Hi Nicethugbert,
nicethugbert wrote:
I can actually work with the all positive noise! That looks awesome! It's so Moria!
The problem, however, was that the design map was decidedly un-Moria. I had a basic design map, which specified the maximum mountain height to be around 1000m (using 10m horiz. scale, BTW). Here's what it looked like:
Using the regular algorithm (with positive and negative noise) gave me exactly what I (or other users) would have expected from that design map; a terrain with the same shape, and mountains up to 1000m:
[texture in 2D]
[textured in 3D]
Using the positive-only noise, I got instead a ridiculously mountainous terrain (mostly above the snow line), with mountains up to 5000m! That's not what I had in the design map, and I think most users would be dissatisfied to receive terrain that is so very different from their design.
[texture in 2D]
[textured in 3D]
Noise should not change the terrain to this degree. Hence, I do not intend to release this modification, or indeed any modification that has the noise producing a net change in elevation away from that set by the user in the design map.
The same 'Moria' effect could have (and should have) been achieved using the 'altitude range' control in the design map parameters wizard. That's what its for.
To avoid the mesas and sink-holes, the recommended method is still to reduce the cliffs & terraces setting, either for the whole map (in the design map parameters wizard), or locally (in the design map brush or pixel editor). And, if that fails, use the heightfield editor. A change to the noise generator will not be a robust solution to the problem of mesas/sinkholes.
nicethugbert wrote:The settings seem highly sensitive to the size of the map in meters.
The degree of sensitivity depends on the horizontal scale itself. The altitude range and noise amplitude both scale according to 1-exp(-ax), where
x is the horizontal scale and
a is an arbitrary scaling factor. Thus, both the altitude range and the noise amplitude increase with increasing horizontal scale, but asymptote towards a maximum value.
Cheerio,
Aaron.