Mini-caves: Helpful criticism

[Hugget Sukker]

I'm working on some small caves for a map. The caves are supposed to be
enterable during the heat of the game, to hide and protect your units from
evil stuff. Yet these caves may be just as dangerous as the lands outside.

I would like some constructive criticism, which I can use to improve the caves.

Now, someone will probably mention that this or that area needs more of a
specific doodad, so I think I better tell you now, that if I keep up this level
of detail, I'm gonna hit the doodad limit before the whole terrain is done.

So what I also need, is some tips on how to make eye-catchy environments
(like these but) with a minimal doodad count.




NEW SCREENIES (after improving)

View attachment 64898 View attachment 64895

 

[Sakuria]

You should get the Newgen jass pack, it has a handy tool called 'No Limits Mode' allowing you to surpass the doodad limit count.
I would try not to go too overboard though, 'cos it can creat some lag in games; but it's better to be able to terrain detailed rather than having to cut back imo.

(you can always go back and delete some later if you don't want them).


The caves themselves lack a certain cavey feel, but i'm sure by adding a few more rocks around the top of the blizzard cliffs ( :\ ) you could change this.
Also try adding some height variation (use the lower + higher terrain manually tools) and some more tile variation (darker rock tiles).
Also i'm guessing in screeny 1 the light is suppose to be a sort of hole in the roof?



Sakuria x

 

[takakenji]

very good, it's a very creative way to use in-game abilities, i love how you used the tree of lifes roots on that waterfall and spiked carapace for spikes and the crypt fiend's web on the spider place. Very interesting!

 

[Sakuria]

very good, it's a very creative way to use in-game abilities, i love how you used the tree of lifes roots on that waterfall and spiked carapace for spikes and the crypt fiend's web on the spider place. Very interesting!

Oh yes, i forgot to mention this, but as he said .

 

[Baintastic]

The caves look pretty sweet . I would suggest that if you want to save on doodads, you could modify the ground height more (not using cliffs) to make sharp points and rock-like structures. You may have to copy a specific .txt file in a folder called UI inside your Warcraft III folder so you can make straighter cliffs than the World Editor normally allows you to.

Also, take a look at this site for more ideas. It is a very useful tutorial; the second post will be most useful to you as it is about cave-making

Hope you found this useful!

 

[Sakuria]

You may have to copy a specific .txt file in a folder called UI inside your Warcraft III folder so you can make straighter cliffs than the World Editor normally allows you to.

This is in a sticky at the top of this terrain board, under something like 'Terraining Hac|<'
follow that tutorial and you'll be able to make much better cliffs without using the godawful blizz cliffs.

 

[Hugget Sukker]

Thanks everyone for some very, very useful responses (of some very, very useful quality).
But come on! Blizzard cliffs ( :-\ ) aren't that ugly! They're annoying 'cuz you can't place all kinda tilesets next to them... But I've definitely seen some homemade cliffs that were uglier, not to insult anyone.

But no matter, wtf. Thanks! Will check out that stuff y'all linked/guided/presented me to, and hopefully that'll all improve my work.

Also i'm guessing in screeny 1 the light is suppose to be a sort of hole in the roof?

Exactly

 

[Baintastic]

I wasn't criticizing your cliffs. There is nothing wrong with cliffs for a cave scene. I was just referring to using the terrain to replace some of the rocks; if you didn't use cliffs, you'd end up using more doodads for path blockers because merely raising and lowering the ground won't stop units from running over the walls of your cave.

Keep up the good work!

BTW, I love the first cave with the light coming into the middle

 

[Hugget Sukker]

Thanks man. Cool.

And thanks for advice of replacing some doodads with texture/height methods. It's a hard balance, since it will look better with real rocks. But it's a Baintastic idea, which might just save me from the doodad limit.

Edit: +rep when time is.

(use the lower + higher terrain manually tools)

But I use the heighten/lower terrain in places you can't imagine! And places you may not be able to see on the screenshot because it's used with some care, but overdo it with that tool, and it will be too visible ingame when units walk around. Flat ground must not be underestimated. Don't make it up/down/up/down everywhere just because you can. Is unrealistic and messy for eyes and everything. Instead I'd advice to heighten/lower a specific texture for example. That brings the ground textures alive, makes them look like different layers of terrain by using pleateau first, and then adjusting everything with heighten/lower to create the ascends and descends you want. Or if you want a hill...
But I won't change the height in those caves. Only for purposes of replacing rocks with terrain.

