In my above post, I was mainly referring at the word generation, not really at the actual game once on ground despite the new map generation do impact quite a lot the games but I’ll talk about this later. Just have a look to the World seed thread, right here at the transition between the old and new system. The “spirit” is gone!
SO of course it is so cool to have big lakes and islands, I think I have fight enough with water in a certain thread to be more than happy to get big lakes but that’s not my point. Lakes, rivers, shores, all this is a must have on such map generation, so being on the old map or new map, that’s the same. The point is the feeling, it’s not anymore the same and apart the “visual” design I think it may affect the games. For exemple because all is smoothed it will be pretty hard to find both mountains and lakes because to get things smooth, you need a certain distance between world features. Before you could find some varieties of tiny lakes on many different levels. That is now almost impossible.
Well ok, tiny lakes were not as cool as big lakes with islands but why not having both? Diversity through squared design. That’s what is needed. Big lakes? Ok but why should we get a shape as any 10 years old child would draw? All this new map are so “déjà vu”…
What we need are squared water body and rivers should be that way too. Imagine a minute some rivers in this nature like method, once you will put a lake, a mountain and a river, the map will be full to respect the soothing distances. And because the player will see only a tiny part of this big picture, he won’t be able to get plenty of features in his game zone. Bad.
So that is my feeling about the “macro” new world generation. On a side note about the “micro” (once in game), the tree repartition is too regular and need noise. Ok for the rule “dense at foothills and near water” but we need some “air” to get something pleasant. We had that before.
Stephanie, having settings via .json is pretty cool but actually whatever will be the incoming changes, it is important to keep in mind the squared philosophy else, again it’s losing a part of StoneHearth soul. Of course if Albert can tell us a bit more about these settings it would be nice but TR must keep in mind a strong design for the next steps, that’s important for success!