Hello everyone!
I'm very new to Vintage Story (less than 10 days) and while I was playing around, a thought came to me about how I could make some maps based on real places. As there is no dedicated tool for importing/painting heightmaps, I thought that I could use the grid method, and fill in the mountains/rivers manually. I used Japan as an initial map to try out, so I made a 10000x10000 pixel map (the map I've made in creative mode is also 10000x10000 blocks), then used the paintbrush in worldedit to paint 98x98 clusters of forest grass to make the corresponding grid in-game, then traced the outline onto the game terrain and cut out the water afterwards. I'm quite happy with how everything turned out, even if it was very tedious at times (40 in-game hours from start to finish). There are no mountains or rivers yet, but the outline is complete.
Here's the thing, though. As I am very new, I didn't understand how the generation tools worked, and consequently made a few mistakes. I set the climate distribution as "superflat", instead of "realistic", which resulted in undesired random climates, rather than north=cold, south=warm. Further, the terrain itself is only about 3 blocks high, so there is unfortunately no room for doing any kind of underground activity. I didn't mind this so much, but I thought if I were to share this map with others, that would be a drawback for them. The oceans are seabed-less, as when I painted the water, the bottom world layer was removed.
So my questions are:
How might I go about creating a flat world (for tracing) with a terrain of more than a few blocks in height?
Are there any tips you could give me in streamlining the process?
How can I go about creating maps/worlds that people would enjoy using?
Is there any real interest in this among other players, or is this more of a 'me' thing?
I am considering making a 50000x50000 map of Europe next, with an attempt at focusing on making it climatically accurate (warm and tropical-ish down in the south of Spain, cold and dark up in Scandinavia) and want the best possible advice on how to make a successful map which others might enjoy.
I've attached two images so that you can see how the grid system worked out.
- Thisted87
