Detailed Terrain Relief

[pagsab]

Thanks for all these reactions.  I think my HeightMapScale setting in my own screenshot was 15, not 10.  I tried at first with 5, but the effect was barely noticeable except at wavetop height.  As Major Lee says, low settings may still affect moving ships and their wakes.  I tend to agree with Torno that flat noise patterns offer a better solution than contours for portraying normal seas.  The main tweak I make to the water in published terrains is to lighten it significantly so that the patterns are more visible.  As I found when making my own tileset and when tweaking the water in the various FE2 terrains as reported in https://combatace.com/forums/topic/101534-opening-the-adriatic/, one advantage of mono-coloured water over a painted pattern is that it is easier to paint water over land tiles and to change its colour if desired using simple 'bucket fill' substitution.  However, the great thing about all of this is how easy it is for users to experiment with all these different techniques to get exactly the 'look' they want.  Sea tiles are the ultimate expression in Third Wire terrain of how the PC can take one carefully honed individual tile and proliferate it all the way to the horizon without further user effort.