chance of spawning in the proximity of other "Forest" units
besides forests, do you have a suggestion for other kinds of areas? i'm thinking maybe grassland, shrubland, forest and swamp are enough diversity but i'm open to suggestions.

connecting random points
how can i do that? keep in mind i can only use GUI

[Narogog]

here is a way you could do it in gui (note i know it won't be this simple)Actions
Set I = 0
Set Point[I] = (Random point in (Playable map area))
Set Angle = (Random real number between 0.00 and 360.00)
Set I = (I + 1)
Set Point[I] = (Point[(I - 1)] offset by 50.00 towards Angle degrees)
For each (Integer A) from 1 to 500, do (Actions)
Loop - Actions
Set I = (I + 1)
Set Angle = (Angle + (Random real number between -1.00 and 1.00))
Set Point[I] = (Point[(I - 1)] offset by 50.00 towards Angle degrees)
remember this is just an example of how you would set a path not how you would implement one.

[diosilva16]

on the contrary, that's perfectly simple, that's how i'm doing rivers right now, the thing is, that doesn't allow me to connect two distant points, that path sprawls randomly towards a random angle, there's no way of defining where it's going to end

[Belgarath]

well random paths would be what you want right? they're more like animal tracks, rather than any actual humanoid ones. you could even try to force animals to stay near these paths, just that they stay near dirt tiles if you leave out dirt tiles in your normal forests, which I definitely would.
Although you COUUUUUUUUULD put like modern/not modern ruins in place by some more refined paths, that would be a kinda cool little easter eggy kinda thing.
I'd still strongly recommend changing the bushes to just normal wc3 lordaeron summer trees but it's up to you really. grasslands, shrublands, swamps, forests...for a randomly generated terrain, that's massive variety.
i know that this would probably be extremely hard to get right in random trigger creation, but have you attempted to do any hilly areas? i'd use lots of ashen grass, less dirty grass, some village rough dirt and village rocks. plus rocks and some trees. if you could get the height right and most specifically smoothly done, that would be an absolutely brilliant addition because of how hard but rewarding in variety hills are for random terrain.

[diosilva16]

well random paths would be what you want right?yeah, for animal trails, random paths work perfectly, but there are other things i wanted to do with connected points, and since it had been suggested i thought i could get some help with that

hills are problematic, since if i give them too much elevation they clip through the game camera, which doesn't adjust itself to ingame created elevations. i wanted some variety in terrain, because i want 2 to 3 biomes per map, and different combinations every gen
wc3 lordaeron summer trees eww!

[Belgarath]

wwelell... i can't trigger for shit, I just had a friend who'd done something like it with orderly and less orderly paths. a few years ago haharrrr...
yeah i thought hills might not work, they are pretty problematic stuff.

lords trees are all goods. believe me