Terrain that Doesn't Look Like Crap

[Bloodshedder]

Grubber has put together an impressive looking terrain generator program for ZDoom. The command-line utility makes terrain using triangular sectors, slope things, and a grayscale heightmap image as input.

[Scuba Steve]

How practical is this? It's amazing, but one look at that shot makes me think this would be impossible to use practically or efficiently.

[jute]

it would be cool to try to draw out a whole map as a grayscale heightmap and have the terrain generator convert it to a wad for you.

[Vegeta]

Needs a tutorial or something, when I run it, it just closes in less than a second.
Should this allow to create a map like the poster of The Ultimate DOOM?

[TheDarkArchon]

Create a Greyscale bitmap, use this command line:

ZTERRAIN.EXE INPUT.BMP OUTPUT.WAD

and run the wad.

THE OUTPUT WAD REQUIRES ZDOOM.

[Bastet Furry]

It only works with .91 or higher zdoom.
Older .63 will give HOMs, or if you add the missing textures it will give some sort of spike sculpture ;)

Now, anyone gona remake Farcry in zDoom? *g*

[Dco16]

I can't get the damn thing to work. My computer frowns upon it.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Dco16

[kristus]

Scuba Steve said:

How practical is this? It's amazing, but one look at that shot makes me think this would be impossible to use practically or efficiently.

Well. I could find a lot of uses, For instance Kurt Kesler used this method in RTCW for terrain, and it was also used in Myst1. But TBH Shaviro have already made really impressive stuff w/o any kind of generators. And I did the exact same thing as this prog did manually in Quake2. (This is when I made the most detailed map even nodebuilt in q2, with SoM's help)

[Siggi]

As cool as this is, it seems to nuke performance. To use this effectively will take a bit of getting used to...
I've allready created a 230mb wad by accident

[Scuba Steve]

What I mean is... how practical is it? It looks like it would literally be a performance hog? Am I wrong?

[Fredrik]

That's why it allows you to specify how close the vertices should be... right?

[SyntherAugustus]

jute gyte said:

it would be cool to try to draw out a whole map as a grayscale heightmap and have the terrain generator convert it to a wad for you.

I'm sure that's a possible, but a bit hard to do in photoshop effectivly. Plus you'd only have the floor heights.

[Use]

Really interesting, though I'm happy with Doom's current terrain.

[Linguica]

Use3D said:

Really interesting, though I'm happy with Doom's current terrain.

hey thanks for sharing

[Nick Perrin]

What an awesome idea! Finally zdoomers can make good looking hills and terrain.

[Ralphis]

Wait, why won't it work on older versions of zdoom? i.e. zdoom 1.23 based source ports.

[Bloodshedder]

My guess is because slope things weren't supported in those versions, only the linedefs.

[Negatronica]

I seen something like this for Quake awhile ago. I forget what the Quake terrain generator was called but it was very easy to use. This seems just as easy.

Is there a way to set the scale that 1 pixel will equal to? Like 1 pixel will equal 64 X 64 units or 256 X 256? That would be useful when making large areas that won't run slow.

[Ralphis]

Bloodshedder said:

My guess is because slope things weren't supported in those versions, only the linedefs.

I've tested slope things in zdoom 1.23 and they work fine

[Bloodshedder]

Shtbag667 said:

Is there a way to set the scale that 1 pixel will equal to? Like 1 pixel will equal 64 X 64 units or 256 X 256? That would be useful when making large areas that won't run slow.

Yes, -size (x) parameter sets map units per pixel (64 is default). -height (x) sets number of map pixels height of one change in gray level.

[Negatronica]

Bloodshedder said:

Yes, -size (x) parameter sets map units per pixel (64 is default). -height (x) sets number of map pixels height of one change in gray level.

Excellent, thanks! I've been messing around with the program and I've noticed alot of sharp triangular edges that stick up in places. Maybe its my bitmap but I'm still messing around with the program so who knows.

I used a 32 X 32 pixel BMP and converted it at the default setting (64 X 64) and the map runs fine so performance shouldn't be a big issue as long as people merge all the "unused" flat sectors together.

[leileilol]

man i wish slopes had distinct shading

http://www.planetgargoyle.com/terrain.png

[Bloodshedder]

ZDoomGL kind of mangles the rendering, but you can still make out what it is.

[Jehar]

Hm. Thats interesting. Not what I would use, but a step in the right direction.

What I wonder is, will I be able to take the output wad, and paste it into another wad?

[Dittohead]

Regardless of how useful this may or may not be, I think its a step in the right direction. Its good to see people are working on little programs like this and I think its important to keep new ideas coming in. I want to see further builds of this - it could be something really, really impressive.

[Job]

Heh, with stuff like this out, I'm surprised no one's tried to make Doom within ZDoom true 3D yet.

[Linguica]

gargoylol said:

man i wish slopes had distinct shading

There be should be an option to set maximum and minimum light levels and have them applied to each sector based on its angle compared to a "light source".

[Martin Howe]

Vegeta said:

Needs a tutorial or something, when I run it, it just closes in less than a second.

If a program is stated as being a "command-line" tool, this is normal. Command-line tools are not meant to be double-clicked from within Windows; command-line tools are meant to be run from a command line :)

You could create a shortcut to the program and use the properties dialog on the shortcut to put "cmd /k " before the actual command itself in the "Target" field. For example, turn "c:\my doom wads\aprogram.exe" into "cmd /k c:\my doom wads\aprogram.exe".

This will cause a command-prompt to open and (due to the "/k") STAY open after running the command. You can then run the command again by typing its name in the command prompt window. The command to exit a command prompt is "exit" (oddly enough :) ).

If the above looks like gibberish, then sorry, you're stuffed until somebody makes a GUI version of the tool, which may not happen as GUI programs are much more complicated to write than console (i.e., command-line) programs :(

[Linguica]

If you just drag the bmp onto the exe it will output a wad of the same name if everything works right. Then you just open that wad in DB or something and wala.

[Graf Zahl]

Ralphis said:

Wait, why won't it work on older versions of zdoom? i.e. zdoom 1.23 based source ports.

Because there was a bug in the setup code which did some slope calculations wrong. That has only been fixed recently.