L3DT Users' Community

I think more HF/DM ratios would be useful.

When making areas from scratch in L3DT I use 128 HF/DM ratio. If I use higher values, I find the terrain has more peaks and depressions than I need. I use low values of noise too for the same reason. So, I usually can't compensate for lower HF/DM with lower noise.

Also, if you want to generate a simpler map, such as a river valley flanked by hgh elevation, higher HF/DM ratio is better.

It's better for editing on the DM too, at least if you suck at brushing like I do.

Higher HF/DM speeds up processing too.


When importing a height map as a DM the reverse problem occurs. The height map is high resolution compared to a L3DT generated DM so even a low HF/DM ratio produces a larger L3DT height field than one needs.

So, HF/DM ratios of 1, 2, 4, 8, 256, 512, 1024, etc. would be useful.

Hi Nicethugbert,

Thanks for the request. I have thought about these options over the years, but I do not at this time consider them to be a sufficiently desirable use of development effort. The 'design/inflate' terrain algorithm and the various subroutines it comprises are not well behaved outside of the 16-128 range, and thus would need to be re-engineered. This could be a lot of work, and I have to weight that up against the costs and benefits of other priorities.

I have however built a complete working implementation of the DesignInflate16 algorithm in a ZeoGraph graph file, which I will include with the next release. You could use this graph to create the algorithms for other DM/HF ratios if you so desired*. I'll let you know when this update is available for download.

Best regards,
Aaron.

* Please bear in mind however that tweaking these algorithms is an inordinately fiddly, time consuming and frustrating task.