Terrain Help (PewPew)

Okay, what I need are a few tips on how to brush up this terrain a bit. ATM, I feel it's a bit plain (Although some stuff on it is going to be triggered, especially on the middle one), but I want to improve them a wee bit more.

The first one isn't completely finished (Need to finish adding rocks, shrubs, and whatnot), but that's beside the point.

I would like some ideas on how to bring these to be a bit more... professional looking? Yet still capable of gameplay.

Here is what I could do for you.

I have a lot of customized crap - larger trees, some trees from the Ultimate Terrainer map and customized rock chunks of various sizes, plus colored rushes and "stuff".

However to import all of that data will overwrite your trebucket file and your statue, blah. I would salvage the trebucket object and its imported data.

If you are ok with this I will add all of this to your object editor on your map.



Then I will remake a few parts of your map removing the cliffs. Cliffs are ugly, ugly and should be banned from existence

For instance your water in the first part of the map would look a lot better if I made the banks smooth and the water deep to where the pathing (hit P in editor) will be pink (unwalkable).

Although you did do a great job with using water falls as rushing water we can make it look better with a shore line.

It would take me about a day to get it back to you.

Let me know.

Would you mind doing so and saving it under a different name so that I can compare the two and see if I like the changes or not?

That would be great. Be sure to keep each area enclosed though, as they are separate arenas.

Ok, give me about a day.

think u need that program to add tiles in, maybe it's just me but i really hate dalaran ruins tileset, it's really...depressing to play in or see, and there's some broken ramps in 1st and 2nd one

First of all I used the WEU enhancer and tossed in a few more tiles for you.

Please NOTE: One of the tiles I added is orange sand it is a cliff tile DO NOT use it to make cliffs - you need World Editor Ultimate in order to run the game with the added tile as a cliff. You can use it for texturing the ground all you want - just can't use if for cliffs.

I did not finish the map. I got you started. I reworked your cliff level to 3 and made one smooth river deep enough to not be crossed.

I also gave you to extra pathing blockers: Xlrg and XXlrg. Use those to fill in the cliff areas or the steep hills.

You have a few custom doodads now, including a few imported from the Ultimate Terrain Map (Give credit to that map for those). You will note that I made copied of stuff like the cityscape stone benches and lanterns - I darkened them up so they would fit into the dark run down ruins areas.

You also have giant trees and seedlings - you might want to adjust the properties on the seedlings to allow for better seeing through the fog of war.

I also gave you a set of triggers - Those are mostly a work in progress (WIP). However it will allow you to see the map in the game from a first person camera angle. Directions are included with them in the triggers as comments.

The game will start off with Fog of War and Black Mask off. when you select one of the units the camera will switch to behind and slightly above and will follow the selected unit. If you select another the camera will switch to it. If you select both at the same time the last one selected will be the one the camera follows.

To turn it off type the following into chat:

camera off

to turn it back on type in

camera on

If you want to deselect a unit and select another hit esc key at any time - the camera will return to default game view so you can select another unit.

--> If you do not want it, then delete it. If you do want it you will need to adjust it a bit. I gave one instance as example of how to adjust the camera higher and lower with a region across the bridge. In the middle bit you would need a lower camera height in places (more regions) it will require you making a copy of the variable Camera_Height name it something like Camera_Height_3 Then in first person settings you will have to make a copy of the first part (where the CamSetting =0) you have all of the "default" settings for ground units there - you just need to make variables for AoA and Camera Height if they will be different.

--> I also threw in lamp post and torch units. I used the torches and a couple of triggers to show how you can light up an area for a player.

I gave you back your boarder shadow, and I spaced the three sections apart. There is enough room to make a shadow boundary between areas.

Again I did not finish the map for you - What I did is gave you a good start and demonstrated what you can do. That middle bit is not fully pathed it has some pathing blockers (hit p in editor) I wasn't too certain how you wanted to do that.

The only thing I did with the last part was raise the water one level - that happened when I moved the area over - sorry.

The rest of the terrain has been randomly generated with ups and downs. It is really easier to start off with a map set at cliff level 3 with a random height field and then to flatten areas as needed.

If you use it DO NOT credit me - I do not want kudos, I do not need kudos - you can take all the praise or blame for it

Sshots? Type of map terrian will be used in?

For this reason alone I plan to release a new version. The UTM is not a source to be credited.

No offense wraith, but it looks worse to me than before.

1. I had each terrain with a certain "atmosphere" that I had wanted. (Some had to be triggered in to help, such as the middle one is going to have a lot of weather type effects), but your terrains seem to have very little theme or sense of connection in the terrain (Except the third one, which all that seems to have happened is just upping the cliff level)

2. The doodads and cliffs look horribly random... as do the tilesets. You also kinda mutilated a few aspects that I was keeping no matter what and deleted some things I intended to keep.

3. I do like the look of the river now, but I think it's inspired me to make it shallow where units CAN walk through it now... I kinda like the lack of a cliff on it, if it's any consolation for the other insults I threw at you in my criticism.

4. You killed the middle one. =\ It's meant to be a dark area called "Thunder Plains", not "Paladin's Dunes". Even though I didn't tell you this, I thought you would still get the idea that I would have liked to have all the terrains have a similar appearance, just a bit more... better off in terms of terrain expertise.

It's always nice to have people willing to help out others on these forums, especially new users who receive alot of harsh criticism. Yet I'm going to have to agree, the terrain dosen't look all that much better.