 

[Revolve]

For a playable terrain this is very nice, I like it very much. Ofcoarse you could improve it, but it is creative and orignial enugh to be interesting for many times of playing ^^

 

[Oziris]

I don't want to be a jerk but the blizzard cliffs just wont do. Making a cave with doodads around is a challenge yet a great improvement from the Blizzard cliffs. Better luck next time.

 

[Lexandritte]

I guess you've been told how to drop limit. Now, onto specific details...

Ice doodads on last screen look off-topic. Totally unrelated to tiles.
Light is not contastive enough. Set time to night, dark mist, even maybe custom lightning.
Use stones scaled to 200%-400% as well, to partly cover cliffs. That makes it looks like cave more.
Stone arcs would be good. Some ruined stuff maybe. Underground ancient temple?

 

[Hugget Sukker]

Okay. There are actually reasons why I haven't done some of those things you say. It's not because I'm retarded and have absolutely no sense of anything related to aesthetics, as you may think. (Although I may sounds very angry, I'm not. This is the underscore jargon, not the anger jargon, so don't be scared, or think that I hate you)

1 - I cannot set it to night time, because these are mini-caves that are supposed to be entered during the game. PM me if you know of any system that can turn day/night cycle off and change time to night for a single player ONLY when he/she looks at those caves, but leave it running normally for other players, etc. (Remember the map is outdoors and indoors at the same time. I may not have been too clear about that before, sry.)

2 - I can't use ruined stuff, because the mapmaker told me not to make any remains or signs of civilization, only wilderness (but he may make an exception in this case, so I will ask him).

Have now worked on larger stones and stone arcs. Those were some of the things that I got to first, after ppl mentioned things that needed improvements. Larger stone doodads is a very good idea, not because of how they appear and hide cliffs (CUZ BLIZZARD CLIFFS LOOK FABULOUS YAAY!!!), but because it will help keeping down the doodad count, by using fewer, but larger doodads for certain things.

As for what you call "ice doodads", I think the webbed stalagmites fit ok in. Escpecially after I have now changed their tinting a bit, and made funny, flat variants of them, that go for ground textures in some places. Give me a day, and you'll see the new pictures at some point.

I don't want to be a jerk but the blizzard cliffs just wont do. Making a cave with doodads around is a challenge yet a great improvement from the Blizzard cliffs. Better luck next time.

You're not a jerk. But what you say is something that I've heard a thousand times now, and unfortunately, I don't agree. It's really a matter of taste, and nothing more. I'm not from the High-Res "New Gen" school, and if I make those cliffs with rocks or something, it's not gonna look very good IMO.
I personally think that Blizzard's original maps looked great except for some minor doubtful things, such as massive unrealism. But those aren't mistakes by Blizzard, definitely. Those maps were well-made, well-terrained, even the melee maps, and even though they never used doodad cliffs. Things were unrealistic, but they looked Blizzardish and very, very cool IMO.

It's also a matter of MAP CHARISMA. If you want everything as epic, legendary, and snobbish as possible, Blizz cliffs won't do. But I'm not into that really. I don't want to be hostile against those who make the cool terrains that use doodads for cliffs, for example. Just trying to underscore everything that I associate with the thoughts you present me to over. I love those steep cliffs more than anything. They're much more detailed than anything you can make with raise/lower, and much more well-crafted than any doodad construction you can make. I think it's just that terrainers are too proud of their own inventions to realize Blizzard's original charm anymore. I'm sry, but for once, I prefer default over customized.

 

[Oziris]

Setting day and night for each player isn't possible i think. What is possible i making the fog different when you enter a region. I've seen it in a rpg. I think it isn't really that hard to make, i just never tried.
Btw, make water in the first picture at the light spot, it will be more realistic. Look at it this way: if there is a hole above rain or any other kind of water can get into the hole

 

[Hugget Sukker]

Setting day and night for each player isn't possible i think. What is possible i making the fog different when you enter a region. I've seen it in a rpg. I think it isn't really that hard to make, i just never tried.
Btw, make water in the first picture at the light spot, it will be more realistic. Look at it this way: if there is a hole above rain or any other kind of water can get into the hole

Thanks! I never thought about that with the hole. Nice.

