Stopping snowy areas from overwhelming land-masses...

[lupine73]

Hello...

The subject sorta sums up what I'm posting about here..

Basically, I've gone through a number of different settings on the "design/inflate" method of creating a terrain. What I'm trying to get is a good blend of low/lake-land areas, "mid-ground" plains and hills, then leading up to mountainous areas. I can't seem to get the balance right.

What I end up with is either a ton of water with very little land to speak of, or , less water but with land-masses that are 80% snow-covered with only small little strips of "green" between the snow and the water. I'm trying to figure out the correct settings to get a more even balance between the three. Ideally, the snowy areas would be limited to the very peaks of the mountainous areas. What I'm getting looks like it's closer to a tundra.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[Aaron]

Hi Lupine73,

To reduce the snowy areas, reduce the 'altitude range' slider in the design map parameters wizard. To reduce the sea coverage, increase the 'average altitude' slider. Ultimately, though, I think you'll have to use the design map brush to re-touch the design map to get exactly what you want. The userguide for the brush is here:

http://www.bundysoft.com/docs/doku.php?id=l3dt:userguide:tools:dm_brush

..and a tutorial on designing maps is here:

http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tutorials:l3dt:fjord

Best regards,
Aaron.

[lupine73]

Hey there Aaron,

Hmmm...

Okay I'll try those. I was thinking maybe there was a way to raise the snow-line more, without sacrificing the height-range of the terrain overall.

I'll experiment and see what I can come up with.

Thanks

[Aaron]

Hi Lupine73,

You can use the climate editor to raise the snow-line in the climate you're using. To do this, select the climate from the 'climates' menu, double-click on the 'snow' land type, go to the 'Parameters' tab, and edit the 'Min. Alt.' setting (you'll want to increase the value to raise the snow line).

Disclaimer: I'm doing this from memory. If I'm wrong I'll correct it when I finish work.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

Edit: That said, the preset snow line is reasonably realistic, so if you find that too much of your map is under snow, it may suggest the terrain is too steep for what you want.

[lupine73]

-gasp!-

Posting from work?! Shame on you!

Oh wait...

So am I... heheheh...

Well, I think I've figured out that it's a matter of me understanding how the different settings really affect things. Will certain settings being set to one degree or the other affect the overall altitude, for example.

My ultimate goal is to create a "macro map" - something large with all the major elements in place, mountains where they need to be, rivers, low-land/swampy regions, etc. Then I can go in and do more "fine-tuning" of those regions using the editing tool. Finally, I could export the heightmap(s) and tweak them further to get local detail as I need it.

At least that's the plan.

Last night I was running around in a terrain I'd generated and just thinking that one slope coming from a mountain would be great for a forest... a more flat area closer to a lake would be great for a settlement of some kind, etc. There was even a significantly large flat area above the snow line, like a small tundra, that would have been perfect as a navigable environment in a real-time setting... So obviously L3DT is capable of creating these kinds of features... Now I just need to learn how to tell it to make what I want it to, where I want it to.