Hey, so I have been terraining my map fairly successfully so far, at least as far as overall setup has gone. Map isn't without issues though, particularly when we start talking about my cliff setup.... Went to a lot of trouble with texture blending, doodad placement/sizing, water setup, blocker placement, all that, making the cliffs stand out REAL bad. The camera is also set to make everything about 230-240 % bigger to give the map more play area.
Currently I have 5 areas, and all I've done to separate them are cliffs, some very box like cliffs. My issue is this, I intend to have 17 areas total, how do I go about making the cliffs/containers more visually appealing in the first place. And then how do I do this in such a way that I don't lag the hell out of any machine that dares to play my map? My current areas are a destroyed mining area, an abandoned/ruined farm, a destroyed city, and a dying forest to give you some idea for what kind of borders I'm looking at.
Step 1: Ask Zarakk, who is the master of tileset efficiency.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.
Otherwise, you might want to give us some screenshots about the textures you are using, so we know exactly how limited you are. This kind of efficiency is one of the hardest things in terraining, so you're in for a ride.
Here is the triggerless map, is missing a few doors since they were in the mod, but have nothing at all to do with my cliff problem. I think all the data changes that had anything to do with the terrain were saved to the map itself, let me know if some pieces are somehow missing.
I don't mean to offend, but looking at what you've got right now, you need more than a few suggestions for better borders. If you really want to put effort in your terrain, I suggest you look up a tutorial or two to figure out some of the finer details of the 'profession'.
Yes, I already established that my borders are box like cliffs, most things I've seen on here have little to do with what I'm looking to do. Why start replacing my horrible cliffs the wrong way? Thanks for the double bad post anyways, get told I don't know what I'm doing, and it points nowhere really to help.
Edit: Really just looking for some techniques on how to get away from the more box like cliffs/chalk outline I got going. I fully realize that boxing an area inside cliffs is crap, and have no intention of the beta/release having any of that, it is simply to make each area functional for testing of gameplay/data/triggers. I would start experimenting, but I'm rather reluctant to get going on something that could potentially turn my map into ENTER THE LAG. Just because something I does works for 3-4 areas, doesn't mean it will for 17....
I should note I'm trying really hard to use as few doodads as possible to portray areas as I want my map to be accessible by as many as possible. I will admit that terraining tends to be the bane of my mapmaking existence, but can't see myself trusting anyone else to do it as I prize functionality over looks, but wouldn't mind it looking at least half decent as I know first impressions are important.
So yea, I know my cliffs/outlines of general areas are the crap, but please don't think I don't know that. Looking for techniques from those who really know/enjoy this kind of thing if at all possible.
Yes, I already established that my borders are box like cliffs, most things I've seen on here have little to do with what I'm looking to do. Why start replacing my horrible cliffs the wrong way? Thanks for the double bad post anyways, get told I don't know what I'm doing, and it points nowhere really to help.
The first post was a call for additional information. I can't help you if you don't provide certain key elements.
The second post was there to point out a bigger flaw: your problem isn't just 'terrain borders'. It's the fact that most of your terrain is a clump of random doodads thrown together. While I really don't want to be an asshole, there's no nice way to say that. My point here is that if you check a couple of tutorials for terraining in general (pointing to help), you'll be able to improve your 'regions' from the get-go. At that point terrain borders will come more naturally. I can't tell you "you can make your borders look better by doing x and y" because with the lay-out and terrain in your entire map that you've currently got, nothing will make those borders look good. I hate to break it to you, but that's the way it is.
My suggestion would be to read through this (I'd link you a terraining tutorial not by me, but there aren't any), try following the Blizzard Terraining Tutorial and then going back to restructuring your map.
We have a problem then, as I just looked through both tutorials in their entirety, and they revealed absolutely nothing I didn't already know about. I had viewed them months ago.
Before I made any map at all I did in fact map out the different areas I wanted to have, the ones you see chalked out currently as they haven't been worked on yet. I went to a lot of trouble picking out 8 basic textures that would work for the 17 areas I had planned out. I was strongly looking at custom, but due to them looking absolutely terrible with raised/lowered ground I opted to go with blizzard defaults. The areas I already terrained do have a theme, starting city of Needia, abandoned salt/mineral mine, ruined/flooded farm, dying forest (2nd boss area). I should point out that the farm and forest areas are intended to be fairly open.
