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Best way to make terrain for a strategy / RTS game

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by Tom163, Nov 8, 2021.

  1. Tom163

    Tom163

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2007
    Posts:
    1,290
    Looking for opinions and experience.

    I'm making an RTS-style game, meaning my camera is mostly overhead and always at least 10 units away from the ground, typically somewhere between 20 and 50 units.

    Most terrain textures I have in the various free or bought assets I own seem to be made for FPS-style games, where you are much closer to the ground.

    I experience issues with tiling and repetition, and feel like a lot of texture is wasted on details that nobody ever sees.

    What am I missing? Are there special terrain textures for RTS-style games that I somehow always missed? Do you use some technique I don't know about to scale things properly or mix them up? I've looked at CTS and MicroSplat and while they can solve my tiling issues, I feel like my actual issue is a lot more fundamental. I think that all I need is probably a few really good textures specifically made for this. Or a technique to apply multiple octaves of the same texture the way perlin noise works, if that makes any sense.

    So, how do other people who make RTS-style games with overhead cameras some distance away from the ground make their terrain look great?


    (if you want to look at what I'm talking about, the Steam Early Access page has a bunch of screenshots: https://store.steampowered.com/app/523070/Black_Forest/ )
     
  2. magnetic_scho

    magnetic_scho

    Joined:
    Feb 2, 2020
    Posts:
    92
    Did you find a solution for your problem?
     
  3. arkano22

    arkano22

    Joined:
    Sep 20, 2012
    Posts:
    1,891
    There's many techniques to make tiling less noticeable:

    - Use more than one UV set, and more than one textures: tiled texture on the bottom, then place a noise texture that modulates it on top.
    - Avoid the basic rectangular grid tiling, use hexahedral or triangular grids:

    - Place decals (cracks, puddles, dirt) to spice it up.
    - Lastly, use textures than don't have easily recognizable patterns in them.
     
    magnetic_scho and Lo-renzo like this.