32 réponses à ce sujet

[M. Rieder]

I am making some dense-**** forests in my campaign (not to be confused with dense ****-forests, which have no place in my campaign.)  Usually, when I lay down trees, I give each a walkmesh cutter.  In a dense forest this can become tiresome and some parts of the walkmesh become totally unwalkable.  I was considering leaving most of the smaller trees walkable and only cutting out the large ones. 

Thoughts?

[MasterChanger]

I recommend making your walkable forests out of the same material I used to make edible forests as a kid: broccoli.

What? You say you want to make your forest in the Neverwinter Nights 2 computer role-playing game toolset? In that case, I recommend making paths for the PCs to walk on, rather than individually cutting each tree out of the walkable area. If you don't want it to look too path-y you can busy up those areas with brush and grass.

Making an entire forest with no paths at all, just cut-out trees, would indeed be not so much fun for the Personal Computer or the Player-Character. Unless the forest is, you know, broccoli.

[Shaughn78]

The issues you run into with forest is the tree fade.

If you create the walkmesh cutouts and the trees fade it will be very tiresome for the player. The trees will disapear from view but will retain their non-walkable area, and here will be no visual way to determine where to walk. It will be horribly frustrating to the player. But without the cutouts it will play like a large open field.
If you make it so your dense forest doen't fade you will not be able to see the characters, NPCs and any hostile critters, again frustrating the player.
I would suggest keeping with paths, clearings or forest that aren't overly dense but use some tricks to make them look thicker. Bushes, jungle grasses, the jungle canopy visual effect and other placeable thrown in there too. Have the borders of your walkable areas very thick with trees and folliage, this will also help create that dense forest atmosphere.
 While a thick forest would be more realistic, play-ability wise it doesn't work well.

Modifié par Shaughn78, 04 mai 2011 - 02:35 .

[Dann-J]

I usually set the fade option for large trees to false. I go to a lot of trouble placing trees in exactly the right position - how DARE the game engine make all my hard work just fade away! I also tend not to bother painting grass or mixing textures beneath large trees, so if the game engine makes them fade you can see obvious bald spots in the terrain. It's a pity the game engine can't fade the upper parts of the tree and leave the lower trunk in place

I prefer using the walk/non-walk painter to cut out tree areas. It's a much broader brush that a walkmesh cutter, but at least the toolset doesn't become overwhelmed and simply make an entire tile non-walkable.

[MokahTGS]

 I've actually started making sections of forest (clumps of trees and bushes) unwalkable instead of worrying about individual trees.  There are a several reasons for this:

• The walkmesh is less complex, leading to better pathing for players and NPCs
• I can add greater detail to the vegitation clumps like mushrooms, rocks, sticks etc without having to worry about some crazy walkmesh cutter trigger.
• For larger vegitation clumps I can use smoke & mirror tactics when building to make it look more dense while actually using fewer resources.

A couple tips for making forests seem dense:

• Scale trees larger than default.  Most of the trees in the toolset are built for short people...real trees are big...very big.  Make them tower over your players like a roof.
• Use clumps of bushes and hills to break line of site and walk pathing.  This will make the player feel closed in.

I'd also warn against too many non-fading trees as the player might get frustrated in combat if they can't see what they are doing.  In the Centaur Bridge module I'm building, the main town is in the middle of a forest.  The town feels as though it is in a dense wood, but the walkmesh is pretty clean.

Centuar Bridge Town Map
Forest Stream

Just remember that you are building a stage, not an eco-system.  The player just needs to feel like they are deep in the forest...not get lost in all the trees.

 

Modifié par MokahTGS, 04 mai 2011 - 08:13 .

[Shaun the Crazy One]

I recommend what Mokah suggested. For really dense sections of forest I've drawn the walkmesh cutters first to make narrow paths twisting throughout the forest, and then filled the boundaries by placing rocks, shrubs, fallen logs, and of course trees. Your going to want to set fade to false for a lot of them as Shaughn said so they don't fade away. Thing is you don't want to block the players vision either. It becomes a tough balancing act and there's no way to really make it work except by trial and error. Building the forest in clumps like Mokah suggested, is probably the best way to go.

[M. Rieder]

MasterChanger wrote...

I recommend making your walkable forests out of the same material I used to make edible forests as a kid: broccoli.

What? You say you want to make your forest in the Neverwinter Nights 2 computer role-playing game toolset? In that case, I recommend making paths for the PCs to walk on, rather than individually cutting each tree out of the walkable area. If you don't want it to look too path-y you can busy up those areas with brush and grass.

Making an entire forest with no paths at all, just cut-out trees, would indeed be not so much fun for the Personal Computer or the Player-Character. Unless the forest is, you know, broccoli.

Is there a broccoli model?  I do feel that my campaign is low in fiber.

[M. Rieder]

I really appreciate the advice and I have heeded it. I made some of the outskirts in clumps then the deep forest is comprised of very large, sparsely placed trees with some small dead saplings and brush thrown in to add density. It is coming together nicely.

[Shaughn78]

Another thing I have found is using a different base textures for the walkable area. Helps to create a visual barrier between the walking areas and the clumps of non-walkable trees. If fade is used, even on some trees will help define where you can go and not have to move the mouse around guessing.

[M. Rieder]

I play tested my forest. I am content with how full it seems. I made the edges thick with smaller brush, saplings, and bushes, but the main forest is mainly large trees with a little brush thrown in for good measure.