However, apparently this sums up to a clump of random doodads thrown together. So what is a guy to do? I am trying incredibly hard not to be upset here, probably failing but seriously what kind of direction is that? What key elements, I posted the map, said the type of borders I'm hoping to use, what is missing? Is it really this difficult to get advice on one topic?
Anyways, I'll try reworking the first couple areas some and post another map sometime tonight or tomorrow, perhaps it will have more key elements in it.
So here goes again, didn't really do a whole lot with town, but did quite a lot with the mine area, probably get told it is worse now, oh well.... Not particularly happy with the entrance to the mines or the amazing lack of color, but much more would take away from the whole idea of it being well, a mine.
First off I'll start with saying that I really like the border around the grass outside of the mine. It makes it feel like the grass is a part of the world. Though it could use some touching up in a lot of places - make it a bit thicker with a more gradual transition into the greener grass. Also, be sure to vary it a bit - don't use the same border everywhere, sometimes the grass should just slowly fade directly into dirt without turning yellow first.
For the mine, I think it would probably look better if it was primarily dirt with rock accents, rather than the other way around.
In general, your textures look very uniform - use a low-strength noise brush to add some variation with other textures - splash some yellow grass or dirt into your green fields, add some rock or grass patches to your dirt, use some rock texture to age your concrete or crack your dirt, etc.
Too many areas are perfectly flat - in nature you almost never see perfectly level ground, there's always at least some subtle height variation. A quick pass with a large low-intensity soft round height brush will make it look less artificial. This is largely up to artistic vision though, it's something you have to experiment with yourself to see what looks good. Be sure to think about what's going on in the world where you do it. Frequently-used paths will generally be slightly sunken into the ground for example - and will be worn smooth.
For your cliff borders, the main advice I have is to not make them perfectly straight, and to blend in some dirt or rock textures around the base. Ideally, add a bit of a slope leading up to the cliff too. And make sure the texture on top matches the landscape around it. Once you have it looking decent, scatter a few rocks, trees or bushes around the bottom.
In the end, the main thing you need is just experience. Terraining is an art, just like painting or playing an instrument - it's a skill developed over years of practice. We can give you tips and pointers but, really, you just need to spend time working with the tools to learn what looks good. Looking at other people's terrains is a good place to start (look at the real world too) - find things you like, examine the details, and try to make something similar. Find things you don't like and figure out why you don't like them, and how you would make them better.
First off, no I don't mind reading as it shows you took the time to really look at the terrain. I'll definitely be trying to implement what you've said throughout the week. I've had similar thoughts about the vast blackness that is the mine right now, more dirt would look better. Could see the monsters better in any case. A concern about that though is how do I go about making the cliff sides follow suit so to speak. With the floor mostly dirt, shouldn't the cliffs have more dirt on them? Not really sure how to decorate cliff walls though, at least without using a lot of doodads and messing with the height features a lot.
I'll try to post something later this week, life keeps me fairly busy nowadays. Thank you for taking the time to have a look.
The best way would probably be to change the cliff type you're using to something that better matches the texture.
Decorating Blizzard cliffs is a very difficult and doodad-intensive thing to do on any sort of large scale. (Personally, I try to avoid using them whenever possible - I usually use steep slopes with a cliffy texture, then paint off the pathing over it.)
Hrmmmm, good idea that one, will definitely try it if the walls are sticking out something terrible when I'm finished doing some of the other suggestions. Might be using that technique more in my boss areas in later areas, be a better way of inserting walls/length into the area. Would have worked in some suggestions last night, but had a long(6-8 hours) night of insanity with the data/trigger editor last night, otherwise known as putting in 30 + more items all at once. I need to quit letting them pile up like that, lol.
I have been considering doing something with lighting, but quite frankly have little clue what I'm doing in that arena, at least on this editor. Last time I messed with lighting was editing old quake2/doom2 maps. This seems particularly good with a mine, where dimmer lighting is expected. I did put in a custom world lighting system, but that effects the entire map, not just the mining area. Any recommendations on where to start with that?
Well, 1.5 added a new Lighting Regions tool that lets you paint areas of different lighting color/intensity. The only problem is that it doesn't let you reposition the lights for each different region, only change the colors. (The regions are painted from the Terrain layer, then the settings of each are changed in the lighting window. The effects are only visible in-game.)
You could also do it the old fashioned way: set up regions and use triggers to manually change the lighting scheme as the player moves around the map. I believe I read that 1.5 also added a trigger to set the lighting individually for each player, though I haven't actually looked.
