Terrain Review PLEASE!

I'm no terrainer...or whatever..lol, so I'm needing help in the revisal of my stuff from some keen eyes ;)

The map is a base vs base type map w/ a heavier focus on neutral creeping and whatnot.

SS1: Alliance base
SS2: Neutral creep placement
SS3: More neutral creep placement
SS4: Night elf base
SS5: Some secondary ramp / walking area that leads to other creep spots

Overview: The placement of all the other screenshots in relativity to the map.

Eh, its okay terrian, but you need to add more details, like grass clumps, place flowers around, and trees in random places, im not really sure what your asking, but if you can make it more clear then i might be able to help =]

Just general suggestions like "I'd place more tress and flowers in the area of SSwhatever"

Some suggestions on how to add said items (like trees and flowers) in a realistic and appealing way might be very helpfull too.

kk well like i said add little clumps of grass here and there, put flowers on the grass, and also go to terrian, grab a brush and use the "Noise" effect on the area where thats sand, then use smooth to smoothen it out, but dont smoothen it out all the way, and make grass patch with flowers around it and a couple trees in the middle of some areas and add shells on the sand to make it more "beachy"

Like this:



I made it myself, took like 10 seconds =] Its not hard to terrian if you look at other peoples terrian, and you try to do something like it, You'll be able to learn to terrian in like 5 secs! =]

Do not use the noise tool. It creates unrealistic bumps in the terrain, so manually raise and lower the terrain yourself. Yeah, it takes a while, but stick to it; doesn't everything? Also, I really don't like how little grass is there. And I never was fond of that Dark Grass tile.


In all screenshots, the trees are growing out of bricks. Weird looking. Please place grass under them.

The whole terrain needs more grass. Both tiles and doodads. I see so many trees, but no grass tiles on the ground. What's up with that?

It also needs more space, I think, if you're doing a melee-type map. Everything seems so small and narrow. More space would mean more space for grass tiles, as well.



The small ramp there looks very malformed. Try using the Plateau (or Raise) tool to straighten it up again.


Click the bridge, press and hold CRTL, then press Page Down to lower it more into the ground until it's at a reasonable height.


P.S. When adding grass, it would look nicer if you placed some Grassy Dirt tiles somewhere, as well, to make the transition between Dirt/Sand to Grass cleaner and nicer.

Looks pretty boring to me. Not that it's bad, though, but I've seen my share of Sunken Ruins terrain that look exactly like yours.

You did something funky with those cliffs, they're all raised and lowered in a weird way. Fix them.

Another thing is the big desert of dirt in each of the bases. It looks weird. Variate that terrain, and if you have to, add more fortifications around the encampments as well, such as a barrier of rock spires, or a large wall. I don't want my enemies prancing in on ships and then laying seige on my two towers and town hall.

Oh yeah, try to make the trees bigger.

Add doodads in the water. Maybe ruined ships or something. Seaweed, even. It looks pretty boring as it is. You're going to fill up the rest of the water with islands, right?

Try scrolling through the Doodads menu and click everything, I guess.

Lastly, if you don't mind me thinking so, it looks a bit cramped. I mean, the poor turtles have a little ruined island with no return path to the ocean And why do they have a bridge? Try making a natural island by raising the water and then attach it to the main island using a ramp and a shallow water path.

Bases have to be emptyish....players are responsible for building the remainder of their base themselves (towers are there to prevent gay mass-rush early on and ending game in 4-5 minutes). I'll go through and see what I can do to spice it up..I just really need ideas....I've done decent terrain in ashenvale and icecrown...but as you said, a lot of the sunken ruins maps look identical to mine in variety and whatnot. I'll change the turtle's island to accessible by ramp + shallow water instead of by bridge.

And yes, the rest of the water will be filled by medium-large size islands...particularly the top-left area.

Sorry for double post...but I've made some updates to terrain:

I tried to take everyone's advice into my revisions while still keeping with the necessities and ideas of my map. I have added in numerous things and areas (which I hope to have screenshots of in a couple of hours, which I'll add), but in the mean time I want to have perfected, or near perfected the areas for which I've already requested review.

Please keep in mind this is an AoS type map, although certainly not of the conventional aspect...so keep the general "Is this AoS quality?" in mind, but ignore the "hmmm, this doesn't look like a normal AoS setup to me..." concerns you may have ;)

Hmm... I've just noticed that your paths, like the one in the last screenshot are really small. Wouldn't it be possible for a n00by ally to block the path to stop movement?

Indeed, they could...

(intended...if its too-often occuring, I'll change it)

You should lower the cliffs in some places. The walls above the sea just dont look natural. Uncheck Enforce Water Limits and take the lower tool and make beaches. Use the dirt tile to edge your beach next to the water (makes it look like wet sand), and then use the sand tile further up the beach (looks like dry sand). Look at my hidden isle post below yours to see what I am talking about.