World builder suggestions

[james]

Thicker trees is on the todo list. Ideally with inverted slopes and horizontal slope blocks allowing us to give the trees a rounded feel. (Well an octagon feel.)

[Okkelinor]

Yesterday I first time tried my powers in Worldbuilder. It’s awesome, but here is few “but”.

• 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?

Thanks for reading.

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

Cough
https://forum.oortonline.com/t/world-builder-suggestions/255

Mods it is time to use the very overlooked merging button

[drthmik]

@Thorbjorn42gbf

Couch

I fail to see how anything in this topic has to do with furniture

[Okkelinor]

Thank you. I looked, but not found.

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

It ia the space between word and builder it messes with the search

[Squidgy]

@Okkelinor

Worldbuilder is extremely need a function to detach blocks

Press ctrl and click

[bigPharma]

I think it would be useful to have on/off toggles in the “Final World” rendering screen for things like “Substrate”, “Strata”, “Decorations”, “Plantations”, “Ores” and “Lakes” (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 “Generator” 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.

[nevir]

@bigPharma

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)

[bigPharma]

I was wondering what the “C” button was for. I suspected ‘Copy’ but I couldn’t figure out how to paste it (and didn’t see the ‘Paste’ button). Thanks!

[bigPharma]

WorldBuilder wish list:

• Be able to ctrl-click (or somesuch) and return an attribute value to it’s 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 “sky” (maybe just in the “final world” viz.?)
• “Undo” functionality (mentioned above)
• More obvious water coloring in “final world” 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 “minY” and “maxY” attributes (to create randomized edges)
• The ability to “fly” around the world when locally play testing in order to survey the world more easily.

[nevir]

@bigPharma

When deleting an element in the designer, a pop-up dialog giving the user the option to deleted sub-elements

Ctrl-clicking does this I think (or some modifier)

[bigPharma]

Great to know, I’ll give this a try. Thanks!

[bigPharma]

@ben, @james, @lucadeltodecso

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 “Deposited World” 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 “floating” and disconnected and then arbitrarily join these to make a more conjoined case system. I’m 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, here’s a 3D noise map with decent cave sizes but a lot of them are “disconnected” and, therefore, not easily discoverable:

There may be techniques in designing 3D noise maps that would result in what I’m 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 it’s default (mentioned above)
• “Undo” 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 “Fly” mode).
• Block collision in “Fly Mode.” 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.

[ben]

Great feedback, thanks!

[nevir]

@bigPharma

Cave Configuration ElementThe 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 “floating” and disconnected and then arbitrarily join these to make a more conjoined case system. I’m 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, here’s a 3D noise map with decent cave sizes but a lot of them are “disconnected” and, therefore, not easily discoverable:

You can currently do this by leveraging the sum function to merge multiple noise functions. (But agree; this could definitely use some UI love!)

It’s a bit fiddly, however. Remember: noise functions have an initial range of -1 to 1, so you typically want to remap your inputs to 0…1 (or -1…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 Kovah’s desert biome in order to get those basalt pillars. The rivers in the jungle biome use a similar technique, too

[bigPharma]

I assumed all noise functions generated values from 0 to 1. I didn’t know this, thanks! That helps my understanding and expectations a ton.

I’ve played with products and summing but only a little. I can see how this would achieve the results I’m 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

[nevir]

@bigPharma

I assumed all noise functions generated values from 0 to 1. I didn’t know this, thanks! That helps my understanding and expectations a ton.

Yeah, it’s thoroughly confusing until that tidbit of info surfaces

@bigPharma

I’ve played with products and summing but only a little. I can see how this would achieve the results I’m looking for. I need to play around with a 3D noise that looks like worms.

Take a look at the cave noise for Kovah too (global noise)

@bigPharma

Love Kovah by the way. One of my favoritee worlds - the forests are beautiful and those channel rivers, awesome. Great work!t

Thanks!

[bigPharma]

@lucadeltodecso:

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, that’s a lot of memory, but with 16GB of RAM available it doesn’t seem like a lot.

After generating a “Final World” visualisation (and increasing the generation size to “64”) the memory increates to 2GB:

So, in short, it doesn’t seem like these types of visualisations take a lot of memory. The CPUs peak, but that’s 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 “Land of Lakes”, 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, I’d like an option for something around the 256 or 512-chunk(?) generation size.

[bigPharma]

@james, @lucadeltodecso, @ben (et al):

I’ve 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.

1. alphabetize blocks in lists (everywhere)
2. be able to configure a climate and be able to see this while play testing (I’m not even sure if the server hosting the test world supports this)
3. provide an option for increased visualisation as mentioned above (with the caveat that it is resource and time intensive)

Thanks guys, I’m loving the tool and I have a few worlds I’d like to submit to you guys for some feedback if you have some time.