My first terrain practice

I've never really considered myself the greatest of terrainers... so I decided to do some practice maps, just messing around and seeing what works

This one is the first I made, I guess it's supposed to be some kind of dwarven mountain stronghold. Still kind of a work in progress, but...

Includes some various tricks i've learned, like what you can see with the walls and gates.

Basically, I'm just asking what you think of my terraining skills.

Its good but it could be better, the place outside the stronghold and the place inside it is all very flat, which is un-natural. I personally don't like huge fortress screenshots because they look all very simular with a moat and then a wall and then a million guys. Try something a little differant or enter a weekly terraining contest if you can't think of anything. Either way if this is your first try it isn't bad, I like how you did the walls and the gate it looks really neat. But if you wanted a lowered bridge like that you could have just used the short bridge, with it lowered into the ground it just looks silly.

looks good so far.

suggestions:

- useing the wall end model repeatedly rarely looks good for constructing a whole wall. make use of the wall model between the wall end, id also suggest the other wall model (the name of which escapes me), i think its a destructable and not a doodad, it would suit the northrend tile set more

- if yore going to use houses inside a walled enclosure, id suggest useing a much more ordered scheam for the lay out. while some chaotic and twisting streets would look good, its much better to have the houses cover most of the inside of the structure. perhaps leaving an open plaza in the center

- the buildings are too loosely places. there are a couple of lines of them, which would give the impression of a street except there is no sign of increased activity within the streets. try stacking all the building model (both the cityscapre and village ones) to the effect of not haveing single buildings all standing on their own, but a collection of buildings each built partialy on or next to the last

- this pic lacks life. this dosnt neciceraly mean useing a lot of units to make it look crowded, but the inside of a fortress such as this, cut of by a harsh environment would mean that the streets would be more likely to look cluttered and full of empty crates, piles of bones, swams of flies, ect ect

- the inside of the stronghold looks like it has far too much snow within its walls. i think it would look more like an active fortress and less like an abandoned outpost by adding a lot more tile variation, a lot more of the dirt tile, and some height variation (commonly walked paths or streets tend to become ditched and worn in shaped quite quickly)

- the river looks far too straight for my likeing. if it is ment to be a moat, then you could make it look more realitic by haveing the walls extend down below the surface of the water covering up that ugly and contrasting cliff tile

i hope this helps

Yeah, just do what Gitlich here sad, and it'll be grate

-Reapy

Level the wall because right now it looks like the corners are collapsing :o

Try to create cliffs using the raise and lower tool. (Experiment doing this first, it took me a couple of weeks to figure it out...)

If you are using the original editor I strongly recommend downloading WE Unlimited, or just download the 80 degree cliff patch around here.

And post more screenshots. Its easier to give feedback when there more than one angle to see. ^_^

Good Luck

Thanks for the feedback. I'm still tinkering around, trying to make changes to it.

Though the tileset, is lordaeron winter, not northrend.

I'll post more shots when i make more progress with it.

Most of the things I would say have been said, the land around the castle could use some enviroment doodads eg rocks and the water could use some more live to it like some ice and such and to make it look more natural for its straigt making it ugly. And its sooooooooo flat as said earlyer, you need hight variation to make it more natural. Terraining is liek drawing a landscape, you can look up pictures of snowy landscapes on the web if you cant see what you want in your head.

1. Never use Cliffs
2. Just stick with normal WE it's fine
3. If you want your skills judged please post finished things
4. Try and do more than 1 screenshot
5. and post more than 1 piece you have done.

what he said.
hey man it looks cool, most of the advice already mentioned is great so ill keep it simple: just make it sensational. (much easier said than done)
good luck.

Well, you can make it so alot better,

*Make trees
*Make some environment ex:Rocks
*The river i straight which isnt netrual
*too flat

*cough*
*cough*
*cough*

I think I'm sick, need to go to bed sorry but you can make the terrain good if you do what I said, can't see more when Im that sick sorry...

Good night!

the main bad thing i notice about this terrain is the flatness of the terrain. use that raise lower tool! dont be afraid to make hills/valleys...

and undead lives, ur sigs too big, make it a wee bit smaller, if you could.

Thanks to bur and Lord Sauron for voting this as "just give up".... NOT. Didn't even leave feedback as far as i can see. If you're going to insult me, do it to my face.
Actual thanks to the rest of you for actually saying something meaningful, regardless of you opinions.

I'll keep working at it, do some more maps of other things, then post them here when I finish. Wish me luck.

Ehm...I voted "Could be better" so dont blame me :P...but...

Why are you making an option for saying Give up when you dont want people to vote on it. If they actually think give up then let them vote it!

Did you read what you qouted? I was legitemately thanking everyone else, except those 2. The only reason i said that was because those 2 downvoted without even bothering to say why. I don't really care what you vote on this, as long as you say something to my face about it.

If they dont say why then dont worry about it for no explaination = null vote in my opinion