Ask the Experts / Grrr..... Landscapes!

Ok..... I want to make a good map, so i started by trying to make a ap with moutains and a lake, apart from it looked crap.

So no im tryn to make a map with just a lake, and i find realy tame consuming and boring and it never looks that good, i always want to jump into themeing and ride making but i know ive got to get the boring stuff outta the way. I think a flat park would be a lot easier its just, would that look totally crap?

Well I think everyone goes about that problem a little differently. I've seen in progress parks that have work done in one section and flatland everywhere else. So you can add geography as you go. You'll probably still want to have some plan from the beginning though so you don't build yourself into a corner. I tend to do all the geography first but that gets tiring real fast and I usually find that after a couple hours of doing that I don't want to work on the park any more that day. Maybe that's a good reason to do it all ahead of time.

I have a suggestion for building mountains or mountainous terrain. The first suggestion is avoid the mountain tool that being the -1 size which creates a slope. It's incredibly hard to get anything nice looking out of that so whatever you use it on you'll have to go back and fix anyway. My method for building mountains is to get a good cursor size like 3 or 4 tiles and then create a bunch of flat platforms of various heights. Make the platforms smaller and smaller as you go to create your slope. Now you have terrain which looks like one big weird Aztec pyramid. I build my sections on this and then as I finalize an area I use the fine adjustment tool (the hard way, one corner at a time) to get all the landscaping the way I want it. I do the same thing for lakes. Drop the ground down two squares where you want water and leave the coastline all square looking and ugly. Then fill it all up with water and only worry about the coastline when you are building each area.

When I first started making parks the landscaping was my least favorite thing. One corner at a time can be incredibly tedious. Now it's one of my favorite things because I can regularly create landscaping I like on the first try. When I'm making architecture I never stop second guessing myself but landscaping can be quite fun. Study the landscaping in IOAH for a while and hopefully some of Schuessler's zen will rub off on you. It worked for me.

I usually don't landscape it right away. I first add my basic buildings and rides then I start to theme around that. I think it is best though to make the lakes and rivers first so that you have a definite area of where you are building. I think flat parks would bring down on the atmosphere a lot so I would say just to make the lakes and such first, then to build some buildings and a coaster maybe. After you have a small area, theme around that area with hills or whatever you want to use.

Turtleman

Thanks for that, yeah that mountain tool sucks.

No matter how tedious coastlines and mountains are (and there's no denying they are) they're also pretty relaxing.

Except for when you mouse keeps lagging or getting stuck on the mousemat. ARGH.

How odd. I use the mountain tool, and then I edit the mountain I have made. That's how I did the mountain in Siberia Ed, lol.

They are pretty relaxing atch, lol. I yesterday I hated them.....