Hey everyone,
so this weekend I decided that I’d go ahead and make an open world map. So far I’ve made a land mass that’s 5x5km with 100 terrains each 500x500 meters and placed into their own scenes that load as the player approaches, then unload when they walk away. I made sure to grow the distance after crossing the threshold and I made sure no two chunks will load at the same time. It’s looking rather pretty if I do say so myself.
Questions I have for you:
1) Do you think that 25 square kilometers is a good size?
I believe that’s a little over the size of Horizon’s map which is about 24.
Ultimately I’m looking to have an open world game that plays like Doom, but with a fantasy setting and with dungeons to crawl like stages.
So the player will be really fast, Doom-guy fast, which will let the player zip around fairly fast. But I’m also not looking to make a AAA title here. Just something about 15 hours long.
2) What tools/pipeline should I use to fill in the map?
I’m not looking to pour any money into this so I don’t expect to be able to use any assets that are more than ~$10.
For height maps I’m thinking that I’ll edit out a greyscale map in GIMP. Maybe make an image that’s 5130x5130 and paint on it. I think that should work well enough.
As far as the splatmaps go, I can easily do some color range selections to create maps based on height, but I have no clue how I could do so with slope. Any suggestions how I could create a splatmap that includes slope?
3) What should I grab to make the terrain not look like garbage?
I think that some definite must-have features that I’ll need are Alpha Blending, MAYBE tri-plainer mapping, and DEFINITELY some more texture options than just Albedo and Normal.
I’m guessing that everyone is going to say RTP, RTP, RTP on that one though, huh?
4) What sort of other things will I want to add to liven up the environment?
I’m thinking that I’m going to create a terrain to draw in the distance, and maybe some 3d clouds. Of course if I make clouds in that layer I’ll need to figure out how to cast shadows onto the playing field based on the same clouds, but I think I can manage.
Time of day.
Weather.
Lens flairs.
Streams.
God rays.
Volumetric Fog.
Any other suggestions?