Second Landscape

For my second landscape I thought it would be a good thing to be able to see an environment when you exit. This could add to the narrative, depending on the environment I finally add.

At this point I decided to add a desert range which you can see from the outside of the exit door.

To create this I tried two programs.

First I tried World Machine, This automatically generates the world, but I found the heightmaps in the demo version were too low resolution at only 512X512.

The next program I tried was Scape, a relatively obscure program, but extremely powerful. Although it doesn't produce it's own landscapes, it allows direct sculpting using various brushes and produces 4k Heightmaps. The procedural noise is particularly realistic especially compared to Unreal's equivalent.

I originally wanted the user to be able to walk into the landscape, but I found I couldn't get the right effect, as I wanted the player to be intimidated by large vistas of sand dunes, which didn't work out from the characters point of view when on the same level as the Landscape.

To solve this I have temporarily stopped the player at the exit and used the Landscape at a tilted angle to get the effect I want.

Here's how it looks in game

From the top of the amphitheater

And fully zoomed out

It's kind of a shame how little you can see from the exit area, but I think I will fix that at a later time.

In the end I think I created a pretty high quality heightmap for this landscape. I think for further development I will work on getting the player closer to it while also keeping the desired dune effect.