Quick October Update - Slopes, Cliffs and the Map Editor

Hello everyone.

You may have been expecting more updates regarding resource mechanics, but since our new programmer Gustas has gotten onboard, we've made some major progress regarding revamping DORF's level editor and general terrain features.

Already, we now have working terrain elevation tools, featuring a convenient painter tool that lets you change brush sizes and automatically changes adjacent tiles to the correct slope shape:

Technically these elevation features already existed in the engine, but, to our frustration (and to the frustration of hundreds of fans of OpenRA), there was no way to actually use slopes or cliffs. Instead, anyone who wanted those things on their maps had to awkwardly import maps from Tiberian Sun into OpenRA using an external .bat program, and since DORF has been radically altered from its OpenRA origins, this meant the maps you typically saw in previews were flat as a board. Hopefully that will change now.

Of course there's still much more to be done with the level editor. Automatic LAT tools - basically a system for the game to automatically recognize adjacent tiles and place the correct transitionary tiles (ie: grass to dirt transitions) between them still need to be added, although given Gustas' speed of progress, we may have this added by next week.

Cliffs are also something currently on the to-do list. While DORF does have cliffs, they will need to be radically redesigned. Currently the cliffs DORF uses are patterned after Tiberian Sun/RA2 cliffs, which were all 4 height-units tall, and often were multiple tiles wide. While these are okay for map variety, this does limit what a mapper can do with the terrain by quite a bit. So instead, we are scrapping that style of cliff in favor of something more dynamic. Cliff tiles will instead include a few different heights, as well as variants with slopes at the base or on the top of the cliff, meaning you will be very easily be able to paint cliffs onto the map, and make them any height you want ( as long as they do not breach the maximum height limit of the map), as well as easily have them transition into slopes for access onto the cliff plateau. 

For a preview of our work on cliffs, here's some of the unfinished artwork, modeled in Zbrush and textured in Substance Painter:

Note that these renders will need to be sorted, rendered from a specific angle/position, given mirrored ends (so that they blend together and there are no obvious seams), and then cut up and properly matted in Photoshop to conform to the correct shapes and dimensions in the game's isometric grid. This is also to say nothing of the fact that these will also need to have their own dedicated Zdepth and Normal sprites created when Tovl finally completes his work on integrating the new rendering system, so we've all got quite a lot of work cut out for us.

That's all for this update, but hopefully we will have another major update by the end of the month.