Yesterday I first time tried my powers in Worldbuilder. Itās awesome, but here is few ābutā.
IMHO, numerical setting of parameters is usable. Today we can copy block as block, but cannot copy block by parameters. And mouse sensitivity is abundantly high for precise tuning.
Copying of blocks is not comfortable. Could it be realized from context menu?
I think it would be useful to have on/off toggles in the āFinal Worldā rendering screen for things like āSubstrateā, āStrataā, āDecorationsā, āPlantationsā, āOresā and āLakesā (others?) so that we can easily turn things off that we are already happy with and slow down the final world rendering process.
Also, would it make any sense to allow world designers to define Substrate, Strata, Decorations, Plantations, Ores and Lakes at the āGeneratorā level? Then biomes added to the world could initially inherit these but be able to providing custom values of their own which would override the default values.
Thirdly, it would be very helpful to create a new element by copying an existing one; creating a new Strata object by copying an existing one instead of having to recreate it from scratch if the designer wants all biomes to share a common set of attributes.
You can copy elements - hit the C button in the top right ish of a node, and then hit paste in the main menu (towards the top). Unfortunately, it appears broken on OS X for me, but works on Windows. (cc @lucadeltodecso)
I was wondering what the āCā button was for. I suspected āCopyā but I couldnāt figure out how to paste it (and didnāt see the āPasteā button). Thanks!
Be able to ctrl-click (or somesuch) and return an attribute value to itās default
Support for a few different lighting models in visualizations (direct overhead, low on the horizon, etc.) - or maybe a slider to move the light source across the āskyā (maybe just in the āfinal worldā viz.?)
āUndoā functionality (mentioned above)
More obvious water coloring in āfinal worldā visualization
When deleting an element in the designer, a pop-up dialog giving the user the option to deleted sub-elements
Weather configuration
Noise function to randomize substrate and decoration āminYā and āmaxYā attributes (to create randomized edges)
The ability to āflyā around the world when locally play testing in order to survey the world more easily.
Most of these are new and some have been mentioned above. I just wanted to capture these in a single place and expound upon some of them.
Common Biome Configuration Elements
The ability to attach a Substrate, Strata, Decoration, Plantations, Ores and Lakes elements to multiple biomes (currently have to copy/paste and keep these synchronized if you want multiple biomes to share element configuration).
Cave Visualization
The ability to visualize caves with a translucent substrate overlay (i.e. - a āDeposited Worldā visualization with solid cave voids and translucent everything else).
Cave Configuration Element
The introduction of a Cave element (like Substrate, Strata, etc.) to which you can apply a 3D noise map and fiddle with attributes to join the solid parts of the 3D noise map with thin tendrils. The idea here is to generate a 3D noise map with solid blobs āfloatingā and disconnected and then arbitrarily join these to make a more conjoined case system. Iām not sure if this would be possible or how difficult it would be, just an idea. Other attributes would be 3D noise maps to apply to the joining tendrils to make them more natural and introduce some distortion, etc. For example, hereās a 3D noise map with decent cave sizes but a lot of them are ādisconnectedā and, therefore, not easily discoverable:
There may be techniques in designing 3D noise maps that would result in what Iām looking for, but the above seems a little more user-friendly maybe?
Designer UX Enhancements
The ability to provide an attribute numeric value by typing the value in (to be more exact).
Support for multiple designer windows (tabs) that would simply allow the user to focus on a different area of the world configuration. I think this may make moving from biome to biome easier.
Be able to ctrl-click (or somesuch) and return an attribute value to itās default (mentioned above)
āUndoā functionality (mentioned above)
Visualisation Enhancements
The ability to choose one of a few lighting models; direct overhead, horizon light, movable light source, etc. (mentioned above)
The ability to reset the camera position (both in regular and āFlyā mode).
Block collision in āFly Mode.ā This would be especially useful when trying to navigate cave systems. Maybe be able to turn collision on and off? (the need for this may go away once we are able to play test worlds)
The ability to define a custom color for any block being rendered.
Only list blocks that are currently being utilized in the world.
Mac OSX Stability and Bug Fixes
The WorldBuilder tends to crash a lot on the Mac OSX platform. Also, copy/paste does not currently work.
You can currently do this by leveraging the sum function to merge multiple noise functions. (But agree; this could definitely use some UI love!)
Itās a bit fiddly, however. Remember: noise functions have an initial range of -1 to 1, so you typically want to remap your inputs to 0ā¦1 (or -1ā¦0, depending), sum them, and then remap back to the desired range.
For an example of this (albeit with 2d noise), take a look at the heightmap I used for Kovahās desert biome in order to get those basalt pillars. The rivers in the jungle biome use a similar technique, too
I assumed all noise functions generated values from 0 to 1. I didnāt know this, thanks! That helps my understanding and expectations a ton.
Iāve played with products and summing but only a little. I can see how this would achieve the results Iām looking for. I need to play around with a 3D noise that looks like worms.
Love Kovah by the way. One of my favoritee worlds - the forests are beautiful and those channel rivers, awesome. Great work!t
WorldBuilder Resource Utilization and Visualisation Size
While using the WorldBuilder on Linux, with a relatively large world (large for me anyway - 5 biomes with heightmaps, substrate, strata, plantations, and ores for most), the application only uses 1.7GB of RAM. I mean, thatās a lot of memory, but with 16GB of RAM available it doesnāt seem like a lot.
After generating a āFinal Worldā visualisation (and increasing the generation size to ā64ā) the memory increates to 2GB:
So, in short, it doesnāt seem like these types of visualisations take a lot of memory. The CPUs peak, but thatās expected:
I was thinking it might be good to have the option of rendering a much larger area for visualization. Just to be able to easily sample the variability (or repeatability) of the world. Looking at a generation size of 64 may look great, but in-game it begins to look like the āLand of Lakesā, etc.
Maybe there could be an option to render a world up to 1,024 in size which would take roughly 2 minutes and use about 5GB of RAM.
TL;DR
If possible, Iād like an option for something around the 256 or 512-chunk(?) generation size.
Iāve been using the WorldBuilder a lot today and here are a few things that I run into a lot and I would consider high on my list of enhancements to the tool.
alphabetize blocks in lists (everywhere)
be able to configure a climate and be able to see this while play testing (Iām not even sure if the server hosting the test world supports this)
provide an option for increased visualisation as mentioned above (with the caveat that it is resource and time intensive)
Thanks guys, Iām loving the tool and I have a few worlds Iād like to submit to you guys for some feedback if you have some time.
The Editor - allows a user to construct the āshaderā used when generating worlds.
The Generator - knows how to execute the āshaderā to generate a world in chunks.
The Pre-Generator - this tool knows how to orchestrate the generation of an entire world (via the generator) including all chunks at different LODs.
The World Builder weāve released only includes #1 and #2. The Pregenerator is an app (script) that runs around everything.
Whilst we can increase the generation scale in the World Builder, it doesnāt include the additional logic for creating the LODs. Ideally, the tool would easily handle everything.
Should be trivial.
Eventually all world parameters will be exposed into the WB: weather, creature spawn stuff, sky + lighting, audio sfx, etc.