How can I make nice looking terrains for my game?

News & General Discussion
1

Hi guys, I’m trying to find a way to make nice terrains for my tower defense game and I’m having a lot of problems. I find the unity terrain system very limited and hard to use. I was thinking about using height maps but I have no idea how to make proper ones for my game. I tried with photoshop and ats colormap shader, but I don’t like the results.
I also tried to use Mudbox and World Machine, but I’m not sure if they can do what I’m looking for

I’m trying to get something like the iOS game Defenders:

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks a lot for your time and your help.

2

Defenders uses tiles, not height maps.

If you’re set on height maps Terrain Composer ($45), RTP ($60), and Advanced Foliage Shader ($20) are a must.

But if you’re looking at top-down perspective I’d look at tiles.

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3

I’m using Tower Defense and MOBA and I noticed that for the demo they used height maps and splat maps so I though that approach could work.

Anyway how would I work with tiles, is there any tutorial? Do I need any asset and do I actually need to use a terrain?

thanks!

4

Well, tiles aren’t that hard TBH.

You just make (or buy) some tiles and lay them out. Then you add some pathfinding on the roads and some buttons on area you can build on.

EDIT: Simple Waypoint System has some good report for the pathfinding aspect. I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard good things.

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5

I already have pathfinding and building areas. The game currently is working but it’s missing the graphics :smile:
What I don’t understand is how tiles work in 3D (I’m totally new to unity and my game programming skill comes from 2D games). Should I just spam the map of cubes and apply textures to them? :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks!

Edit: watching this video, it seems to answer my questions :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Go to the top of a hill or to any place with a valley below. Take digital camera or high quality cell camera with you. Take photos below. That is what I am thinking about doing when I get on to making a zelda style rpg one day. Then I can just scale to the right size and pixel draw over to make the terrain.

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7

Huh, that is a very interesting idea. I’d like to see that.

8

Not_sure I still have a question. About tile maps won’t it require a lot of time to make one level? Also do my assets have to be designed for tile map use?

Back to terrains do I need all the 3 assets you mentioned yesterday as a must?

Thank you very much :slight_smile:

9

You can snap them in place, but if you’re feeling lazy there are a lot of tile laying programs our there. Just give the asset store a look.

As for the terrain stuff goes, when I say a “must” what I mean is that the built in Unity one is pretty much a place holder at this point and not very good on its own.

Terrain Composer will let stitch multiple terrains together if you want to do Elder Scrolls sized maps, and it had a great set of tools for creating the splat maps.

RTP pretty much cover everything that Composer lacks, such as blending textures by its alpha layer and blending 3d models to the terrain.

And Advanced Foliage Shader stops plants from looking like smacked-ass.

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10

Thanks a lot. I’m still unsure if I should use tiles. The problem is still one. If I build areas with cubes, planes and other 3d object, will the level look good as if there was a terrain, or good like in defenders? Also if I use this approach how will it look once I add textures?

11

No, it would look better. Also, type in “tiles” in the asset store. You may like what you see.:roll_eyes:

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12

Thanks a lot :smile: ill let you know once I look there :slight_smile:

13

one more thing :stuck_out_tongue: Does advanced foliage shader and RTP work also on a tiled map? Or must the tree, plants and textures be on a terrain?

14

I couldn’t find anything by searching “tiles”, maybe I’m just blind :stuck_out_tongue:
Btw I found these: ProTile Map Editor 2 and Tile World Creator
Do you think they can help me?