Alright. So, you know how every cliff style has like 5 or 6 randomly-used cells. For aesthetic purposes, for manmade structures or the like, I want to get all the cells to be identical. I really feel like a tool sitting there clicking and hoping for the right cell to come up as I move down the line of the structure. Is there any way to select which random cell is going to be selected? Or would I have to create my own cliff texture that only uses one of the cells?
not very obvious at all, nice contribution! lot of people have been complaining about a lack of ceilings in maps, but this really opens up doors. i'll probably be using this in some of my maps.
doesn't have to be crazy, anything creative i enjoy. i have used the lava splash for fire, but never thought of using smoke with it. thanks a lot, it makes my fire look so much better!
it's official because i'm one of the two terrainers for the project, timeibis is the other. figured i'd call it official because it would draw more people in :P.
also, due to legal reasons, we had to change the name of the project to Evocation. it's just an FFish RPG. As for my inspiration, it was 50% Midgar 50% Hanging Edge.
This was mostly about me wanting to increase the speed of my actions and learning how to do terraining more efficiently, and also just seeing what I could get done that doesn't look terrible. Maybe when I have no obligations I'll go back and make the map a little better because the terrain height itself had potential. I really botched the upper right corner in my personal opinion, could be a lot better.
Maybe I should have another challenge that requires patience, 4 hours on a 56/56 map. Who knows. This is all just a distraction from my main project anyway, which, by the way, I've put in about 20 hours and think I'm only halfway done on a 256/256 map.
As I was working on a map using the Temple Bricks to line a pathway, I had an epiphany. I thought, "Hey, I could make a pyramid with these bricks." And so I did.
As some terrainers will tell you, using doodads creatively makes your map look exponentially more professional, so I thought I'd start a thread about crazy doodad purposes. I've used protoss power lines as pathways, crystals on top of the closed biodomes, cliff doodads as 'locks' for my subway trains, doors within Giant Space Platform Cliff doodads (the hangers, thanks for the idea TimeIbis), and I've used gap fillers extensively in my maps. I hope to see some totally unexpected things that really open my eyes.
Usually the best ideas are using two or more doodads together, but here I threw an entire pyramid together in about 45 minutes (lol, took a lot longer than I had anticipated) but I figure two or three of these could make a desert map look insanely epic. Of course, someone could probably model it in about 20 minutes and have it be easily modifiable, but that's not the point.</P>
I probably could've hit "I" to lessen the interface or cropped it out, but it's so damn late that the morning birds are already singing. Nonetheless, Enjoy :)
Hmm. The same thing happened to me when I opened up an old document. I noticed a trend though. Only the Temple Wall doodads reverted for me, and they reverted back to their original color that I placed them as. Personally, I preferred one of the default colors over the other, so I kept replacing them until they were the color I preferred. Yeah, pretty mundane.
As for the tanks, I haven't really done much with them in my mapping. But if I had to take a stab at it, since this is only a Beta of the editor and not the full Galaxy Edit, there is a programming error where the rotation isn't saved during the game save and is randomized on load-up, and the modified coloration of the Temple Walls isn't saved and it is reverted back to its default on load-up.
Strange places for bugs, since it seems like having 100+ doodads they would all use the same saving/loading engine, but that's just my shot-in-the-dark guess.
Like most things that hold our maps back, work around it.
It's nothing really official, but I was bored on a Friday night, a little bored of the Braxis Alpha set I was working with for FF, (whoot) and a friend gave me the idea of trying to design a 144/144 map in two hours.
I figured I'd make a forum about it, see what other people could do in a 'speed run.'
So, I gave it a whirl, breaking down my time into 3 different portions (height, texture, doodad). I would've done the 4th essential to terrain design(lighting) but it would've taken easily another 30 minutes. This is what I got:
I chose the Bel'Shir tileset because it's so easy to make look good, and any beginner who wants to make sick terrain should start there.
A little less than 30 minutes in, I had my rough terrain done, using cliffs to help my mountain effect.
The texture was the most time consuming, but the blur tool was my best friend. This next part took me about an hour, and the big picture doesn't really do justice to the detail.
Realizing I was nearing the 2 hour mark, I started putting doodads down like no other.
Really looking forward to seeing other people take the 2 Hour Terrain Challenge! Oh, and if you use more than two hours, just be honest. This really isn't to determine who's the best terrain mapper out there, just a little fun on a Friday night.
Thanks!
Hey guys, I know the communities had some nice anticipation for our FF project. Unfortunately we've hit a few legal snags, but we're still going to release a top-notch product that will help define what we at Team Pandora do, and solidify us as one of the elite mapping teams.
I'm proud to release these terrain images of our first Final Fantasy map:
It would also be helpful to do it with a bridge too, not necessarily a bridge that would be used, but across open water a bridge going from higher ground to lower ground would be aesthetically excellent. I searched the forums but failed to find anything, I think this is something that could open up many doors for mapmakers.
