Umm ok well to answer orfelius, the cliffs are boxy because I'm using different methods to draw the heightmap than what I would usually use. My last map proved to be really good for evo, so this is a second. My goal is 10 maps, similar in design philosophy which will then supplant the current haphazard zk featured list for evo servers. It's a bit of a long term goal, but doing maps this way has managed to make mapping fun for me again. I no longer dread it, so this is a huge plus.
That's one reason I stopped using the splatting a normal maps, A because it takes forever to get it right, B because for me on a gtx 660 the performance hit is real, C doing all that made mapping more of a chore than something I actually had fun doing.
The passages between the main and the center lake are very intentional. In Evo, it is to encourage either expanding that direction with your overseer and putting a factory on that side, or using all terrains or air or amphibs (because the narrow pass will not obstruct amphibs in any meaningful way).
Remember that these are primarily made to be played with evo, but of course I always do my best to make them play good/decent with ba/zk too... IE I don't intentionally make them crappy for either of those games (remember, when I started mapping, they were all primarily for AA, so I have a lot of experience with *A based maps).
Picasso, your post is now the description on springfiles.
@bob, actually it's carrara. I spent a really long time on the texture for this. The fact that the terrain is multi-tiered makes it simultaneously more difficult and easier to wrangle the climate in carrara. I truly love L3DT, it is amazing software (I mean hell, I made like what, 70 some odd maps with it?), but at this point, carrara is simply easier to get the kind of texture generation that I want.
That said, if I dove deep into l3dt like I used to back in the day, I could still pull it off. The thing that carrara does that makes it better for me is... Carrara uses 2 source colors, then applies a blend to them. You can then control what altitude those colors are applied at, the min and max slope, and even how aggressive the blend is applied as well as the overall coverage. The amount of control actually in some ways makes it more difficult to use lol
L3dt, uses similar controls for application, but instead of colors and blends, it uses pregenerated textures. There are obvious advantages to this method. For example, l3dt textures are extremely realistic, whereas carrara is very surrealistic. Honestly I like both methods, but currently, carrara is easier for me to use (which is weird to say cause if you aren't familiar with carrara, using it is like looking at the back of someone's brain).
