Procedural Terrain Generator (Features Tutorial Added!)

[-Blades-]

damn gsf back at it again with the PTG

[Ad Bot]

[[GSF]Ghost]

I have been mucking around with the PTG for a while now and I am getting some nice terrain out of it.
Things I will certainly use in an RPG.

I have a couple suggestions though.


Would it be possible to let the mountain biomes use bigger slopes?
For example, if I use the 1/4 modTerrain bricks as base and set the multiplier to 4.
The slope bricks used will be the normal height modTerrain slopes, not the 1/4 like they currently do.
The mountains would look a bit smoother.

Thanks for the suggestion. Someone else also requested that feature awhile back, and it's a great idea. It might be somewhat challenging to implement, but I'll try to include this in the next update. You can also make mountains appear more smooth by reducing the Z-Snap Mult. value under the Mountains category of Features options.

An other idea was this:

The left is how it currently is
The right is my modified version
It looks a bit nicer, and I would think it is a pretty easy fix.
Just make all the bricks under a certain level the sand instead of using boundaries of a biome.

I think that's just due to how ModTer placement works; sometimes the generator can get confused as to what color / print to apply to ModTer bricks. I was working on fixing that issue in v4, so it should be implemented with the next update.

damn gsf back at it again with the PTG

Procedural generation has definitely become a passion of mine lately. =)

[BlooKirby]

I Really hate how the PTG Custom Bricks replace some Bricks from Demian's Brick Pack.

[8hbc]

How do you disable brick height snapping?

[[GSF]Ghost]

I Really hate how the PTG Custom Bricks replace some Bricks from Demian's Brick Pack.

The brick names have already been replaced in v4, so that should be fixed in the next update.

How do you disable brick height snapping?

Replied via PM.

[Potatoh]

bbuuummppp

[[GSF]Ghost]

Thanks for the bump =)

[fionnbharr1]

Big fan. I've spent quite a few hours by now tinkering with details, mostly noise scales, and have a quick few points.

• Some cave settings can cause terrain tears and broken offsets.
• Build spawning on 'Water Surface' seems to be completely broken.
• Builds occasionally load partway inside modter.
• It's very difficult to get usable flat areas (without using the inbuilt feature which doesn't smooth often) for building without using larger-size modter.

And about the noise scales, which is the most interesting part I can see: why in the complex gui have a preset set of noise layers (Terrain ABC, Clouds AB, etc) to configure instead of allowing open-ended progressive layers to be stacked on-top of one-another, especially considering half won't be used on many generations? Even with three terrain settings, on larger 'maps' there is visible repetition, especially with the cloud layer. Assuming the code could accommodate it, a simple "[layer] [angle] [size] [value]" format could allow for some really organic terrain.

Regardless, (and probably needless to say) this tool has a lot of potential, mostly in the sheer number of additional random features available to populate a landscape (once you finally get one that works). The more top-end features and configurability, the better the result ends up looking. Custom biomes are neat, but without their own terrain options or the ability to restrict features more than the pseudo-equator setting, they'll ultimately be clumps of details. More dynamic and inter-related thresholds that would let, for instance, clouds spawn more frequently above mountains or for grass colors to grade with elevation, are #1 on my wishlist.
Again, more props. 

[Bwopper]

Im gonna try to make a miniempires.

[Lawrence of Ablockia]

I've got everything set, I'm never landscaping the old way again. hopefully.

[[GSF]Ghost]

I've got everything set, I'm never landscaping the old way again. hopefully.

Awesome =) Also, I do have another generator called Simplex Gen which, although doesn't have even close to as many features as PTG, is a lot easier to use and generates better looking terrain.

Big fan. I've spent quite a few hours by now tinkering with details, mostly noise scales, and have a quick few points.

• Some cave settings can cause terrain tears and broken offsets.
• Build spawning on 'Water Surface' seems to be completely broken.
• Builds occasionally load partway inside modter.
• It's very difficult to get usable flat areas (without using the inbuilt feature which doesn't smooth often) for building without using larger-size modter.

And about the noise scales, which is the most interesting part I can see: why in the complex gui have a preset set of noise layers (Terrain ABC, Clouds AB, etc) to configure instead of allowing open-ended progressive layers to be stacked on-top of one-another, especially considering half won't be used on many generations? Even with three terrain settings, on larger 'maps' there is visible repetition, especially with the cloud layer. Assuming the code could accommodate it, a simple "[layer] [angle] [size] [value]" format could allow for some really organic terrain.

Regardless, (and probably needless to say) this tool has a lot of potential, mostly in the sheer number of additional random features available to populate a landscape (once you finally get one that works). The more top-end features and configurability, the better the result ends up looking. Custom biomes are neat, but without their own terrain options or the ability to restrict features more than the pseudo-equator setting, they'll ultimately be clumps of details. More dynamic and inter-related thresholds that would let, for instance, clouds spawn more frequently above mountains or for grass colors to grade with elevation, are #1 on my wishlist.
Again, more props. 

Thanks, and yeah build-loading / flat area generation was a bit of an experiment. But, those features can also be very useful under the right settings.

[16-Bit]

This may have been asked already, but why are the tutorial videos unavailable?

[[GSF]Ghost]

This may have been asked already, but why are the tutorial videos unavailable?

Someone tried to hack my account awhile back, so I just took my channel down for the mean time.

[Lego lad]

Loading landscapes from heightmaps is possible, but due to the limitations of the engine it's very difficult; it someone made an external application that would convert heightmaps to a text file, it certainly could be included.

 As for being able to draw or sculpt terrain using brushes, I'm actually starting work on that now. =)

did anything ever become of these 2 things?

[[GSF]Ghost]

did anything ever become of these 2 things?

I did get a prototype working for a brush-based editor; it's definitely possible. As for the converter, there's been no progress on that yet. It might be possible to bring back Torque's heightmap importing function, but not easy to do I'm sure.