I'm working on the Final Fantasy map with NeoDeathXP and am creating a railway system in one of the maps. Turns and twists in the the rails are easy to make, but when I get to some different terrain levels I encounter a problem: I don't know how to make the rail move up or down. In other words, I want to be able to modify the doodad so that one end is lower than the other in Z dimensional terms so that it matches the height differences in my terrain. Imagine a building that is on a slope that has one end signficantly lower than the other to adjust for the slope.
Worse comes to worse the doodad will have to be changed in a modeling program of some sort.
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Alright. So, you know how every cliff style has like 5 or 6 randomly-used cells. For aesthetic purposes, for manmade structures or the like, I want to get all the cells to be identical. I really feel like a tool sitting there clicking and hoping for the right cell to come up as I move down the line of the structure. Is there any way to select which random cell is going to be selected? Or would I have to create my own cliff texture that only uses one of the cells?
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not very obvious at all, nice contribution! lot of people have been complaining about a lack of ceilings in maps, but this really opens up doors. i'll probably be using this in some of my maps.
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I also use red/orange lights around the fire to amplify the effect...thought I'd add that.
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@ Lennywing
doesn't have to be crazy, anything creative i enjoy. i have used the lava splash for fire, but never thought of using smoke with it. thanks a lot, it makes my fire look so much better!
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lol actually i made really good use of copy/paste and group/ungroup. kind of improved my efficiency too. think it was 45 minutes total.
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it's official because i'm one of the two terrainers for the project, timeibis is the other. figured i'd call it official because it would draw more people in :P.
also, due to legal reasons, we had to change the name of the project to Evocation. it's just an FFish RPG. As for my inspiration, it was 50% Midgar 50% Hanging Edge.
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@Mozared
This was mostly about me wanting to increase the speed of my actions and learning how to do terraining more efficiently, and also just seeing what I could get done that doesn't look terrible. Maybe when I have no obligations I'll go back and make the map a little better because the terrain height itself had potential. I really botched the upper right corner in my personal opinion, could be a lot better.
Maybe I should have another challenge that requires patience, 4 hours on a 56/56 map. Who knows. This is all just a distraction from my main project anyway, which, by the way, I've put in about 20 hours and think I'm only halfway done on a 256/256 map.
0
As some terrainers will tell you, using doodads creatively makes your map look exponentially more professional, so I thought I'd start a thread about crazy doodad purposes. I've used protoss power lines as pathways, crystals on top of the closed biodomes, cliff doodads as 'locks' for my subway trains, doors within Giant Space Platform Cliff doodads (the hangers, thanks for the idea TimeIbis), and I've used gap fillers extensively in my maps. I hope to see some totally unexpected things that really open my eyes.
Usually the best ideas are using two or more doodads together, but here I threw an entire pyramid together in about 45 minutes (lol, took a lot longer than I had anticipated) but I figure two or three of these could make a desert map look insanely epic. Of course, someone could probably model it in about 20 minutes and have it be easily modifiable, but that's not the point.</P>
I probably could've hit "I" to lessen the interface or cropped it out, but it's so damn late that the morning birds are already singing. Nonetheless, Enjoy :)
0
Hmm. The same thing happened to me when I opened up an old document. I noticed a trend though. Only the Temple Wall doodads reverted for me, and they reverted back to their original color that I placed them as. Personally, I preferred one of the default colors over the other, so I kept replacing them until they were the color I preferred. Yeah, pretty mundane.
As for the tanks, I haven't really done much with them in my mapping. But if I had to take a stab at it, since this is only a Beta of the editor and not the full Galaxy Edit, there is a programming error where the rotation isn't saved during the game save and is randomized on load-up, and the modified coloration of the Temple Walls isn't saved and it is reverted back to its default on load-up.
Strange places for bugs, since it seems like having 100+ doodads they would all use the same saving/loading engine, but that's just my shot-in-the-dark guess.
Like most things that hold our maps back, work around it.
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In case you guys missed it, figured I'd bump it in here. Some eye-candy from my terrain work on the FF project so far:
http://forums.sc2mapster.com/development/map-development/3451-official-ff-project-screenshots-by-team-pandora/
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I chose the Bel'Shir tileset because it's so easy to make look good, and any beginner who wants to make sick terrain should start there. A little less than 30 minutes in, I had my rough terrain done, using cliffs to help my mountain effect.
The texture was the most time consuming, but the blur tool was my best friend. This next part took me about an hour, and the big picture doesn't really do justice to the detail.
Realizing I was nearing the 2 hour mark, I started putting doodads down like no other.
Really looking forward to seeing other people take the 2 Hour Terrain Challenge! Oh, and if you use more than two hours, just be honest. This really isn't to determine who's the best terrain mapper out there, just a little fun on a Friday night. Thanks!
0
0
I'm proud to release these terrain images of our first Final Fantasy map:
0
It would also be helpful to do it with a bridge too, not necessarily a bridge that would be used, but across open water a bridge going from higher ground to lower ground would be aesthetically excellent. I searched the forums but failed to find anything, I think this is something that could open up many doors for mapmakers.
0
Worse comes to worse the doodad will have to be changed in a modeling program of some sort.