Fix the completely unrealistic, frustrating terrain generation

Sorry i aint reading through 21 pages just to say i agree with the topic...
Not only is terrain frustrating but also textures for town buildings....
I mean using textures for both doors and windows makes things hard to change the looks of towns...

What in the hell were they thinking when they did windows in towns.. Planks of wood covering windows looks strange, and its impossible to change some textures because they are mapped to use the one graphic texture.. why not have seperate textures for windows and doors?

Its this reason you can only change so much without having to remodel the whole thing yourself.. sorry i aint got time for that. Designing new textures takes enough of my time.

Trying to make a door look like a window and a window look like a door is extremely hard to do and have it look good...

the planks of wood would be shutters, extremely common since they didn't have much glass in Europe back then for windows, mainly fishskin was used (since it is fairly see-through) and glass was only for the extremely rich.

other than which, spot on.

Yeah but on every window.. and some windows they arn't shutters at all but rather look like fence pallings... either way ive changed them in my mod and put windows where i could

Awngwyn said:

I'd be happy if someone would create a user-friendly map editor that didn't require programming skills.  I used to make some pretty cool maps for Age of Kings.

Click to expand...

THIS. PLEASE.

I'd love it if custom battles, you could make your and your enemy's army as custom as you could (25 huscarls, 50 veterans etc) and edit the map and save maps.

  Just wanted to second that the excessively -spikey- terrain is pretty goofy, if it can be toned down a little. Read a few pages of the initial comments... I endorse mountainous terrain, and while it's true that pathfinding could be better, at the same time claiming that this terrain should be accepted as a "tactical consideration" is kinda stupid. Ideally, both will be rectified eventually.

  Since it's very possible/likely that the modding community is working on this sort of stuff, perhaps, if the devs are overloaded with the many aspects of production (understandable) they could recruit/utilize some of their "civilian" workforce. Perhaps choosing one of the more effective ones and integrating it into the base game (giving credit to the originator, maybe?).

Looks to me like the terrains are generated off of some sort of noise template. its a simple matter of reducing the intensity of the noise amplification to get the world to be smoother, and or add in new noise template.

easy peasy

I have a feeling understanding the terrain generation is similar to understanding the diamond square algorithm. I've thought on and off about generating random terrain in a game and through my googling found this page. If you look at some of the examples of inputs you can have to alter the algorithm you will see the are pretty close to the sliders you have in warband to generate the terrain laydown.

Some other games that have interesting world gen are dwarf fortress, for a sort of over the top one, in which he generates temperate zones, mountains, rivers, has an erosion process, then simulates the world history to place villages, farms, etc etc. It's quite amazing actually, but anyway i'm rambling.

So in warband, maybe a quick fix for this is to use 'fake' cliffs in generation. You just use flatter terrain, then instead of dropping a castle, you have an object that looks like a real cliff face and place that between terrain. Since it's an object you probably won't need to mess with the ai mesh too much for the ai to avoid it. The problem here is of coarse set pieces in random generation can feel very repetitive over time, ie daggerfall/oblivion. But that might be a way to perk up some hand crafted maps.

The other solution might be to change the way impassible boundaries are placed. If you could for example take any slope beyond a certain steepness and make sure there is no ai walk mesh on it, and also add boundries for the player to not be able to cross, that could provide some more interesting maps, but you would have to be careful else you would end up with a situation where neither army can actually reach the other one.

I read an interesting paper someone had done talking about using cellulara automata (like the oldschool 'game' life) to generate random caves in 2d. It was a pretty simple algorithm in the end with some parameters you could use to change up your structure, but always guaranteed you had a path for the player to walk and it was all connected. So you could get some pretty cool box canyon maps by using this algoritm to generate a 'floor' in 2d, then just rise the z axis of all the impassible spots to look like canyon walls, or even do it randomly so some are higher then other and a few more are just little bumps. Either way you'd get a pretty cool looking cliff terrain.

But honestly if you think about mountainous terrain, an army wouldn't generally travel through random areas. You would most likely stick to a pass or well known route that had enough room for your troops to maneuver. Otherwise if you were traversing forest or mountains you'd probably have a small force that was capable of fighting there or trying to sneak around a flank or just necessity demanded you go through it. But yeah I doubt very much that a force of 100+ guys would be walking randomly in mountains so you end up with a fight on a steep cliff or really with no place to maneuver.

So maybe there should be some set pieces that line up with the overland map, like there is a well known mountain trail between towns, every time you get in a fight in the vicinity of it you get mostly the same map.

With any game there is always lots of room to improve and change things, just a question of time and drive

I am sick of fighting over mountains in the middle of a flat plain! If there is a 45 degree sloped mountain, you don't fight over it!
You fight in the bloody valleys!

