Procedurally generated terrain

[SilverSanta]

Hi,

For my personal project I am doing in UE5, I am developing a hex-based landscape. Out of all titles available I think that AoW4 terrain seems the most crisp and fluid, and I am curious what procedures/alghorithms were used to generate such a beautiful landscape (especially mountains). I do have some theories about that, but if one of the AoW4 developers gave me some directions, It would be really appreciated.

Kind regards,
MK

 

[Yavor]

I wish you luck! I'm trying my best to learn Godot and make simple platformers, but you do seem to have taken the heavyweight path. Never stop learning, creating and having fun!

 

[seperamos]

This might fall under proprietary information. I myself am curious to know what engine AOW4 is based on, if it is a custom upgraded unity or unreal engine...

Someday I may want to build a classless strategy game partly inspired from AOW.

 

[Shimohi]

Triumph uses their own engine named Creator Engine.

 

[SilverSanta]

I wish you luck! I'm trying my best to learn Godot and make simple platformers, but you do seem to have taken the heavyweight path. Never stop learning, creating and having fun!

Thanks! Actually I took the easy route, since I am a game programmer and I do indeed work in c++ and unreal engine.

 

[SilverSanta]

This might fall under proprietary information. I myself am curious to know what engine AOW4 is based on, if it is a custom upgraded unity or unreal engine...

Someday I may want to build a classless strategy game partly inspired from AOW.

Unfortunatelly I suspect that indeed what I am asking for is dangerously close to internally protected information (though I am asking only for guidelines regarding specific pipeline - like first use perlin noise for general shape, then use erosion alghoritms on mountains etc.).

 

[Blanch Warren]

Give us all your trade secrets, Triumph.

 

[JamieV]

Glad to hear you like our generation! We've done a dev diary on it for Age of Wonders 4, and one in the past for Planetfall that still serves somewhat as the base for what we do now. I'd recommend having a look at those and hopefully it can guide you towards something that satisfies the needs for your project!

It's been a journey of a lot of tweaking, and adding new features alwasys leads to rebalancing others, so be prepared to spend a lot of time on the last 5%.

Dev Diaries:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-22-underground-changes.1594764/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/age-of-wonders-planetfall-dev-diary-37-planet-generation-part-i.1177922/

 

[SilverSanta]

Jamie, you are the man! Thank you so much! I will squeeze out as much as I possibly can from this!

Outstanding! Cheers!

 

[Jonagold11]

Hey JamieV, thank you for the answer and the insightful dev diaries! I do agree that your system creates beautiful, aesthetically pleasing worlds

I hope this doesn't come accross as ungrateful or demanding, but would you mind letting us know about a thematically related request that has come up ever since AoW 4 was announced?

It is about the current lack of a "proper" map editor, which would allow players to truly create their own realms, as it was the case for AoW 3 for example, and most comparable games I believe. I think Jordi pointed out quite a long time ago on why this wasn't currently planned or feasible due to some technical reasons of the engine that you use.

I would just humbly ask to check if this could be overcome in the future. Some of my most memorable moments in AoW 3 come from beautifully hand crafted maps that truly tell a story (for those that are curious, I am talking about the "Mystery and Beauty" map on the Steam workshop for example). I think many others would love to have this opportunity and it would likely make the game even more appealing to many!

Either way, thank you for any insights on this matter if possible

 

[Blanch Warren]

anything is possible with mountains of money and manpower