The Curse of Bad Terrain

I've been hanging around these forums for about a month now, and one thing I've noticed is that when people are critiquing maps, a lot of them mention "bad" or "newbie" terrain as something that needs work. What I have not ever seen clearly defined is exactly what constitutes newbie terrain. So I thought I'd pop up and ask for everyone's opinions: What makes terrain bad or good? And what kinds of terrain mistakes newbies make that they could avoid?

Details. Too much or two little doodads, extremely narrow or extremely wide parts of the map, unnatural terrain height,...

Too much texture repetition. To make it look real make sure it's mottled a bit (but not too mottled).

Cliffs placed in strait lines (not very natural) (only applies to actual natural stone cliffs)

Random height variation tool. You should never use this unless you are going to smooth the crap out of the terrain after.

General unproffesionalism. People just don't seem to care how their maps look. Ramps will be badly placed and have missing polygons. Bridges will be either too far above or below the ground. Tree walls will be placed like literal walls with no variation...etc.

if it hurts the eyes and\or isnt nice to look at it, its bad.
a good terrain should be to the eyes what a chocolate cake is to the mouth, it should have many doodads, but not too many, it should look "natural" unless its a city, then it should still look slightly random and natural, cause no city is symmetrical.

simple... terrain... without details or looking unreal

look the dota terrain, everybody knows the old terrain of the orginal dota. There are not many details, he never used the height-tool... but its fine. i wont complain about it.

the worst of the worst is this "random height" tool that kills any terrain.. blizz should remove it

I can give you an example of a crapy terrain

take for instance a forest terrain everywhere around you trees
you can move only through the stupid (well cut-no tree) path
and also there are some things in normal life missing.
1# No birds
2# no bushes
3# on type of terrain (all grass ; all dirt etc)
4# no rocks and stuff like that.
5# no life around the whole place (Uhh... Critters)

Now a city

1# people just standing doing nothing
2# Houses made all unpropotional to the road (if not missing a road)
3# Stupid looking

Thats all for example !
Hope enjoy reading it , as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Only Cities and dungeons can be symethrical, never, never make a symethrical forest or cave, nature does not do things symethrically.

Take not wich kinds of maps need a terrain, Aos - Rpgs - Campaigns really need a nice terrain, Some other minigame maps really don't need so, just some map infrastructure (Does that word actually exist?) Be careful chosing tilesets when you the map doesn't have a storyline, ex: Avoid using the red tilesets Outland- Dungeon as possible, cause they hurt the eyes if not made well.

ok, first off: NEVER EVER MAKE ANYTHING SYMMETRICAL, i'm talking completly symmetrical, not "dungeon at the top sides and bottom of each of the 2 main rooms but are spaced diff and in diff spots" even cities dont make them symmetrical, NEVER make ANYTHING look planned, cause it isnt. No, cities are not planned, go take a bike ride round the city, its nothing like symmetrical with curves, diagonal roads, different size houses, different spaced houses, big buildings, little buildings, cities are the hardest to look good, they have to look random, but organised (i know that dosnt seem to work, but it does) oh and Infrastructure is a real word.

Speaking of bridges, can you do a "snap to terrain" type thing for bridges?

Bad terrain also consists of wrong types of terrain for the game. I.E. lots of elevation in an AoS can be bad. Too many doodads, too much or bad tileset mixture. When terrain doesn't fit the story line it can be a severe detraction, if there is a draught in the story, commen sense would dictate the terrain not be covered in a lush forest with a river and lots of wildlife.

*cough* TAIL OF ARCHON *cough*

I played a resident evil RPG,

and he really overdid the terrain, really really bad.

And the camera angle was... HORRIBLE. It tried to seem innovative, but it wasn't. Custom camera angles never work.

Um, ever seen a Roman city? Perfect square crossed by two main roads and on every specified length there is another road connecting houses. All later colonial cities (1 century BC and beyond) are constructed in that manner. And if you'd like even more organization, take an example of Roman permanent camp. A single house outside specified coordinates resulted in punishment of the builder (mostly soldiers). That, of course, is an extreme version of organized building.

the romans are the exception, the main reason their so damn organised is because their cities were planned and built by the military, who like things to be organised. But their still not perfect, i've seen aireal shots of some of their larger cities and their "Basicly" symmetrical but on the large scale they arnt.

I agree. Small (also newer) cities like Pompei keep the organization, large (older) cities, like Rome or Constantinopolis, however had no room to expand regulary.

a game cant have an attraction without good terrain.. and yes i agree