Terraforming Tool? Flat Maps?

[Angelus Mortis]

Hello, so far I am loving the game and all it has to offer, but my one complaint is there are too many mountains and hills no matter which location I choose to start at. It makes expanding a base/village a bit difficult when you try to fortify your location and have enough space to expand. I'd like to see either a tool to flatten land or perhaps a mod made with the ability to just procure flat terrain maps like Banished has. Granted, I know the game is more realistic with the mountains and hills but there are quite a lot of them, and the mining nodes do not take up the entire mountain range to really warrant a bunch of them.

Overall, I am just tickled with how much there is done in the game so far, and the developers should feel a lot of pride in what they have created. :D Please keep up the good work!

Thoughts?

[aquaricorn]

Well, realism is kinda what the game should be going for yeah? There aren't really flat terrains anywhere, and earthmoving was a massive undertaking for the peoples of those days (which is why they usually didn't do it).

Glacier-made terrain tends to either be flat or super hilly and ravine-y, and the Devs opted for one of those. I agree that a map that's more steppes, or forested (but as another player notes, wide-ranging forests were a feature of a different time), would make for some more variety. You get to choose one of what, 5-6 spots to start your village but there isn't any real difference between them.

[Hucks]

Originally posted by aquaricorn:

Well, realism is kinda what the game should be going for yeah? There aren't really flat terrains anywhere, and earthmoving was a massive undertaking for the peoples of those days (which is why they usually didn't do it).

Glacier-made terrain tends to either be flat or super hilly and ravine-y, and the Devs opted for one of those. I agree that a map that's more steppes, or forested (but as another player notes, wide-ranging forests were a feature of a different time), would make for some more variety. You get to choose one of what, 5-6 spots to start your village but there isn't any real difference between them.

There sure are flat terrains on earth. The great plains of the midwest USA is a prime example. 1/4 of the country with flat terrain.

[aquaricorn]

Originally posted by hucks:

Originally posted by aquaricorn:

Well, realism is kinda what the game should be going for yeah? There aren't really flat terrains anywhere, and earthmoving was a massive undertaking for the peoples of those days (which is why they usually didn't do it).

Glacier-made terrain tends to either be flat or super hilly and ravine-y, and the Devs opted for one of those. I agree that a map that's more steppes, or forested (but as another player notes, wide-ranging forests were a feature of a different time), would make for some more variety. You get to choose one of what, 5-6 spots to start your village but there isn't any real difference between them.

There sure are flat terrains on earth. The great plains of the midwest USA is a prime example. 1/4 of the country with flat terrain.

Right, those still have hills. They're not flat like a table; not a lot of places are, even the steppes. Having done enough roadtrips on I-80 and 70 I'm pretty confident in this statement. And much of what made the great plains what they are is the result of thousands of years of environmental forces, hence my statement that "glacier-made terrain tends to be either flat or super hilly". Although the plains are a result of the inland sea that divided north america if I recall correctly.

When you start the game, it tells you that you're somewhere in ancient Europe as well. Never been there, but I don't know of any great plains presently or historically.

[Hucks]

Having played their other game planetbase, they never made a map editor/adjustor like they did for banished. I hope they do for this game because there are too many mountains. when you pick a map you can play high up in the mountains which would excuse that. but if you pick a location next to a river by the ocean then there should be many less mountains

[Angelus Mortis]

I'm not saying we need something to get rid of all the mountains/hills, the sloping hills are usually fine to work around but I would just like less mountains than what we have currently. :D Not a whole bunch of them anyways.

[Jeb Bush but super communist]

Sup y'all. This problem has been bothering me as well. I think, however, I may have may the first step towards a solution. I started data mining the game files if I could find anything useful. After unpacking the file, resources.assets with UBAE (Unity Assets Bundle Extractor - click link to download[7daystodie.com]) I located a text asset written in XML that appears defines the terrain object.

I won't link everything but the first portion of the file contains this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<terrain_parameters>
    <noise_amplitude_count value="10"/>
    <file_path value="Assets/Custom/Resources/Terrain/terrain.xml"/>
    <main>

        <!-- How many map objects are we going to split the terrain into -->
        <chunks value="4"/>

        <!-- How big in meters the terrain is going to be -->
        <chunk_size value="512,256,512"/>

    </main>
    <heightmap>
        <algorithm value="HexPerlin"/>

        <!-- The base size for the Heightmap, the actual size will be 2^Base+1 -->
        <chunk_base_size value="8"/>

        <!-- This controls how high mountains are going to be at various frequencies. In meters. -->
        <noise_amplitudes values="0 0 0.24 0.154 0.097 0.045 0.025 0.005 0 0"/>

        <!-- This will make lower heights flatter -->
        <squash_heights value="True"/>

        <squash_factor value="14"/>
        <squash_offset value="8.5"/>
        <distance_height_offset value="0.015"/>
        <smooth value="True"/>
    </heightmap>
    <alphamap>

        <!-- The base size for the Alphamap chunk, the actual size will be 2^Base+1 -->
        <chunk_base_size value="8"/>

        <!-- Above this gradient, we start using the texture -->
        <slope_texture_min_gradient value="0.6"/>

        <!-- How quickly we transition to the full on texture -->
        <slope_texture_transition value="2"/>

        <!-- Above this height, we start using the texture -->
        <high_texture_height value="13"/>

        <!-- How quickly we transition to the full on texture -->
        <high_texture_transition value="5"/>

    </alphamap>

I'm going to keep digging and testing, but I wanted to spread this information to help push the conversation and modding work forward.

Best of luck to everyone.

[Lu5ck]

You don't need terraform to make flat land to build but this game doesn't has the concept of foundation thus is hard to find land to build.

[Tiberius]

I agree with the OP. Some flatter terrain options would be appreciated.

[Juju83]

Flatter Terrain please!!! or a map editor option!!

[UhohhotdogYT]

I would love some flatter terrain

[ossome]

Originally posted by aquaricorn:

Originally posted by hucks:

There sure are flat terrains on earth. The great plains of the midwest USA is a prime example. 1/4 of the country with flat terrain.

Right, those still have hills. They're not flat like a table; not a lot of places are, even the steppes. Having done enough roadtrips on I-80 and 70 I'm pretty confident in this statement. And much of what made the great plains what they are is the result of thousands of years of environmental forces, hence my statement that "glacier-made terrain tends to be either flat or super hilly". Although the plains are a result of the inland sea that divided north america if I recall correctly.

When you start the game, it tells you that you're somewhere in ancient Europe as well. Never been there, but I don't know of any great plains presently or historically.

There are plenty of plains in Europe, not in the same scale as the Great Plains perhaps, but definitely bigger than what we see in the game: Italy has the Po Plain, France has lots of them, especially in the central and (north)western regions; I live in the Netherlands, which has 322 meters as its highest point of elevation, Northern Germany has plains, Poland, etc.

Especially when rivers or the sea are involved, plains form naturally from frequent flooding, when the rivers/sea deposit layers of sediment. Never mind the glaciers :)

And nobody is saying that they should be flat as a pancake, or stretch for vast distances, just a modest area around the riverbanks would do.

[ianescott]

count me in the group wanting less hills and more flat terrain, but still some hills for resources.
community mods do this well, but I want to see it in the core game.

[Schwifty K]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1710378799

[Ace]

You can edit the map seed in the xml file. I've been doing it and you can come up with alot better maps. Some are significantly flat. Watch out for your resources though. Whenever I get a flat map I like it tends not to give alot of flint.

[Ronald Gordo]

Originally posted by Schwifty K:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1710378799

Try the Flatlands mod. I think that's what you're looking for.