Trying to improve my cliffs

[Antares A]

Hey guys,

overall, I really like the terrain in my map, but I feel like my cliffs could need some work as they're inferior to the rest of the terrain.

I never knew what to do with them, so I've just randomly placed some rocks, shrubs, and mushrooms on them without much thought.

Now I've tried several changes:

• Replace most of the Ashenvale rocks with Sunken Ruins rocks with a recolored texture, where I changed the green to match the rest of the terrain.
• Rock clumps instead of randomly scattered rocks.
• Added more of the Rock texture variations with plants.
• Added more trees.

Do you think I'm going in the right direction and should apply these changes to the whole map? Any other suggestions?

Thanks and cheers!

 

[lord_Turin]

The height diffrences have to be sharper to make it believable cliffs.
Which is hard to do with the basic doodads. you might want to import some sharper featured doodads.
or scale the existing ones up.

 

[Antares A]

If I make the cliffs sharper, I have to add objects to block the pathing on the new area. I can try this on a few areas and see how it works.

Can you suggest a doodad? Last time I searched, I didn't find any that fit.

Thanks!

 

[Gilles]

You could always just use invisible blocks.

I think your over thinking it. Less might be more here. I don't like the large rocks in either. They look odd to me. I'd scale them way down and make small groups of pebbles maybe to simply add texture to the somewhat bland tile. Also make sure you clump doodads. It generally looks much better in small clumps of shrubs/rocks/flowers rather than spread out.

Again I think less is more. It looks good to me, I'd actually take out rocks not add stuff.

 

[lord_Turin]

I personally tend to go for full doodad mountains these days.
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/media/7-wip.118826/full?d=1512142540

I don't know how you currently do your pathing but consider making custom blockers. using the pathing texture of large buildings and doodads.
For example the gate pathing texture is massive and long, will greatly reduce your doodad count.

 

[Sapprine]

Looks incredible! Wow, I've never seen such beauty in Wacraft 3 before!

 

[Antares A]

You could always just use invisible blocks.

I think your over thinking it. Less might be more here. I don't like the large rocks in either. They look odd to me. I'd scale them way down and make small groups of pebbles maybe to simply add texture to the somewhat bland tile. Also make sure you clump doodads. It generally looks much better in small clumps of shrubs/rocks/flowers rather than spread out.

Again I think less is more. It looks good to me, I'd actually take out rocks not add stuff.

I'm going to add stuff, but make small clumps as you suggested, and also add more variation: Here's a clump of rocks, here's a few trees, there it's just a flat wall of rock.

I'll make the cliffs steeper in some areas. I'll add a farm with a fence around it to replace one of the larger cliff areas. Stuff like this, try to be more creative.

I personally tend to go for full doodad mountains these days.
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/media/7-wip.118826/full?d=1512142540

I don't know how you currently do your pathing but consider making custom blockers. using the pathing texture of large buildings and doodads.
For example the gate pathing texture is massive and long, will greatly reduce your doodad count.

I think full doodad mountains is above my skill level currently .

I have a function in the map initialization that makes rock terrain unpathable, then on some areas I additionally use pathing blockers. Using larger blockers (I only use 2x2 and 1x1 standard ones) is a good idea. But is doodad count still relevant for map performance today?

Looks incredible! Wow, I've never seen such beauty in Wacraft 3 before!

Thanks! You should go into the Top 10 legendary terrains thread then. This is nothing compared to that .

 

[lord_Turin]

about the doodad count. nothing official taht i know.
but we did some testing with 12k doodads in a costum 5v5 map with 30 heroes vs 30 heroes and 500 units vs 500 units (total, not on screen)
and the biggest anti lag diffrence was removing all the doodads.

Amd full doodads mountains arent actually that hard once you found the right doodad. just takes bunch of time..

 

[Antares A]

Here I replaced the rocky area with an inaccessible farm area, getting rid of all the "horizontal cliffs." I made the cliffs steeper as you suggested. I'll replace the rocks next.

 

[Gilles]

Both a good, but I prefer the second.

One thing you could try is changing the angle of the rocks. In the second image the rocks are laying flat on the hill so it points them at an angle. Try tipping them so they are pointing straight up.