I took a look at the original and the middle set didn't look too bad for playable terrain. It had a theme and a concept and stuck with it. What it was replaced with was a bit random and chaotic and looked nothing like the original. I think what Death was looking for it some sort mazey/desolate cliff ruins area. The leftmost scene didn't change too much. With sized waterfall rivers it can be hard to see Blizzard's and overall I think it looked better than the smooth shores.

Considering that you did not say these things in your posts, or that your map's triggers were simple melee map triggers, no region placement, no weather effects and no indication of where you were going, I worked with what I had in the way of knowledge of your map.

As I said I did not finish the map - that would take several days - yes days for me to do. I started it with a very simple outline of what direction I was taking it.


I worked on if for a few hours only.

There was no mention of the feel or the atmosphere you were striving for. I assumed a wasteland kind of affect since your "canyons" suggested wasteland to me. I stuck with rock chunks since you modded rocks into rock chunks.

Yes I removed cliffs and went for straight angles into city walls - one because ramping a diagonal always looks bad, and two because you had many broken ramp/cliff transitions which broke open the terrain to see the sky box below.

The randomness of the terrain tiles is simply because I did not finish the work. That would take DAYS to do. I didn't go further in the middle area simply because your map didn't have any clear one path through it. Yes there was still a lot of orange sand and a region of brown earth and blight to the north. I focused on a few areas (the oasis near the center and the hill-top ruins). The rest I just roughly fleshed in.

Roughly means I took wide sweeping attacks with base textures, grass, or sand or dirt - to outline differing areas. The details come in the long hours and careful consideration of each minor area. Like the detail I placed on the oasis

Given that I only gave you 4 hours of my time most of that was spent in raising the cliff level to three removing the whole of the first area, relaying in the water at two deep in order to get deep water with smoothed banks, moving sections of the map over to allow more space between, reboardering the map before I could start actually doing something with the map.

You got maybe 2 hours of real work out of me - most of it roughed in with a few areas that I spent more attention to.

In the second area I assumed that green forest statues/obelisks meant that you wanted patches of green - perhaps an ancient forest area that was being taken over by wasteland - an abandoned elven area with only a couple die hard elven folk remaining in the drying up area. Burnt out ruins suggesting that in earlier wetter times the place was lived in.

As you may have noted I made steep hills, some I textured with rock on top of those are pathing blockers to prevent units to run over them. No I did not finish that either - I did not know exactly how you wanted pathing and left that open to you.

There was no suggestion of connectivity between these three areas - in fact your insistence to keep them separate indicated to me you were looking for diversity between the three areas:


Area one: With Felwood trees it appeared to me you were seeking for a feel of forest.

I made a forest with a river running through it

Area Two - looked like a dried out canyon with elven stuff. Elves like trees/forests.

I tried to incorporate the feel of death and dying in an old elf area.

Area 3 - Obviously the sewers of some town. I didn't fuss with that much except to move it over and to redo the water since raising the cliff levels to 3 removed all the water from the map.


There is a lot - I mean A LOT of triggers that could be done. Your vague mentioning of triggers was not helpful.

Lastly did you even bother to run it in the game and see what it looks like from the game camera? I attached two images below to give an idea of what it would look like in the game. I assumed that this was being designed for a game so did NOT over crowd the areas allowing the units plenty of room to move about.


Dungeon M - I am not a "new user" I have been terraining for years. I have never bothered to post my terrain shots on these boards and forums. Each map takes weeks for me to finish not hours - I spend a great deal of time on the details. I did not have weeks of time to spend on this map, just a few short handful of hours.

By "new user" I refer to your status here in Wc3c. You only joined us back in August, unless of course you're posting under a new account. I do not doubt you've been mapping with Warcraft 3 for a long time. I only criticize because the quality of your work has nothing to do with how much time you spend on it. Alot of the work you did doesn't really match well, you have wet muddy grass right next to a barren desert and a random road in the middle of the terrain. Again, your work shows effort and time, it just seems very disorganized. I suggest you start with the big picture then work your way into the details. I don't mean to be harsh but that's the way it looks to me.

Don't EVER... EVERRR use the WEU enhancer. Just freaking don't. It's unreliable, buggy, and messed up. There are other ways to get more than 13 tile points.

I'm not trying to offend you or anything wraith, it's just there are a few details in which I'm trying to maintain for the map. Dungeon does say a few things that I thought were a bit weird.

As for the middle area, it is called Thunder Plains, but it's slowly turning into more of a Thunder Valley (We'll see where I decide to take it), so really it needs to be kind of desolate as it has constant lightning & thunder overhead. The main problem I'm having with this area is trying to find suitable doodads and etc without losing the whole openness of the territory as it's long been evacuated by its former occupants (with the exception of a special druid =))

The third area is indeed sewers. It is going to have a few triggered effects as well, I'm glad you could recognize it at the very least.

The first area, is going to be called fortress. I intended to increase the fortress areas a bit, but one part I needed (and I didn't tell you when you started working) was the zenith area where it could hold one flag or object at an elevated area. I do believe I'm going to smooth out the river and actually make it walkable within (but still keep the rushing water effect on the shallow water). The only major modifications I saw on this map was the inside of the fortresses, which I wasn't very fond of.

@ Void - What would you suggest for getting more tiles?

To be honest I've never had a problem with it. I once had the miracle of getting 17 tiles even though the limit is 16...


Maybe get some idea from here...
http://wc3campaigns.net/showthread.p...ighlight=sewer