Friday Facts #219 - Cliffs

[doppelEben]

are they already in the experimental?

[MasterBuilder]

are they already in the experimental?

Yes.

[doppelEben]

are they already in the experimental?

Yes.

oh my bad. just wanted to see the new start and started without config the world generator; and so there werent any cliffs I saw. Now checked again with the settings and voila; all fine

[Serenity]

The way cliffs are generated needs some work (but so do resources and water). When you have set them appear at a higher frequency they are often everywhere. There should be more regions without cliffs, while others have more of them. So you have clearly defined features like a mountain range and plateaus. That can the be case to some extent, but often you too get lines of cliffs clustered together. 3/4 of a map can be nothing but cliffs, while 1/4 may be free

There is also too much of a jump between small and medium size. With low frequency the first gets you no cliffs at all even at some distance, while the second places them right around your start. Like with resource generation the settings are very intuitive

[leoch]

Even with cliffs, terrain feels really flat. Hills you can walk on but not build on would make a difference, but I've no idea how to make that work graphically.

And being able to destroy cliffs just sounds wrong! *I* think rail bridges able to cross cliffs and water (and maybe also factories) would be a great addition. Then you could possibly also restrict landfill to shallow water.

[Engimage]

Maybe it would be cool no make cliffs OPTIONALLY destroyable (configurable at map generation)

[Ranakastrasz]

You don't so much as destroy the cliffs as install a ramp. Kinda..

Its still weird, and the generation is still pretty off.

Maybe if it generated a height map, and anything above a level of steepness would become a cliff. And with a second set of something that cuts out ramps.
Might look better then, and significant height changes would correspond on all sides.

[Engimage]

You don't so much as destroy the cliffs as install a ramp. Kinda..

Its still weird, and the generation is still pretty off.

Maybe if it generated a height map, and anything above a level of steepness would become a cliff. And with a second set of something that cuts out ramps.
Might look better then, and significant height changes would correspond on all sides.

It does generate a height map. This is why you can get no cliffs in some areas at all cause the hills are too steep due to low noise level.

[Ranakastrasz]

You don't so much as destroy the cliffs as install a ramp. Kinda..

Its still weird, and the generation is still pretty off.

Maybe if it generated a height map, and anything above a level of steepness would become a cliff. And with a second set of something that cuts out ramps.
Might look better then, and significant height changes would correspond on all sides.

It does generate a height map. This is why you can get no cliffs in some areas at all cause the hills are too steep due to low noise level.

Huh, really? Interesting. Didn't realize that. Seemed from the post that it generated a bunch of lines, and placed cliffs on those. I suppose it makes sense that those lines are essentially the borders between thresholds of height-maps.

Still, I wouldn't expect some of the features I've seen if that was the case...

[MageKing17]

In the end I removed the slope calculation. We still check that edges cross a threshold elevation, but instead of using slope as the second factor for cliff placement, there's an additional noise layer called 'cliffiness' which applies equally to the north-south and east-west edges. That fact that this noise layer is completely independent of elevation has the added benefit that it's easier to tweak, e.g. to ensure that there are gaps in cliff faces every so often.

In other words: it's partially based on the heightmap, and partially completely made up.

[HalfPastZulu]

This is amazing!
You shuld add a way to build bridges, and cliffs with pipes and conveyor belts.
Wah:

omg RA3 was such an amazing game... I personally feel it was the king of the non-3d rts.

[HalfPastZulu]

Also for better view upper terrain should be little bright.
terrain.gif

Yeah I think they are avoiding stuff like that because it starts us down the height map road.