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Work In Progress / Improving World.DAT discussion
« on: April 07, 2018, 03:42:35 am »
Players spend a significant amount of time in this game in Geoscape. Earth should look better and more accurately reflect our real world (circa. 1999) Searching the forums has led to:
Volutar's World Editor
Bladum's World.DAT
Hobbes's Area51/Terrain pack 4.X
Am I missing any?(yes i was! there is also)
https://falkooxc2.pythonanywhere.com/worldeditor
These resources make some of the changes I'm looking to see, but do little to satisfy my main concerns with the current globe, being:
Firstly, I feel the coastlines of Earth look terrible. Laughable. Land in vast areas where none exists, missing landmass and islands, and oversimplified edges.
Second, all but the very largest bodies of inland water are ignored. Earth looks very dry, and earth has MANY lakes large enough to lose a UFO and drown its entire crew.
I have therefore started using World Editor to experiment with "improving" things. That was over a year and many man-hours ago. Progress is pictured below. The Question is : "Should this be finished?" Getting this far has taken dedication, there is still more to go, especially in Canada and Greenland, where high latitudes are a pain. Then would still come the terrain distribution improvements by Bladum followed by integrating all of the terrain type improvements by Hobbes. Whew. Poly count is already pushing 6000. I welcome any and all opinions or insight. I dont think I'll finish this unless other people think it's possible AND practical. I think it looks beautiful so far, but if it breaks the game, makes it run too slow, or too drastically changes the "look" of the game then I'll shift my efforts back to other parts of the game i've had my eye on...
Volutar's World Editor
Bladum's World.DAT
Hobbes's Area51/Terrain pack 4.X
Am I missing any?(yes i was! there is also)
https://falkooxc2.pythonanywhere.com/worldeditor
These resources make some of the changes I'm looking to see, but do little to satisfy my main concerns with the current globe, being:
Firstly, I feel the coastlines of Earth look terrible. Laughable. Land in vast areas where none exists, missing landmass and islands, and oversimplified edges.
Second, all but the very largest bodies of inland water are ignored. Earth looks very dry, and earth has MANY lakes large enough to lose a UFO and drown its entire crew.
I have therefore started using World Editor to experiment with "improving" things. That was over a year and many man-hours ago. Progress is pictured below. The Question is : "Should this be finished?" Getting this far has taken dedication, there is still more to go, especially in Canada and Greenland, where high latitudes are a pain. Then would still come the terrain distribution improvements by Bladum followed by integrating all of the terrain type improvements by Hobbes. Whew. Poly count is already pushing 6000. I welcome any and all opinions or insight. I dont think I'll finish this unless other people think it's possible AND practical. I think it looks beautiful so far, but if it breaks the game, makes it run too slow, or too drastically changes the "look" of the game then I'll shift my efforts back to other parts of the game i've had my eye on...