Having some element of automation in landscape generation for an open word game is a given. You can't go hand-placing thousands of trees for example, that's a complete waste of labour. You just define the area where you want trees and various options like type/species, density, height, etc. and let the tool (SpeedTree in that instance presumably) take care of the rest. That doesn't mean that you don't still hand-place actual content.
Most of the large game worlds are generated from a heightmap, and where's needed there'll fix it with raise/lower too w/el. So I don't see where's the problem, in W2 I guess they didn't use heightmaps, and neither REDKit have the option for it. So maybe that's what they meant by manually.
About vegetation, same thing, you get alot of parameters if you generate, but you cal also use a brush to paint different kind of vegetation in some place, again with your own options.
Really. There is some kind of superstition amongst the RPG devs (or may be casual fans influencing them? damn cattle) that bigger territory == better. It is not. Randomly-pregenerated, dull, uninteresting vast spaces nowhere better than small, tightly packed and manually designed locations... Deja vu,huh. I think i tried to explain the same point in this thread precisely few months ago.
Honestly, while I could agree with this when it comes to Oblivion, I really can't when it comes to Skyrim. I found the map to be really, really well designed. There was a lot of stuff that was clearly planned by a human being, both when it comes to landscape, buildings/castles/towers and vegetation. Chasms, waterfalls, rivers with rotten trees thrown over, fortifications on both sides of the river, connected by a stone bridge... a lot of stuff. Not to mention breathtaking Blackreach and expansion areas. There was nothing boring about the map at all. Oh, I don't mean that every fragment of it was immensly interesting, but there was almost always something nice to see.
And honestly? All those google searches prove is that there are people - just like you - that don't like sandbox RPGs. Sure - bigger doesn't equal better, but it also doesn't equal boring. It just doesn't fit your taste, that's all.
Really. There is some kind of superstition amongst the RPG devs (or may be casual fans influencing them? damn cattle) that bigger territory == better. It is not. Randomly-pregenerated, dull, uninteresting vast spaces nowhere better than small, tightly packed and manually designed locations... Deja vu,huh. I think i tried to explain the same point in this thread precisely few months ago.
Actually, you are arguing directly against something that made a lot of fun in Fallout 1 and 2, traveling over a big map with generic landscape hoping to find something wonderful. In fact, I´d argue, that a lot of the appeal of minecraft goes into the same direction. Heck, even GTA goes this way, more playground =better. So yeah, bigger territory=better.
Really. There is some kind of superstition amongst the RPG devs (or may be casual fans influencing them? damn cattle) that bigger territory == better. It is not. Randomly-pregenerated, dull, uninteresting vast spaces nowhere better than small, tightly packed and manually designed locations... Deja vu,huh. I think i tried to explain the same point in this thread precisely few months ago.
Actually, you are arguing directly against something that made a lot of fun in Fallout 1 and 2, traveling over a big map with generic landscape hoping to find something wonderful. In fact, I´d argue, that a lot of the appeal of minecraft goes into the same direction. Heck, even GTA goes this way, more playground =better. So yeah, bigger territory=better.
Well, there is some merit to the idea that large land masses made with automated tools are boring. When you appeal to the sense of wonder of exploring large maps, you actually talk about hand placed points of interest (including hidden loot, NPC encounters and so on). However, none of it can be done half well without manual labor. And I think the developers understand that point well - they use the automated tools to generate the first version of the landscape quickly and then mold it manually to make it more interesting.
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