Terrain stuff - not as hard as I thought

I decided to download the demo of 'T.ED' Advanced terrain editor by "D-Grafix".

http://www.blitzbasic.com/toolbox/toolbox.php?tool=137

It's only £15.99 - which I think is cheap and I will probably buy this - once I've spent a while practicing with it.

This terrain making stuff is actually reasonbly easy to pick up. I'm probably not the only person that had little interest in bothering with it. However, I am kind of liking doing it - it's a slow process but it is kind of rewarding.

The first problem I identified was creating the terrains from scratch, and in one, go is almost impossible if you are trying to create a town/village environment whereby you need to place buildings/walls, etc.

My only way of doing it is to keep saving the terrain and loading it into B3D to place buildings, etc and then edit the terrain - this all seems a bit fiddly. Is this the way you lot do it? Any tips on this?

I would use gile[s] for object placement. I know it supports some terrain tool exports (to B3D), so probably will handle T.ED exports as well.

For a free solution you might be able to use Dropper, Droplet or similar.

Okey-dokey.

Or click my sig

Actually, 'A.L.E.'s' ability to import meshes (such as a building) is bloody handy when you want to place paths etc around buildings.

Mmm, I prefer the interface of 'T.ED' but need the 'Load Prop Mesh' ability of 'A.L.E'.

If I make an editor I make it for a specific task, i've never really bothered much at looking at any of the editors out there so I dont know what's normal.

I am really suprised that there's one which doesn't at least have an option for flattening the terrain under a placed object. It really ought to be freeware without such a feature as it's the most common and necessary modification to the terrain and therefore a huge oversight. Personally I would be giving the option of blending the texture base around it aswell.

Maybe i'm just not up to speed of what is accepted as standard.

In fact, 'T.ED' does appear to be popular with Blitzers:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=51632

I have to be honest I liked it very quickly - must be interface-related. Shame it cannot load mesh props - sniff - although, according to the other thread, it will get that feature soon - yippee.

ALE has possibly the worst lightmap routine in the world that I have ever seen. Sorry skitchy, it's mind numbingly slow and gives poor results.

Other than that, it's an excellent app. Only the lightmapping lets it down for me.

TED isn't too bad, but I think it's got a terrible interface. It's poorly planned out.

The painting of terrains is superior though.

Neither are outstanding and both have different pro's and cons...

That is my honest opinion on them.

TED looks really great. I planned to buy it a long time ago, never got around to it. I do have gile[s] and I probably will end up making my levels with a combination of the two, or possibly even creating my own levels.

[plug]Have you tried Total Terrain? It works with heightmaps so not sure if it'll be suitable, but it's freeware. Click all seeing i in my sig...

One thing I like about ALE is the workflow. You could load in the models for your village, place them, adjust the terrain around the models you've placed, color/texture the ground around the models, then lightmap the whole thing (ALE creates shadows for objects on the terrain) It's nice not to have to edit in two or three programs to get the final product.