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Total Members Voted: 305

[Rose]

http://i.imgur.com/YjvSpe8.png

This is more or less what blocky looks like.

What's missing right now are side walls.

[PeridexisErrant]

Yep, that's totally gorgeous. I honestly think it looks better than Isoworld, mostly the proportions but the angle probably helps!

[Rose]

http://imgur.com/a/hd2VI

Some more.

[NW_Kohaku]

What do you have to do to "zoom in" to the degree that you see those two spikes? Do you have to perform a fake embark, or something?

I suspect it would be obscenely time consuming to do so, but it would be incredible to see a whole world rendered like that, even a "mere" pocket world.

(And my first embark ever had a single spike out diagonally from a mountain range, actually.  I made my noble housing throughout it, with windows looking down over the Joyful Wilds shrublands and the menacing unicorns therein.)

As for art style, Endless Legend (looking specifically at the slopes and cliffs) had a style of still having relatively simple, low-poly art for terrain, but it still managed to look rough.  (And it's also on Unity ) While it would up the poly count and make the graphics card have to work for it a little more, you could try making something similar-looking ridges, which might contrast with smoothed walls you could actually expect to see smooth.  I also personally like "diagonal" walls, although possibly only for smoothed ones.

[Rose]

I just did an actual embark.

[CLA]

Oh, I'm getting isoworld flashbacks. I wasn't too excited about Armok Vision before, but I certainly am now.

[easykiln]

I quite like the blocky. Shame you can't get the higher detail version by default. The actual embark site still somewhat gives the impression that it is floating over the terrain rather than a part of it though...

Are you planning on adding a map symbol overlay or something to let you see notable features like cities and roads?

[Rose]

The actual embark site still somewhat gives the impression that it is floating over the terrain rather than a part of it though...

http://imgur.com/a/oI683

Not anymore.

Though now there's a gigantic hole wherever the embark site is outside the viewable range.

[Ezekhiel2517]

If you need to look upwards, you can zoom in to first person view, then you have an unrestricted camera.

YES! thats exactly what I needed, thanks. By the way I´m totally rooting for blocky style!! those renders looks amazing dude.

[CLA]

I have a suggestion. No idea if it's easy to implement, or even feasible, but whatever.

So, in the old method, you took the map data and interpolated it with a really high (per pixel?) resolution.
Like so:
http://imgur.com/a/98bo0

With the new method, you don't interpolate at all, leading to gigantic (from a dwarf perspective) blocks:
http://imgur.com/a/oI683

How about interpolating with whatever basic method you used earlier, except only up to the resolution of the detailed tiles?
So that you effectively end up with a consistent tile resolution all over the map.
Here's a mockup:
http://imgur.com/KtiIEgQ


At the very least, having the rendering method (blocky or not blocky) implemented as option in some config file would be great, as it appears not everyone likes the blocky map.

[CharonM72]

http://imgur.com/a/oI683

Oh man this looks fantastic.

[PeridexisErrant]

I do like the idea of (optional) fake higher detail. In my experience cubic interpolation looks good for height maps, if you decide to take up the idea.


On the other hand zooming to below the region-tile level for the whole world map is pretty pointless, and merging a highest-zoom setting to the edge of the map would be hard (but *amazing*).

[easykiln]

The actual embark site still somewhat gives the impression that it is floating over the terrain rather than a part of it though...

http://imgur.com/a/oI683

Not anymore.

Though now there's a gigantic hole wherever the embark site is outside the viewable range.

Nice. I can't tell if that is a gap at the bottom though. If so, can it be rigged so anything below the terrain is connected downward like the detailed terrain is carved out of the top of one of those blocks?

Also this might not be the place to discuss it, but I am in favour of trying changing the "unknown" colour from black to that sort of slate gray of rock. Looks more natural, makes sense. Black as the dominant colour is mostly just a leftover from the ASCII, anyway. I was going to say use whatever colour you get from the method you are using to pick colours for the blocks in the map, but green would just be weird.

EDIT: BTW, I see you have a ton of z levels rendered there to give a proper aerial view. How do you make it do that? Looked around but couldn't find anything.

[ragundo]

http://imgur.com/a/hd2VI

Some more.

With obviously very bad purpose, I want to do a critic review of your world generation: 

• There're no rivers.
• There're no roads, bridges nor sites.
• Are the colours based on the elevation or the real biome?. I think they're based on elevation. Meh

I'll wait patiently in #dfhack IRC for you to give a justification about such "poor" world map. 

[Rose]

Colors are based on a combination of biome and elevation.