Man, I wish that picture had stayed buried in the sands of time… It looks soooooo goood!
The terraced style works, yes, but it leaves little room to have anything interesting in the world. And since citizens apparently hate pathing between elevations, I have been building all on one level of late and it makes me just ignore the terrain altogether, just because its all super samey. The old style looks so much better, and still conveys ‘cubes’
Agreed, I fricking love the “old” terrain style and coloring. Oh well, better put it behind us - from what @sdee said it sounds like they have moved away from that.
I particularly like the ‘Civilization’-style world generator where you can specify:
If implemented in SH, this could have the following effects:
World age would affect erosion exposure, making cliff edges smoother and digging trenches where rivers run through.
Together, the temperature and rainfall would dictate if the world is tundra, coniferous forest, continental forest, plains, subtropical, tropical rainforest, or desert.
Sea level dictates if the map is landlocked, coastal, or an archipelago.
As much as I like this idea, I think its way too late to make major changes to the world editor now…
OCD Edit: Also, to the OP, it’s ‘seGue’ 
I guess that is one of the bonuses of being around during the alpha phase. If they have a chance to change it, now would be the time, so I figure we have a responsibility of sorts to voice these things. If the devs want to tell us reasons why they don’t want to do it that way, or that they cant, then that is fine.
well i was just looking through the archived stuff on stonehearth.net and found this, the one named “taking another stab at world generation” basically tells us that they made it how it is now for easier building. though the concept picture had a bit more “fleshed out/detailed” looking terrain type then we currently have…
I think that terrain in slightly smaller steps, as shown above, is perfectly reasonable. What if certain smoother biomes had 5-block steps, and the current 10-block steps were reserved for rockier areas?
Also, we need stone cliffs to be not as drab and flat-colored.
well digging around some more, here is some early test generation…
edit: well early-ish…
I think that this could also use a little bit more talking about, especially since water is being added to the game, so I would assume the terrain generation code is being looked at again.
The smaller terraced system is much nicer looking I feel, just because it breaks things up a bit less evenly. I just wonder if it is doable, since I remember being told that building things on different levels caused problems with the pathfinder.
The pathfinder’s doing better with height variation, but when the Y-height difference is fairly big, there’s still a number of issues still being worked on.
I think there will need to be some degree of terracing and natural curves to the landscape (curves?! As in ROUND objects??) This will be especially important for any sort of arid/desert biomes added in the future, since dunes–which are normally rounded–will look like either blocks or pyramid-like objects if done in the current generation style.
Isn’t the y-height essentially always the same? The only situations where it it is different is when you build odd structures with slabs and some mining situations. Other than that, all cliffs appear to be the same height.
Now that the water generation is implemented, I think that this would be the idea time to give the terrain generator another pass.
TR’s ‘desert world’ generation could alternately be Dune styled, where the landscape is entirely flat, except for some jutting rock formations:
Sandworms to be modded in by one of our beloved forum geniuses 
I think that the really old-school, kickstarter-campaign-era landscape would definitely look nicer in that setting, though:
Who do we bug to get some curves around here?!??
DUNE!!! … blue eyes, spice as a ressource, ornitopthers. sandworms, the water of life … i dont want to think about it … ok im off - looking Dune in HD ^^
While we are somewhat on the topic of world generation features, I see a definate need for rivers. From a gameplay perspective, rivers are much more interesting to work with than ponds.
If you watch last Tuesday’s stream, Tom mentioned that rivers and other realistic water formations were in the works. They’re just getting the water mechanics sorted out first!
We’ve got spreadable water, we just need current! And swimming!
well in the updates [notes][1] it says,
Water, Part 1
Lakes now spawn in the world, and water behaves rationally as the terrain is deformed. There’s still a lot to do here: rivers, improvements to the simulation, swimming, and the ability to use water as a resource.
so dont worry they will be added
[1]: http://stonehearth.net/2015/04/22/stonehearth-alpha-10-test-build-uploaded-to-steam-latest-branch/
Not worried. You can’t add water to the game without adding water features.
Just hope we get another look at the generator, to make terrain more interesting.
