How to make a proper river flowing in map editor

[JohnCena]

IIs there like any pro tip to making a flowing stream in the editor? Whats the best way to do it

[Cr4zYcH1cK3nB0Y]

Ya, I'd like to know this as well. My rivers dont work too good and cant seem to get them running right. Any help would be great, thanks.

[Alien8472]

On Youtube there are a lot of videos on how you do this.

[grapplehoeker]

I'm not going to write a whole guide to it here, but I will give you a couple of tips.
If you're using a height map or a generated terrain that has rivers on it, then what I like to do first is sort out the river before I do anything else like smoothing or road/train connections.
I start by flooding the map by raising the sea level, let it fill and then in gradual steps, lower the sea level again until it reaches 'normal' sea level. The flood waters will slowly recede and as they do you will see the water flowing naturally along the river path. This gives you a clear route for terraforming your river, bolstering banks where necessary and gives you a better idea of how fast the current is. This is important for determining how deep or shallow you carve your river.
Try learning/experimenting with relatively low gradients at first, since steep mountainous elevations can be a pain in the arsenal to carve out while maintaining an even river bottom.
Hope this helps ;)

[Barbarossa]

I always start up in high elevation, build a lake bed. Create a river bed running down to the Sea/Lake/River/Map edge you want it to end at. Make sure there is a temporary dam between the lake and river beds. Fill the lake with a water source(s). When the lake is full, break the dam and let it flow. Make sure you don't get flooding out of the river bed, I made this mistake once.

[Macronomicus]

Also be sure to smooth the riverbed near the ocean and let the river cleanly enter the ocean with very little if any gradient, considering sediment build up there should rarely be a lot of rapids at the mouth of a river, unless its a really rocky terrain which is difficult to approximate with the current terraform tools.

Another nice trick is to create a water source at the high point where you want to start the river, just turn it on and let it take the path of least resistance, then follow along with the terrain tools and accentuate the natural path. Also try to keep in mind rain runoff and erosion over time, so bend the eroded peaks & valleys towards the main deeper river valley. This is also helpful for building mountain landscaps and achiving a more realistic water erosion over time, in that case once done just delete the water source.

Just remember, all water wants to return to the sea, and it will move mountains to get there via the path of least resistance.

[grapplehoeker]

Feel free to subscribe to my High Springs map.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=429520594
If you open it in the map editor you can see pretty much how I achieved the rivers by looking at the water overlay.
I should point out that this map uses as much of the terrain as possible to define the rivers, the river/lake beds are extremely shallow and there was very little accentuating/carving done. The end result worked out very well indeed. The lesson to learn from this is, 'less is more'. Don't overdo anything, let the terrain dictate what you need and add it little by little.

[JohnCena]

Mar 31 @ 5:22pm