2013-03-27, 02:29 AM
In the past I have more than once had to develop software from scratch in order to inject straight lines into models developed with very high end 3D modeling software that is geared toward non-engineering applications. I don't know how things are nowadays but game and CGI artists have really never valued straight lines (enough to demand tools for making them) even when it comes to seams straight down the middle of a model.
If you don't just mean wabi-sabi or whatever by "flaws" then you have to come up with a technical justification. I wouldn't worry so much about artificial straightness, it just comes with the territory. You won't be able to make a map that doesn't look like a grid with SOM. And that's a good thing if you ask me. I bet Esther (not having played it) is modeled entirely from scratch without any repetitive elements outside of plants and things like that. To me that is not a scalable approach. It lends itself to completely disposable graphics. In other words you can't share and recycle them (it will be possible to make maps with disjoint elements one of these days, but its important to wholly embrace tiling in my book)
The Rathmor Crags demo is actually constructed out of a single columnar tile boundaries wise. You can't exactly do that either. It already takes a whole host of tiles to slap together a working tile set. I can't envision variation tiles or objects being worth the overhead. Although it would be worthwhile to consider developing a layer over SOM's file formats that could efficiently represent slight variations at somewhere down the road. Like no sooner than 2 years from today if I am doing it.
I don't want to wander too far off topic. I've said what I wanted to say. And also I've been replying in the hopes of winning some replies in kind vis a vis my own thread. So if don't get some soon I'll probably wander off
If you don't just mean wabi-sabi or whatever by "flaws" then you have to come up with a technical justification. I wouldn't worry so much about artificial straightness, it just comes with the territory. You won't be able to make a map that doesn't look like a grid with SOM. And that's a good thing if you ask me. I bet Esther (not having played it) is modeled entirely from scratch without any repetitive elements outside of plants and things like that. To me that is not a scalable approach. It lends itself to completely disposable graphics. In other words you can't share and recycle them (it will be possible to make maps with disjoint elements one of these days, but its important to wholly embrace tiling in my book)
The Rathmor Crags demo is actually constructed out of a single columnar tile boundaries wise. You can't exactly do that either. It already takes a whole host of tiles to slap together a working tile set. I can't envision variation tiles or objects being worth the overhead. Although it would be worthwhile to consider developing a layer over SOM's file formats that could efficiently represent slight variations at somewhere down the road. Like no sooner than 2 years from today if I am doing it.
I don't want to wander too far off topic. I've said what I wanted to say. And also I've been replying in the hopes of winning some replies in kind vis a vis my own thread. So if don't get some soon I'll probably wander off