Smooth terrain is pretty to look at and is overall a good idea in the sense that it was a good idea to create a more realistic and smooth kind of terrain for the platform.
That being said, it is currently an awful idea for the users to try to actually use this feature for a game.
That's not to say that smooth terrain was a bad idea. It has a LOT of potential.
It's just a pain to work with right now.
While ROBLOX seems to be planning many more material types, that won't help when the feature itself could use some work.
Here's things that I believe could make it a lot better to use.
Suggestion 1: Add a new tool allowing us to extend maps that have already been generated.
If we want to create a detailed open-world game like an RPG, smooth terrain would initially seem like an excellent new tool to use for making a nice map with.
Unfortunately, the developer will immediately be confined to the map that gets generated.
Adding on to the map with the tools provided would be a seemingly impossible task.
Introducing a new tool to let the developer extend their world after it has been created would be a great update to Smooth Terrain.
Suggestion 2: Water Color and Transparency applying to the terrain that we place and not the terrain in its entirety
I am glad that we can adjust the water's color and transparency in the properties of the terrain, but this applies to all terrain in the game.
If a developer wanted to have water that's mostly opaque, cloudy, and more green than blue, that would allow him or her to make a swamp-like environment - but I doubt very many people would want their entire game to be that way, so the color and transparency feature on water is mostly useless.
Suggestion 3: Allow the tools for adding and removing terrain to be more controllable.
Currently these tools are hard to work with and at best can produce lumpy looking terrain. This could possibly be fixed by increasing the maximum amount of terrain that can be added at once. In "Legacy Terrain" the users had the ability to use tools to create entire mountains, having tools like that in smooth terrain would be VERY useful.
While the tools we currently have are good for adding minor details, trying to create a landscape with them is not fun.
Suggestion 4: Allow us to give weight to which biomes are included
In our current system, we choose which biomes to include and then choose a fixed biome size.
Clearly there is not an equal amount of plains, canyons, mountains, etc. in the world.
It would be incredibly useful to be able to give weights to which we want to include.
Perhaps I'd like to select all biomes but have a heavier weight for the amount of hills and marshland and a smaller weight on lakes, dunes, and lavsascape.
Using a slider to select a weight value to be accounted for in the random generator could work as a functional interface for this feature.
Suggestion 5: Option to preview and even modify the map before generating it
Instead of waiting for the map to generate in its entirety before deciding whether to keep it or try it again, having a generated map appear as an image would save a lot of time. An even more useful feature would be if the developer could interact with this preview to do things such as move a biome by selecting and dragging the biome or using the terrain paint tool on a 2D preview to manually edit the map before it has been generated.
It would be a challenging and ambitious tool to make but it'd be very powerful for developers creating trying to create a perfect landscape to match their idea for a virtual fictional world. Creators of all genres with from RPGs to naval games to adventure games or anything with an exploration aspect would greatly appreciate new features in Smooth Terrain.
Suggestion 6: Allow developers to switch back to legacy terrain
To this day I find Legacy Terrain to be more useful than smooth terrain due to smooth terrain seeming underdeveloped and hard to work with. By now the "Stamper Tool" is very old but it was undoubtedly much easier to control. |