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Ok, I've looked around and I didn't see this sort of thing mentioned anywhere (although Yoshi is onto a similar thing with his Matrix map sky scrapers)

Many of the terrains have doodas which can be remade into new terrain. The most common thing to do this from is the bridges.

I made an oil rig type of terrain for the badlans.
Similar thing can be done with the Jungle bridge for a dock, or some floating castle.

Just look at the image.


Also I saved the custom terrain slabs for the jungle (compatible with StarForge) so if someone wants to make an rpg and needs a dock ask and I can send it (I'd attach it but only one file can be attached). It's more of a starter kit anyway not 100% complete.

If enough are interested I'll make these terrain kits for the terrains it's possible in and if it looks good enough. The dock edges don't really look perfect, but are good enough to not dwell on.


Edit: If you want to keep the map looking perfect you can use this technique to create skinny/wide longer/shorter bridges.

And one more thing, many doodads have tiles which are not really needed so you can drop them off to fit the thing it into a smaller spot (like the temple wall stairs on a skinny wall)

Check this platform bridges that I made.

Wow, both of you guys have some pretty sexy stuff, especially Dabbu. I'd like to see these custom terrain packs and the funky cool stuff you can do with these.

Hehe, that looks fun, have you made it placeable buy units in game or not? I suppose you could just convert to a version that could. This is getting me thinking on an idea, this weekend i'll give this a go, and then see if i can work on somethign interesting, get ready next week.

Custom terrain brushes will come, when SCMD2 has support for it.

SI promises soon, but I frankly have heard nothing from him.

SI isn't working a lot at the moment, but he is busy in school or college i believe, though he hasn't been around SMEmp for a while as well...

He more than likely will have it up soon, maybe, a month.

Clokr did my post inspire that work of art ?

I tried messing with the space bridge too when I was testing the terrains but it wasn't as good as yours, the Jungle terrain interests me the most.

StarForge crashed 2 times and deleted my stuff when I was working on the Jungle Dock, but I remade it anyway.

DrunkenWrestler made "dock" brushes for StarForge a while ago. I'll see if I can get them from him.

Dabbu, can you tell me the steps you took to crash SF, and the nature of the crash?

It crashes on other occasions too, but I'll try to describe this one

let me try to recreate it
.....
Ok I couldn't get that to happen again but basically it crashed before when I was trying to save my doodads, I'm pretty sure both times when I was over writing the file I had before.
It's a nasty crash cause I couldn't load what I had already done, I had to start from scratch cause the file was no good.

One time the file stayed but everything was just null tiles. I got scared of losing my work again so I started saving into different files, like Dock1, 2, 3, when it crashed after that the file I was saving to would get deleted entirely.
It maye have crashed 3 times now that I think about it.

It gave me an error, I cant remeber it, sorry. Just a little message box with a number, may have said illegal operation or something like that.
Not what I was worried about at the time.

If it happens again I'll tell you.

I'm aware the Starforge has a custom brush option.

It leaves me in a rather tough position though. The likely hood of SI doing a hybrid compatible custom brushes is not likely.

Most likely I'll have to create 2 categories.

My question is will a custom brush allow you to place sprites on it as well and save the data as one doodad?

I've noticed when placing a doodad (like a tree) through Xtra or SCE will result in its break up when the map is opened up in StarForge. It makes the tree sprite separate from the terrain counter part. Then if you save the map and open it again in Xtra or SCE the sprite will be removed leaving the trunk terrain (which also come with 50% chance to miss ground units ).

I use StarForge for a lot of things. I've realised that StarForge will have to be my last stop, when I need to do decorating. Back tracking will kill that work.


I hope whoever is in charge of SF will make us be able to edit trigger retro stype or coding style, and allow more doodad/custom terrain options (and fewer crashes )

Also when making a custom slab one annoying thing was that you can't pan what is alrady there left/right/up/down, it would be a huge time saving option!
And when placing the terrain slab it would be nice if the transparent blocks were actually transparent, make things a little less confusing.

oh and can the pylon aura Sprite have a better image and also have the option of being hidden (not the aura from actual pylons on the map, I mean the sprite)

... hmm this is turning into a wish list

Sorry, I made that near a month ago, when DrunkenWrestler was messing with bandlands dock terrain.

My first suggestion about custom brushes was expanding them, not only to terrain, so they can be able to add sprites and units.
Another idea that I had is options for change the style of placing the custom brush. If you select a custom brush and you click and drag, it looks nasty and ugly. So some option for that could be a good feature. Options like:

Custom brushes that you can drag and it dont breaks the "picture".


Some options like that.

Cool Dabbu.
I had that same idea when I was thinking about doing weird bridges that are really long/wide/segmented, same thing with Ramps, and making multi-cliffs where you put cliffs on TOP of a cliff.

here is what i did for a map im making for the ramps

Hehe cool stuff. Started screwing around with the palette in Twilight. I made a reservoir. IE: Water ON the basilica. Looks pretty cool.

I'm glad I could get this out in the open.
And it's good to see Clokr, EzDay2 and other found these things out on their own

You know, all these things are encouraging me to make something.
This could be a "Post all your uber terrain" thread now
I've had this Fast Reply box open for atleast a half-hour now, working on my something that I was encouraged to make, lol.
I've been working on it plenty, it will be cool. to me, atleast.
EDIT: Rofl Valahan, I was working on something with water too =D

I can't wait to see it

I'd be done by now if I weren't so indecisive, and would stop checking SEN lol.
Anyway, it's gonna use the bridge thing so it floats on water, like yours, but it's not solid ruins. And it'll have a bit more, the part that I'll like most about it.

- - - - - - - -
OMG Starforge crashed...
Poor emoticon, it wanted to see my thing finished... when it reads the text it cries... think of the emoticons!Anyways, might as well describe it.
It'd be like the dock, except a closed diamond. In the center is a big diamond of grass. Then, on the grass is a big thing of raised jungle with raised jungle on that with raised jungle on that and raised jungle on that.
Simple, not very cool... but it looks neat... \=

Check theese 2 out the one in ashworld is just an extended hill to get on a cliff. The one in the desert is the hill going right then turns left to get on cliff .

hehe, cool

But becareful when using the ramps for an actual map, don't forget that units on the lower tiles of the ramp have a greater chance to miss units on the higher tiles. So it may look like you're above a guy when in the middle of the ramp but miss him a lot...

And Ez I feel for you man... Sounds like you lost way more than me when mine crashed.

Hampster, did you make the bridge thing by making a bridge, then making a new brush, and just 'painting' that brush in that line?

I used starforges Tile Pallete for both.

My narrow understanding defies me again, On how you do this? what programes, I could give it a shot if i knew how.