I have not had trouble navigating despite the fade of trees and walkmesh, but I am likely going to darken the terrain around each tree to aid in helping the player see where to go when the tree fades. Right now I'm using 25% grey on color to give the forest a darker feel, but i am considering going a little darker.

[MokahTGS]

 I demand screenies!!!

[M. Rieder]

400x400http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/nsrc/projectimages/wangpine72.jpg[/img]





....okay, I'll post a real one later, when I get home...

Modifié par M. Rieder, 05 mai 2011 - 04:23 .

[The Fred]

I remember the issue of forests coming up a while ago, too. My solution was to take a lot of photos when out on a walk one day, and then promptly forget all about it. It probably is a lot easier to see the key features when you look at some actual foresty areas.

[_Knightmare_]

Another trick to add density is to place trees and sink them way down into the ground and then Height Locking them there so that just the tops are exposed. They make for great "bushes" and if kept roughly below waste high (on a human) you can have then non-fade but still allow the player to move through them without it looking weird.

[rjshae]

Can you place a scaled stump in the location of a large tree so that when the latter fades, the stump will still show the blocked walkpath?

[MasterChanger]

rjshae wrote...

Can you place a scaled stump in the location of a large tree so that when the latter fades, the stump will still show the blocked walkpath?

I'm pretty sure you can. When I was adding encounters to forest areas (made by someone else) I often turned off trees in the TS to avoid blowing up my computer; I noticed that he placed stumps at the bottom of the huge trees to create extra ambience. It gave a nice look to the area.

[M. Rieder]

400x300https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_9ocWRSkzdqs/TcMu7w8ReoI/AAAAAAAAAHw/pUsXtQQTPP4/s1024/NWN2_SS_050511_190747.jpg[/img]


Near the outskirts.

400x300https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_9ocWRSkzdqs/TcMu8Sv3m5I/AAAAAAAAAH0/HB6_Br3GNJs/s1024/NWN2_SS_050511_190849.jpg[/img]



400x300https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_9ocWRSkzdqs/TcMu85qjGhI/AAAAAAAAAH4/l2gfaWUWB3s/s1024/NWN2_SS_050511_190918.jpg[/img]

400x300https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_9ocWRSkzdqs/TcMu9edLAYI/AAAAAAAAAH8/HSk1y0KzIYw/s800/NWN2_SS_050511_190952.jpg[/img]

in the forest.

400x300https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_9ocWRSkzdqs/TcMu91gR5KI/AAAAAAAAAIA/Gz165BO08FA/s1024/NWN2_SS_050511_191022.jpg[/img]

You are in the forest here, but can't see many of the trees well due to fade.  I am thinking of putting the placeable trunks inside their base to see how they look.

Modifié par M. Rieder, 05 mai 2011 - 11:26 .

[Eguintir Eligard]

dont need walkmesh cutters outdoors. Just use the nonwalkable paintbush mode, shrink it to 1/2 size and paint one blotch on each tree.

The cutters are NOT as accurate as you think they are, and are intended for the old tile based NWN1 use. You can only block/make walkable an area as small as one of the slices you see with walk mesh on. Sure you can draw a trigger that is more precise, but the engine won't recognize that shape it just draws the nearest slices as unwalkable. Further to that, the PC wouldnt fit into that small of a space anyway.

So... just use the painter I say.

Modifié par Eguintir Eligard, 06 mai 2011 - 12:56 .

[MokahTGS]

Yup, EE is right. Walkmesh cutters are for fiddly bits that you can't take out with the no-walk tool. In the end, the player doesn't really NEED to walk everywhere anyway.

BTW, those areas look fantastic!  Looks a lot like my home about a month ago.

Modifié par MokahTGS, 06 mai 2011 - 01:04 .

[M. Rieder]

Thanks. Glad you like them.

[PJ156]

These look great Matt,

I am with the recent posts on this, use the non walk tool and cut it out in clumps. Either that or use nothing at all. I found when doing dense forest that the tree fade anyway so you do not get odd looking people in trees effects. I have tried all the method mentioned at one time or another and nonwalking the area to form paths or clumps has worked best for me.

For a forest this tight though I would have thought it makes sense to cut just paths through it rather than making it free to roam, unless there is a specific reason to be going in there?

I like your use of scaled trees and the burnt tree versions to give some contrast in height in the forest.  Realy good looking area design

BTW, on a more generaly foresty area note, I have been toying for a long time about how to do roots coming out of the ground and out of banks and slopes. I have not tried it yet but playing your cave made me think of using the spooky tree, finding a bent over version and burying that into the ground. It might work I am going to play with it in my next area. Not sure if it is going to work for snow scenes though.

PJ

[M. Rieder]

Thanks PJ.

I have a somewhat irrational obsession with making all my areas as walkable as possible. I know this is unnecesary, but for some reason I like it. I used the clump-approach works really well for the outskirts of the forest.
I am not sure exactly what I am going to put in there, exactly. I have some ideas.

Regarding roots:

I like it. I think it would look exceptionally well if you had a dirt bluff with a tree at the top, then took the spooky tree (or even winter baobab or some of the other winter ones) and sunk it into the side. That would look really good. I wonder if you could use some of the fallen tree placeables similarly? I think that one of them would make a fair root if scaled properly.

[PJ156]

Fallen tree could be rotated which would be useful.

I am going to have a play in a moment but it seems to me that I am going to spend a lot of time looking at tree random seeds

[M. Rieder]

Here's a video clip.

Modifié par M. Rieder, 06 mai 2011 - 08:07 .

[M. Rieder]

**duplicate post**

Modifié par M. Rieder, 06 mai 2011 - 08:23 .