Terrain WIPs for my map

Heres several screenshots of the terrain for my upcoming map. Most of it is done, although I havent even touched the bases yet (4 big blocks). It was done in about 2-3 hours including doodads and pathing. Everything is pathable, including the stairs, shallows, etc. It was one hell of a job, I had to use 300+ pathing blockers to fix various problems... The last one is from game view.

Vary nice.

What is the gameplay like though?

Also, try not to bunch trees like that.

Looking good.

A couple things I'd suggest for the forests are too thin out the trees a little bit. Right now they are too densely packed, and they don't look that natural. Also, I'd suggest adding lots of bushes and ferns and stuff in the forests around the bases of all the tree's.

Your temple ruins look pretty interesting - I'd also be curious to hear what the project is.

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Beautiful (for a wc3 doodad terrain, that is) but not the best I've seen. Of course I recognize how much effort you put into it and that's really all that counts right? +rep for the 2-3 hours

Everything looks good apart from the trees and the coral arches.

Those trees make me worry about people with slower computers lagging too. Otherwise, make the bases and keep us updated :D

Any suggestion as to what I can replace those trees with?

Just use the canopy trees, and maybe have more paths. You could also block with rocks or ruins.

a nice suggestion would be really put your mind and time at it and space it out a bit making it look natural, just make sure they can't go deep in the forest, but maybe walk between 2-3 trees would be fine, cause then they can gank

EDIT : you should also mix in the original variaties of trees with canopy, it looks better that way

And before you take a screenshot in the editor, press "v" and it'll turn on game view settings(thus eliminating all of those ugly purple boxes)

Yep the trees.

I would customize canopy trees (Barrens?) Anyway they are the yellow-green wide topped trees.

in your editor hit advanced, hit view all map. From a straight up view plop your canopy type trees to where the canopies just touch, over lapping just slightly.

Jungle like conditions usually have a thick overhead canopy of tall (giant) trees. below that has a lot ground variety vegetation at the jungle floor - along with rocks, logs and other 'stuff'. Vines tend to grow up tree trunks, moss hangs from tree limbs... you get the idea.

For your map you can make customized version of your canopy tree (Sunken Ruins and I think barrens) increase the size (minimum and maximum) I have found that switching the canopy pathing base with the tree wall base makes a good guide to just how large a tree should be for normal 'game views' As you know one can change the angle of attack of the game camera without special triggers while in the game. The wider base takes care of the wider trunk.

This will be your canopy for your jungle. viewing from above place several (10-20) together forming a rough rectangle of "jungle" copy and paste them over and over again until you get your jungle outline. Remove those that you do not need. Randomly select a few to take out here and there, replace with a clump (around 3) of regular sized ones. In jungles when a tree dies and the canopy opens up a race between seedlings begins to fill in the open space.

On your ground use shrubs and other "fill" material. Wheat will work if you modify the color to a deep green or shades of green. Rushes will work as well, make a few variations.

Flowers can be modified as well, making them either green, or even making them say red adding a red flower to a clump of green rushes ends up looking like a red flowering plant of some sort.

Vines/thorns can have their pathing removed, be "flattened" or lowered into the terrain to fill the area with brambles. Tree trunks can be overlapped a bit - as long as you cover the seam with say vines or mushrooms.

You can shrink trees to small shrubs like size (customized). Like the Felwood tree wall, shrink it to about twice the size of the bush plop it and lower it until the trunk is hidden - it becomes a new kind of 'dark' shrub that one might find in a jungle.

Pathing tips: In many cases you can change the pathing of a doodad to meet pathing needs. instead of using alot of pathing blockers. If you hit p in your editor, plop a doodad you can change the pathing of that type of doodad at will and the ones on the map of that kind will all have their pathing changed.

When I am doing say rows of corn, I use the barrel pathing, plop a square of corn, then switch back to the default pathing. I end up with a row of evenly spaced corn. Different pathing will render different spacing.

something you might want to try is using the Sunken Ruins Destructable wall, increase its size and then plop a line - where you have used the cliff terrain you can set the walls over that. Then lower them a tad - depedning on which variety of wall you use you can end up with some interesting results having a bit of a bannister around the drop off giving the impression of safty for a great height.

As for your coral arches. Make a customized version that allows you to have a wide range of x,y,z stretch, shrink, pull, them in different ways to give the illusion of variety. No pathing map will allow you to "stack" them a little better Then use one with pathing of arch inside of that collection. I like to stack them side by side (opening to opening) my smallest version being the one with a path, the other versions are pathless and I make each one slightly bigger and bigger leading to a "shell" like design. Then either using the cliff tool or a maching rock/rock pillar or making a matching rock chunk with various colors path around the "wall" of the arches.

You can change the hue by tweaking the colors a tad. just do it slightly and those next to one another will look different enough.

Instead of using the small pathing blocker, use the large one, you can over lap areas by holding down the shift key when you plop.

I note that around your ramp ends you have 6 small ones - remove them and replace with two large ones that over lap.

If you are planning on screen shots from the editor and do not want the "Game view" message at the top and want every last pixel of the image, then get in the habit of lowering those boxes below terrain/doodad level to "hide them"