I Say that the random World generator adds a few ruins to the battle map like a old messed up outpost of somesort or guard tower, and maybe some birds and crows flying around making noises,just stuff like that it would be kinda different and better in my opinion because the vanilla battle map is just boring and always the same.

Sef OK b said:

I Say that the random World generator adds a few ruins to the battle map like a old messed up outpost of somesort or guard tower, and maybe some birds and crows flying around making noises,just stuff like that it would be kinda different and better in my opinion because the vanilla battle map is just boring and always the same.

Click to expand...

While this may or may not be true, it isnt to topic about hills and "cones" generating randomly but still according to certain algorithms. Reapy made an exquisite albeit somewhat long post addressing this. Here is what i think...

Such type of hills may or may not exist in real life. But that isnt the point, is it? But yes, this game is somewhat loosely based on real cultures from a variety of time periods and geographical areas. They are mixed together, and not all nearby Europe. Even while a faction based from a culture from any part of America isnt represtented, it is due to several reasons not a completely valid argument to say that since that the type of rocky mountains seen ingame and from pictures of posters isnt a European phenomana, and therefore shouldn't be part of the game.

[list type=decimal]
[*] You don't know about all of the variety of European geography. Such hill peeks could in fact exist, rare or not.
[*] The setting of the game is still fictional, isnt it?
[/list]

Furthermore, neither is it a valid argument to say that these densed hill peeks should necessarily be a part of the game for the reason that you've seen and/or experienced somewhat similar geophormology yourself. Remember, fiction. Its a game.



So, what do I think? Devs, make it so that if such geometries must exist, it should be obvious where they would occur, per example indicated on the overhand map. Give us mountain passages, and proper mountains too, instead of the seemingly oft occuring and frustrating scaled down rocky mountains, at every place there is a slope by where the overhand map shows a large mountain. I would also like edgy tops of mountains seen in the battle, unclimbable of course. Furthermore, I want to stress mountain passages by larger mountains in-battle, of course AI would prefer this, especially if mounted.

That's my 2 cents. Basically, give us variety with these types of landscapes and ways to utilize surroundings more easily, in some sync with AI. 

Gotta agree with OP

I would like add in that it would be nice if you're righting close to a city to actually see the city somewhere in the background.  Then again it doesn't make sense that bandits can wander close to cities and not get shot to pieces.

I would like to further lend support to the original poster's request, but also go on to mention that many of these villages tend to have absurdly uneven ground in them, as well.

Who builds their house where the only approach to it is a sixty degree slope on top of slick, flat stones, anyway?  Try walking a sixty degree surface sometime... especially a smooth stone surface... in the rain...

Now try to get a horse to do that same sixty degree slope on a smooth stone surface in the rain.  (And you can drive your all-terrain horsemobile up almost completely vertical cliff faces.)

Or better yet, just look at how nonsensical some of the slopes we have to go up and down are:

I also want to know why, exactly, the "steppes" where I fight steppe bandits (which have to be cornered at the top of a cliff to engage those speedy little suckers) seem to consist almost entirely of mountains.  One would suspect that nothing but mountains would make for poor horse country.  It's not a mountain or a series of pointy hills I trapped them on, it's a cliff.  I should see a steep, fatal drop-off on the other end of the battlefield, not a series of sheer cliff faces in my face the instant combat starts.

I think an improved collision/physics system would fix that sort of thing.

I know:

http://www.halolz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/halolz-dot-com-skyrim-physics-*****imahorse.jpg

the best solution i know, is replace 'mountain' terrain with 'plain'(or any other suitable terrain type) in map.txt

simply open the map.txt,
replace all "\r1 0 3 " with "\r3 0 3 "

save map.txt

Wraith_Magus said:

Who builds their house where the only approach to it is a sixty degree slope on top of slick, flat stones, anyway?  Try walking a sixty degree surface sometime... especially a smooth stone surface... in the rain...

Click to expand...

Villagers who live in a warzone and are prone to constant invasions by various bandit types and warbands?
But seriously, I agree with you. It is a bit silly not to mention not fun to play on.

+1.
I love running along the hills b/c i can go at a full gallop. slightly turning towards the incline makes it easier to ride up steep hills, instead of going straight up.

There should be a heightmap in the world map that corresponds to the battlefield.

Hello! Well, completely unrealistic, frustrating terrain degeneration
torment me as well for a long time now, as I menage to fix it before... I remembered how to do it.
This is short tut:
1. You need Map Editor (it will do just fine with Warband just copy your map.txt into old M&B then copy back to warband when you finish editing)
2. Click on vertex mode
3. Select all vertex or dots by double click i think (use z mode)
4. Lower whole map height down and save

It is not perfect but it will generate more smooth battle terrain.

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