While I love the dramatic and thematic blocky terrain, I was wondering if it might be possible to have rolling hills with natural steps and shallow slopes. I feel terrain like that might make for interesting sloped cities, and add a bit of a challenge to farming in some circumstances. And, it would presumably make for a nice visual contrast to the sharp terrain.
While I agree it would look pleasing! I also don’t want to wait for my Hearthlings to also flatten out building areas either (already takes more than enough time getting your first couple buildings up and going).
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maybe it could be an option in the menu when generating the world to be able to pick which generation style to use.
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paging @BrunoSupremo (who has experience in modding such things) would it be possible to do this by adding more bands to the terrain generation? Thinking of your Canyon biome, you managed some really nice rolling hills in the lower levels; although I seem to remember that method didn’t play nicely with the normal terrain generation.
Going back to the OP though, I fully agree. I’d like to see more gradual inclines on the lower slopes, with the foothills being about half as tall as they are now, and then more levels of exposed mountain stone to really convey how massive they are. For the Darkmoor Forest I’d even like to see “sharper” inclines on the mountains; although I think the current desert mountains and mesas are perfect (the sand dunes and foothills around them could stand to be a bit smoother though, IMO.)
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I believe that is how the game was orrigionally… they scrapped the idea and went for the way it is now… i dont remember why… but the game did used to have what your asking for a long time ago.
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I honestly can’t see me playing in a smooth terrain. Just to start, without flat grounds, you would not be able to use templates. Everything would became a shore, having to level the terrain all the time.
But yes, it is possible to remove that restriction of the heights “steps”. There is a lot of math dependent on it though, so changing it requires a lot of changes in other codes too.
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The whole terrain need not be sloped. There can – and should – be plenty
of level areas.
I guess thats a matter of opinion, because i really like it. Especially the foreground where the trees follow the terrainheight. But some of the squares to the left (EDIT: Right!) side seems a bit unnatural, so in that part i agree with you.
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Totally disagree with slopes and hill as being Natural. This is stonehearth a blocky world and as tthe way the terrain is now fits its style. Changing it I feel the hearthlings wouldnt fit in it.
My Grove biome was designed to serve as a middle ground on different terrain slopes
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I’m not a fan of the right-hand side where the steps meet at the corners, that looks weird and unnatural to me; but on the left where the foothills are smoother I like the effect.
However I agree that, on the whole, the larger and chunkier terrain suits the rest of the game better.
I do think that there’s potential in the idea of some very gentle hills scattered across a flat plain, but I’d have to dig around in the terrain generator to test a theory on that. It would be an appropriate place to start out with modding Stonehearth (I generally start on terrain gen in other games I’ve modded), but I doubt I have the motivation and time to make it happen right now lol.
Still, thanks @BrunoSupremo for trying it out
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I think id prefer hills over the small ditches that form in some areas… they just look ugly… but i liked how stonehearth looked in earlier screenshots before they changed the terrain.
Rolling hills in a block games still look good.
Minecraft:
Gnomoria:
They just don’t look good in your picture, IMO, because the world level generation is too coarse.
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that first picture is how stonehearth used to look… before they changed it… it looked very similar to that i remember old screenshots of it.
and honestly i would prefer that to how it is now.
TBH I don’t think anyone is denying the Rolling hills and natural looking terrain looks bad.
The thing I have an issue with it is that:
- The current terrain fits nicely with the hearthlings themselves and the mechanics of the game.
- Radiant would need to develop some really quick and easy in-game terrain flattening tools w/o making it convoluted and risk losing the other game aspects and having the building and Terra-forming dominate the game even more lopsided then it is.
I like that my lil hearthlings build my creations from the ground up but I would also get turned off rather easily waiting for them to flatten the land before they can even start building. (imo) It is already still a little much in the time department waiting for them to finish a simple project.
The team has made some good progress on speeding up the build times some but adding to the job of waiting for the hearthlings to flatten out an area before they can even begin to build (imo) would be a big step back in that department.
I know it would probably be Okay for the pure builders and they wouldn’t mind the extra time it took but I like the other aspects of the game as well and the building is only part of the game (a big part of the game! but not all of the game).
Sometimes I just want to set up my town and enjoy the rest of the game.
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