Insane Asylum Grounds - WIP, feedback

[Robbie]

Hey all, long time no see! I've been making a map! It's for my Insane Asylum game that I've reignited yet again. I've been planning the grounds so I can start decorating and wanted to get some ongoing feedback on it.

Still to add: Coal storage, gas holders, cemetery, barn, fields, cistern (maybe), possibly some other things I haven't thought of yet.

The black line coming in from top left to the back of the boilerhouse is a railroad spur for dropping off coal and supplies.

GroundsMapWIP_01.png

[Robbie]

Did some more work on the Grounds...here's where it is now. I've also added contours...anyone wanna see em?

GroundsMapWIP_02.png

[Redrobes]

Hi Robbie, Are you planning on doing any 3D renders when you have the contours ? You should post a link back to your old vidoes of the place for those people who did not dee it the first time around, as they were fascinating and so well done. If you have the old 3D building model sitting in a contoured landscape in 3D then yes, I would be interested in seeing it. I am certain that's where you are heading with it so looking forward to seeing that.

[Robbie]

I've been keeping a blog of the game progress, but it needs to be updated with this stuff. https://fantaseum.com/category/proje...bride-project/

I've done quite a bit more work on the grounds layout...this is completely different than what's been shown so far because this particular layout is in planning and doesn't exist in 3d yet.
GroundsMapWIP_03.png

[Robbie]

I actually might need a little help...I kinda haphazardly plotted some contours, but I ended up NOT sticking to even gradations. I've got the colors where I want, but I'd like to smooth it and possibly erode it and turn it into a height map. Could this be something I could process with a tool from waldronate or Redrobes? Any ideas?

Plan_Grounds_Elevation.png

[Greason Wolfe]

I actually might need a little help...I kinda haphazardly plotted some contours, but I ended up NOT sticking to even gradations. I've got the colors where I want, but I'd like to smooth it and possibly erode it and turn it into a height map. Could this be something I could process with a tool from waldronate or Redrobes? Any ideas?

Plan_Grounds_Elevation.png

Since it looks to be gray scale you could probably use Wilbur with some precip erosion and a bit of guasien blur. You might just as easily do a bit of pre bluring before processing it in wilbur. I could try playing with it a bit when I get home from work and give you a better idea as far as numbers go unless waldronate happens by before I get there. Not sure about Red's tools since I have never tried using them.

Hope that helps.

[Redrobes]

Its quite large scale map to do erosion on it - at least with anything I wrote. Presumably the land is covered in grass and other vegetation which holds the soil and earth together more than it might if it were a bit of valley or something about 20km square.

For smoothing you can go a little further with the ole gaussian blur but only up to a point where you run out of grayscale values and then you need to convert it to something that has 16 bit or float style pixel representation. With few contours you will have steps even if they are smoothed out.

I know that you are a whizz with 3D tools like Max. Can you put this as a texture map and use displacement to generate a 3D model of it and then smooth that. Since it will triangulate it then you will at least get the in between height levels that you wont get with a grayscale map.

All I can offer is a view in my 3D tool after a bit of blurring which I hope will allow you to visualize what you have.

Its probably too exaggerated from what you have in mind as the amount of effect of the height map is arbitrary. You can have the viewing tool for windows if it helps but I think you can get the same effect as a displacement map in Max, Blender or similar. The tool was just for debugging tiles in MeDem.

[Robbie]

I think my problem is, I was trying to visualize the terrain using contours alone while actually knowing what it SHOULD look like....I think I need to sculpt the terrain using landscape tools in the vision I have and then generate the contours for it after the fact. I'm still going to want contours because this map will eventually become an engraved survey map when I have time, and it will appear in the game.

[Robbie]

I started up a sculpt in blender. Just messing around initially, but I'm kinda liking it so far.
Screenshot_2024-05-20_23-12-00_1920x1080.png

[Redrobes]

That looks good and I think a sculpt tool is a great way to get what you need.

I don't know blender all that well but in my old 3D app I used to apply a black and white striped texture to the X or Y axis of the model and then you can render the 3D shape textured and all of the Z heights cut through the stripes and give striped contours from which you can do the edge detect to get thin lines. Maybe now its all done procedurally so you can set the color based on the Z height directly. Or maybe blender has a plugin to show contours. It seems to be able do everything these days.