-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
FAQ
Version 2 introduced significant performance improvements to the terrain and biome brushes so you can see their changes more quickly (almost real time depending on the map resolution). Other performance optimisations were also added.
However, there are times when the full procedural generation engine must run (loading a map, after completing an edit, etc). The generator can be computationally heavy when calculating new terrain, moisture, and temperature models, particularly at larger resolutions. Maps of 1000x1000 pixels process very quickly. Maps of 4000x4000 pixels look beautiful, but may take a few seconds to calculate even on powerful PCs.
The questions below go into more detail on specific performance and behaviour quirks.
What you are seeing is a difference in how biomes are being procedurally generated as a result of orographic lift (rain shadows caused by mountain ranges). In v1, there was a bug which caused orographic lift to only consider the procedurally-generated elevation model. If you used any tool to edit the terrain (terrain brushes, custom rivers or tectonic faults), these would not be taken into account. In addition, the original strength of the orographic lift was using a fixed value which did not change with the map's resolution or its scale. Both these were fixed in v2. This means procedurally generated biomes will look a little different (more realistic), particularly on maps that have a lot of terrain edits.
Note that because orographic lift is scaled, biomes in regional maps should still look the same as the original map from which they were created.
You can bring in any image as a reference (see Module Settings), and it will be shown as a canvas overlay. You can then use the Flat terrain engine to generate a flat landscape slightly higher than sea level. From here, you can use the terrain edit tools to sculpt your topography to match your reference image. Biomes will still be calculated automatically, but these can also be edited using the Biome brush (see Biomes).
Will you add the ability to load a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) or a greyscale elevation map to generate the terrain?
No. This is still being considered. The main issue is that for the module to faithfully recreate the map when it is loaded would mean saving the DEM or image with the map. This adds a lot of file size to each map save (which are Foundry Journal pages).
Version 2 introduced significant performance improvements to the terrain and biome brushes so you can see their changes more quickly (almost real time depending on the map resolution). However, once an edit is complete, all terrain edit brush strokes must be replayed in chronological order whenever the terrain must be recalculated. The more edits you make, the more history the engine must process in sequence. If you are just making a few changes to a map, this will not impact performance. However, if you are hand-drawing an entire map at a high resolution, you could easily generate thousands of brush strokes that must be reapplied one by one after the edit is complete.
Use the Standard or Flay terrain engines and create your initial terrain map at a lower resolution, such as 1600 x 1200. This reduces the computational power required to calculate the terrain and biomes. Once you have your topography, custom rivers, and tectonic faults (which physically deform the terrain) in place, you can generate a high-resolution regional map from it (see Creating and Managing Maps). Instead of cropping a small area, expand the crop box to cover the entire map and increase the target resolution. The module will automatically upscale the map, calculating more granular detail while perfectly preserving your custom features. Please note: once you are working at this higher resolution, any further structural changes to the terrain, rivers, or faults will take proportionally longer to process.
The procedural hydrology engine mathematically forces water to flow downhill. If you draw a custom river route directly over a high mountain range, the engine will cut a gorge deep enough through that terrain to ensure the river never flows upwards. To avoid extreme canyons, try to route your rivers through natural valleys, or use the terrain Lower/Level brushes to flatten the path before drawing the river.
Procedural rivers (those flowing from the automatically generated springs) calculate the path of least resistance downhill to the coast or a lake. If you use the terrain brushes to raise a hill, carve a valley, or smooth a slope anywhere near a river's path, you alter the underlying topography. The hydrology engine recalculates the most natural route based on your new landscape, which will sometimes divert the water down a new valley.
Tip: If you need a river to stay in an exact, permanent location regardless of how you sculpt the nearby terrain, use the Custom River tool instead (see Terrain Features). Custom rivers physically carve their own channels into the landscape, whereas procedural rivers simply adapt to the landscape as it currently exists.