Hello! I’ve got a question for the community:
is it possible to create hexagonal shaped terrain tiles? If so how?
my goal is to create something like an open world akin to a Settlers of Catan board, with tiles of different terrains ( 2~5 kilometers per side) shuffling and disposed randomly every time the player start a new game/session.
Thus generating a new world to explore.
More Catan-y elements (like random resources tags, settlements and road buildings, exchange of ressources, robbers on rolled 7) could be added further down the line as I learn the engine’s intricate working
Oh and just to be clear, it’s not something to be sold, and so still under the fair use condition umbrella
You would have to use a modelling application to model each tile. This is not possible with the landscape system currently in place.
Are we talking World Machine or would Blender do the trick?
how to proceed for the terrain itselt to cover the tiles?
WM and blender. You would generate a terrain in WM, export it as a heightmap, and use that heightmap as displacement in blender. That’s just one way you could do it of course.
I don’t have WM, actually, I was hoping to be able to avoid having to use it
Another idea that occurred to me while I was working was to have normal square tiles for the world itself, and a minimap with hexagons
but the question is how to shuffle the worlds’ square tiles in accordance to the minimap with the hexagons; tiles with forest, tiles with grassy pasture, hills, fields of agriculture, mountains and quarries and desert
Down the line, each hexagon would be attributed a number, and a random lottery would pick one, and grant some kind ressources depending which terrain occupies that sector
Similar to Catan, as mentioned before
No need for WM, for that task, when you know Blender basics.
A heightmap you can even draw with paint, but i would model it inside Blender.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EnrrsVzkqncIf you want to populate your hexfield later (roads/buildings), then i would export them seperately as fbx.
When you set up the origin for all the corresponding “upgradeassets”, then you could easy apply them into UE4
When you need only gfx, from a specific view (not mesh), then you can “bake” your gfx easy and export them.
You could easy export a gfx for each hex with all upgradevariations. For example HexHillSteep.png HexHillSteepRoads.png HexHillSteepRails.png HexHillSteepRoadsRails.png
http://flarerpg.org/tutorials/isometric_intro/
Apologies, I wasn’t trying to suggest you NEED World Machine. Just that you mentioned it.
Indeed, what Luftbauch suggested would probably be best.
The idea for the hexes is that they’re really large (65 Km² or something about) and supposed to be open world. When a new game is created they’re shuffled randomly
so one time a forest would be near meadows, another time it would be next a mountain or a desert, and orientated differently; without the control of the player or the developer
The player starting point would also be randomly generated.
Much fun with lightning building times. ^^
might have been a good idea, but Terragen is even more expensive than World Machine. As hobbyist, that fee is way above my paygrade
Base version of Terragen (as well as world machine) is free for hobby use. You only need a license if you plan on using it commercially.
J^2