Hey, so I have been terraining my map fairly successfully so far, at least as far as overall setup has gone. Map isn't without issues though, particularly when we start talking about my cliff setup.... Went to a lot of trouble with texture blending, doodad placement/sizing, water setup, blocker placement, all that, making the cliffs stand out REAL bad. The camera is also set to make everything about 230-240 % bigger to give the map more play area.
Currently I have 5 areas, and all I've done to separate them are cliffs, some very box like cliffs. My issue is this, I intend to have 17 areas total, how do I go about making the cliffs/containers more visually appealing in the first place. And then how do I do this in such a way that I don't lag the hell out of any machine that dares to play my map? My current areas are a destroyed mining area, an abandoned/ruined farm, a destroyed city, and a dying forest to give you some idea for what kind of borders I'm looking at.
Any advice appreciated, thanks!
Step 1: Ask Zarakk, who is the master of tileset efficiency.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.
Otherwise, you might want to give us some screenshots about the textures you are using, so we know exactly how limited you are. This kind of efficiency is one of the hardest things in terraining, so you're in for a ride.
@Mozared: Go
I'll post a triggerless map later tonight so you can get an idea of what I've got so far.
Here is the triggerless map, is missing a few doors since they were in the mod, but have nothing at all to do with my cliff problem. I think all the data changes that had anything to do with the terrain were saved to the map itself, let me know if some pieces are somehow missing.
I don't mean to offend, but looking at what you've got right now, you need more than a few suggestions for better borders. If you really want to put effort in your terrain, I suggest you look up a tutorial or two to figure out some of the finer details of the 'profession'.
Yes, I already established that my borders are box like cliffs, most things I've seen on here have little to do with what I'm looking to do. Why start replacing my horrible cliffs the wrong way? Thanks for the double bad post anyways, get told I don't know what I'm doing, and it points nowhere really to help.
Edit: Really just looking for some techniques on how to get away from the more box like cliffs/chalk outline I got going. I fully realize that boxing an area inside cliffs is crap, and have no intention of the beta/release having any of that, it is simply to make each area functional for testing of gameplay/data/triggers. I would start experimenting, but I'm rather reluctant to get going on something that could potentially turn my map into ENTER THE LAG. Just because something I does works for 3-4 areas, doesn't mean it will for 17....
I should note I'm trying really hard to use as few doodads as possible to portray areas as I want my map to be accessible by as many as possible. I will admit that terraining tends to be the bane of my mapmaking existence, but can't see myself trusting anyone else to do it as I prize functionality over looks, but wouldn't mind it looking at least half decent as I know first impressions are important.
So yea, I know my cliffs/outlines of general areas are the crap, but please don't think I don't know that. Looking for techniques from those who really know/enjoy this kind of thing if at all possible.
The first post was a call for additional information. I can't help you if you don't provide certain key elements.
The second post was there to point out a bigger flaw: your problem isn't just 'terrain borders'. It's the fact that most of your terrain is a clump of random doodads thrown together. While I really don't want to be an asshole, there's no nice way to say that. My point here is that if you check a couple of tutorials for terraining in general (pointing to help), you'll be able to improve your 'regions' from the get-go. At that point terrain borders will come more naturally. I can't tell you "you can make your borders look better by doing x and y" because with the lay-out and terrain in your entire map that you've currently got, nothing will make those borders look good. I hate to break it to you, but that's the way it is.
My suggestion would be to read through this (I'd link you a terraining tutorial not by me, but there aren't any), try following the Blizzard Terraining Tutorial and then going back to restructuring your map.
@Mozared: Go
We have a problem then, as I just looked through both tutorials in their entirety, and they revealed absolutely nothing I didn't already know about. I had viewed them months ago.
Before I made any map at all I did in fact map out the different areas I wanted to have, the ones you see chalked out currently as they haven't been worked on yet. I went to a lot of trouble picking out 8 basic textures that would work for the 17 areas I had planned out. I was strongly looking at custom, but due to them looking absolutely terrible with raised/lowered ground I opted to go with blizzard defaults. The areas I already terrained do have a theme, starting city of Needia, abandoned salt/mineral mine, ruined/flooded farm, dying forest (2nd boss area). I should point out that the farm and forest areas are intended to be fairly open.
However, apparently this sums up to a clump of random doodads thrown together. So what is a guy to do? I am trying incredibly hard not to be upset here, probably failing but seriously what kind of direction is that? What key elements, I posted the map, said the type of borders I'm hoping to use, what is missing? Is it really this difficult to get advice on one topic?
