Factorio Forums

I'm curious if we will ever see some kind of height map with 3 dimensional terrain. Mountains, dips, valleys, rivers, ect. Love the game (it's awesome) but the world just sort of feels lifeless, flat, and barren. I think some terrain features would liven things up a bit.

I don't think Factorio will become 3D. The engine won't allow that.

Not really impossible to have 3D terrain ... but also impractical and not like the op have thought of.
To make it work you need a few more types of terrain. slope up (one for all directions), slope down (also in all directions), air, and impassible terrain.

A map could look then like this: [normal terrain] [slope up x1] [impassable].
when leaving the slope towards the impassible you will be one level higher on normal terrain that only an be as big as the patch of impassible terrain and will be surrounded by air. (but also could contain slopes and impassible)
Well at the place where the slopes up in the lover map are, are now slopes down.

It is then technically a 3D map ... without being 3D ... (DF FTW)

I point to this discussion: viewtopic.php?f=80&t=12771 Terrain elevation, hills and mountains with fake cliffs

It's technically possible to have starcraft 1 style pseudo-3D terrain in Factorio. What's missing is cliff textures and algorithm to place them.

It shouldn't be impossible to make a mod that does something like that. It'll be a ton of work and it's probably not possible to have the higher ground have much of a direct effect on game play (e.g in SC1, being on higher ground made your troops to be harder to hit).

Some of the early SimCity games had simple stepped terrain and a simple terraformer raise/lower facility, so it has certainly been done before.

As for Factorio, while belts and power could certainly deal with the steps, how would you expect pollution and ballistics/lasers to be handled?

ssilk wrote:I point to this discussion: viewtopic.php?f=80&t=12771 Terrain elevation, hills and mountains with fake cliffs

But instead of my suggestion would be not fake, but real 3d .. done in a 2d engine

I am aware of the two different types of "3d" terrain. I guess I envision more of a Sim City 2000 style with slopes and cliffs. You can also look to game stronghold hd which does both. Fake 3d would be better than we currently have. It would be both graphically pleasing and add some gameplay depth. What if underground ore spawned in mountains more but had to be surveyed? If we ever get water based units rivers and lake could play a larger role. Valleys could produce more wind for turbine based power. What if you could place hydroelectric dams for power along rivers? Lots you could do.

Bizz Keryear wrote:

ssilk wrote:I point to this discussion: viewtopic.php?f=80&t=12771 Terrain elevation, hills and mountains with fake cliffs

But instead of my suggestion would be not fake, but real 3d .. done in a 2d engine

That was the reason why I didn't moved it to suggestions. Kovarex (?) thinks about that this, that it might come with Factorio 2.0.
So it might take a while.

Pseudo terrain in StarCraft1 style can be done because hills, cliffs etc. are only obstacles. They're flat sprites with collision boxes. Even now moders can draw sprites and spawn them on ground (like concrete).
Only problem is when we want place anything directly on that cliffs because of perspective.

Bizz Keryear wrote:But instead of my suggestion would be not fake, but real 3d .. done in a 2d engine

It can't be done. If you want real 3D then you have to use 3D engine and only place isometric camera. Like StarCraft 3 it's full 3D game only with isometric camera.