And for the fog. Yes it would be possible, but not very good for an RtS map, which this is, because if the fog were to work, you would have to limit the camera bounds to the cave, which is not an option in RtS. What about all the stuff that's going on outside the cave?
So it would require detection of the player's current camera in order to work.... But that might actually be possible, come to think of it.

 

[Hugget Sukker]

BUMP!

I've now worked on improving the caves, and have now attached new images.
I have included doodad water; a thing which I have never seen done before (except I did it for some water puddles in the past), and therefore I'm interested in what people will think about the doodad water. I assume you can tell the difference between the standard and doodad water. I used the Replenish Life and Mana (Moon Well ability) model for it.
I know there are still a lot of things that could be improved. I personally think that it has gotten to messy right now. There is a slight blur or spam of some doodads. I think this is because I've been trying to make it more cavey in areas where the cliffs were just too meh.

As you can see these pics have night lighting. But unfortunately, I don't have the option of enforcing that ingame, due to the map being outdoors/indoors. The player must also be able to see and control his units inside and outside the cave simultaneously. This makes it probably impossible to configure the fog to be cavelike, unfortunately.
The web model looks better ingame, btw. I don't know how this comes. It seems as though some filtering on the model is being disabled when viewed in the editor.

Edit: Water in log/light cave is not doodad-made. Notice that every pic has ceiling rays. Yes, it is an obsession.

 

[Arcany]

Great improvements, I don't really like the lightbeams though; looks like some one is shining down with a flashlight, but I guess there is not much you can do about it.

 

[Hugget Sukker]

Maybe it will help to make them darker with tinting. Thanks for reminding me.

 

[syltman]

also, the rocks are out of place with the colours

 

[Megafyr]

Try to sink the light from above doodads a bit into the ground. Also tinting them a bit less bright will look better in my opinion. If you want to get rid of that ugly circle they leave on the ground a little trick could be using regular glow models, stretching them, and then lifting them into the air. Then place a couple of those next to each other so that they appear as lightning rays.

 

[gurra_geban]

BLARGH the new screens are killer! Aw man, waiting impatiently to merge new terrain with triggers and objects ^^

Dammit, u gotta send me an update of the terrain!

 

[FrIkY]

Terrain looks great in my oppinion! I like how you used Ability and Buff models as doodads!

 

[Hugget Sukker]

I want to bring a little bit of attention back to this thread, because I feel I can make these caves way better than they are now, with a little bit of help. Having seen many awesome dungeons, I'm sure it's possible to take a cave in a similar direction.

I was skimming through Oziri's cave tutorial, and since I haven't seen any really good-looking caves before, I think the result screenshot in that tutorial was, well, good, but far from what I imagine a really professional cave might look like.
So I was wondering if any of you guys could help a naked abomination left in the woods, by linking me to any pictures you know, of really gorgeous, convincing, natural caves? That would really be appreciated. I totally desire it for inspiration

Edit: Btw I currently have good ideas for better environmental lightning, fog, and shadows. What I miss right now are the good meat and potatoes.

 

[CloudWolf]

The ctrl+pageup and ctrl+pagedown are you friends! They allow you to raise and lower doodads.

I noticed a lot of the doodads appear to be floating, by lowering them slightly you can make them join onto the ground

All in all though, a commendable effort! looks good so far

 

[Hugget Sukker]

I found out that very recently. But thanks for it anyway. I've currently started all over with a new style and appearance, and specifically, the Diablo 3 terrains you showcased are a major inspiration at the moment.

 

[Hugget Sukker]

New cave

Hi, I'm back (bump) with new mini-caves. Yeah, I
crumbled the piece of paper and started all over.
This is the first cave in a series with a brand (for me)
new style. Critique, flatters, bitch slapping, anything is
welcome

View attachment 65829 First picture is seen from outside the cave (will never be seen this way ingame).
View attachment 65832

Combined models from the UTM and War3 models with Hi-Res rocks.

EDIT: I don't understand that... looking at the glow fog models it seems like I used a bad format again. Sry for this. Hope it will not hurt your eyes.

 

[Revolve]

Wow, that looks really nice. I like the improvements. +rep ^^

 

[CloudWolf]

blimey those are some real nice screenshots The contrast between the dark and light places in the cave really improve the graphics