Anyways, I'll try reworking the first couple areas some and post another map sometime tonight or tomorrow, perhaps it will have more key elements in it.
So here goes again, didn't really do a whole lot with town, but did quite a lot with the mine area, probably get told it is worse now, oh well.... Not particularly happy with the entrance to the mines or the amazing lack of color, but much more would take away from the whole idea of it being well, a mine.
@Deadzergling: Go (I hope you like reading :) )
First off I'll start with saying that I really like the border around the grass outside of the mine. It makes it feel like the grass is a part of the world. Though it could use some touching up in a lot of places - make it a bit thicker with a more gradual transition into the greener grass. Also, be sure to vary it a bit - don't use the same border everywhere, sometimes the grass should just slowly fade directly into dirt without turning yellow first.
For the mine, I think it would probably look better if it was primarily dirt with rock accents, rather than the other way around.
In general, your textures look very uniform - use a low-strength noise brush to add some variation with other textures - splash some yellow grass or dirt into your green fields, add some rock or grass patches to your dirt, use some rock texture to age your concrete or crack your dirt, etc.
Too many areas are perfectly flat - in nature you almost never see perfectly level ground, there's always at least some subtle height variation. A quick pass with a large low-intensity soft round height brush will make it look less artificial. This is largely up to artistic vision though, it's something you have to experiment with yourself to see what looks good. Be sure to think about what's going on in the world where you do it. Frequently-used paths will generally be slightly sunken into the ground for example - and will be worn smooth.
For your cliff borders, the main advice I have is to not make them perfectly straight, and to blend in some dirt or rock textures around the base. Ideally, add a bit of a slope leading up to the cliff too. And make sure the texture on top matches the landscape around it. Once you have it looking decent, scatter a few rocks, trees or bushes around the bottom.
In the end, the main thing you need is just experience. Terraining is an art, just like painting or playing an instrument - it's a skill developed over years of practice. We can give you tips and pointers but, really, you just need to spend time working with the tools to learn what looks good. Looking at other people's terrains is a good place to start (look at the real world too) - find things you like, examine the details, and try to make something similar. Find things you don't like and figure out why you don't like them, and how you would make them better.
@Telthalion: Go
First off, no I don't mind reading as it shows you took the time to really look at the terrain. I'll definitely be trying to implement what you've said throughout the week. I've had similar thoughts about the vast blackness that is the mine right now, more dirt would look better. Could see the monsters better in any case. A concern about that though is how do I go about making the cliff sides follow suit so to speak. With the floor mostly dirt, shouldn't the cliffs have more dirt on them? Not really sure how to decorate cliff walls though, at least without using a lot of doodads and messing with the height features a lot.
I'll try to post something later this week, life keeps me fairly busy nowadays. Thank you for taking the time to have a look.
@Deadzergling: Go
The best way would probably be to change the cliff type you're using to something that better matches the texture.
Decorating Blizzard cliffs is a very difficult and doodad-intensive thing to do on any sort of large scale. (Personally, I try to avoid using them whenever possible - I usually use steep slopes with a cliffy texture, then paint off the pathing over it.)
@Telthalion: Go
Hrmmmm, good idea that one, will definitely try it if the walls are sticking out something terrible when I'm finished doing some of the other suggestions. Might be using that technique more in my boss areas in later areas, be a better way of inserting walls/length into the area. Would have worked in some suggestions last night, but had a long(6-8 hours) night of insanity with the data/trigger editor last night, otherwise known as putting in 30 + more items all at once. I need to quit letting them pile up like that, lol.
I have been considering doing something with lighting, but quite frankly have little clue what I'm doing in that arena, at least on this editor. Last time I messed with lighting was editing old quake2/doom2 maps. This seems particularly good with a mine, where dimmer lighting is expected. I did put in a custom world lighting system, but that effects the entire map, not just the mining area. Any recommendations on where to start with that?
@Deadzergling: Go
Well, 1.5 added a new Lighting Regions tool that lets you paint areas of different lighting color/intensity. The only problem is that it doesn't let you reposition the lights for each different region, only change the colors. (The regions are painted from the Terrain layer, then the settings of each are changed in the lighting window. The effects are only visible in-game.)
You could also do it the old fashioned way: set up regions and use triggers to manually change the lighting scheme as the player moves around the map. I believe I read that 1.5 also added a trigger to set the lighting individually for each player, though I haven't actually looked.
Try the Xel'Naga Torn Plates doodad, those used right can give alot of character to cliff edges/bottoms.
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
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