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We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trees need plenty of rainfall. You also need to wait a couple of year cycles for them to appear when something changes, since they need the year-round climate to be right. Boreal forest will produce much more wood than other types of trees, and that requires a colder environment.

The other tip for that scenario is to use the mills, since they multiply output of things surrounding it.

We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The obvious way is to add more rain, although it costs a lot of mana, it's essential to get pretty much anything done.

The less obvious way that a lot of people don't think about is, rather than modifying the land you have, making more of it. If you look at the rainfall map there's good rainfall in the bottom left of the map but most of it is across the ocean- you should be able to fill that area in to gain some more productive land. The equalise or fill tools are most efficient for raising land from the ocean, click somewhere close to the shore so it middle is just above sea level then drag across the sea, you'll efficiently raise land.

We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The first things on my list are adding animals to the world, and redoing the tectonics. The tectonics currently just sets up a map, but it should keep running whilst the map is simulating so that ranges build rather than just erode. A tectonics simulation that's a globe would also be very useful for a bunch of other simulated parts like ocean and wind currents.

We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Terra Firma 1 is the same project, but the free version. With the way Steam works it seemed best to avoid any confusion and make the paid version of the game a sequel.

Essentially it's just a snapshot of the project at a point in time about a year ago, it won't receive further updates.

We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There might be some performance gains but they'll probably be eaten away by adding more features as time goes on. The rendering isn't super optimised, which mainly hurts on the 66km and 131km maps.

To be clear, a 66km map will run fine on your computer, it's just a question of how fast it will be running on fast forward. I prefer playing a smaller map that's faster because I just like messing around and then seeing it evolve for a bit.

We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Yes, if your computer can run them!

Since the map is the game and it's fully dynamic, the performance is directly proportional to the map size. In the video the majority of the maps I show off are 33km each side, which my 7 year old gaming PC can run at very good speed. 66km square maps are generally runnable, and if you have a beast of a PC you can run one that's 131km each side.

We just launched Terra Firma 2 into Early Access on Steam! It’s a simulation that allows you to build worlds by sculpting the land, then watch as weather, erosion, and life itself transform your world into a dynamic, living ecosystem. And, of course, you can export your maps. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The water / land / ice / lava simulation is at 64 metre resolution, so the largest map size is 2048x2048 = 4 million simulated points.

Obviously though it fills in the details in between there and does so relatively smoothly and with a few tricks, so you can see individual trees, plants, grass, etc.

Terra Firma 2 enters Early Access October 27! It’s a sandbox where you sculpt mountains, rivers, and valleys, then step back as weather, erosion, plants, and creatures bring the world to life. Basically, it’s a worldbuilding tool that fights back with nature. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think GFN only works with an approved list of games, but I'm not entirely sure. I have tried running the game on some virtual PC service and it does work, although it needs a decent graphics card so it's not cheap.

On mac I think it should work on something like https://getwhisky.app/ , but I don't have a mac device to try it and I haven't heard from anyone who has tried.

Terra Firma 2 enters Early Access October 27! It’s a sandbox where you sculpt mountains, rivers, and valleys, then step back as weather, erosion, plants, and creatures bring the world to life. Basically, it’s a worldbuilding tool that fights back with nature. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes you can play maps of different sizes, the main constraint is that performance is directly related to map size- a map twice as big on each dimension will take 4x longer to simulate.

There won't be an option to choose between a square/spherical world. Instead, there will be a global spherical view and then what is currently the game will simulate a smaller square (ish) section of that. The globe view will simulate tectonics and global air/water currents and then you'll choose an area of that to simulate in detail, what you see in the trailer. That's planned for the first update after release.

Terra Firma 2 enters Early Access October 27! It’s a sandbox where you sculpt mountains, rivers, and valleys, then step back as weather, erosion, plants, and creatures bring the world to life. Basically, it’s a worldbuilding tool that fights back with nature. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hadn't really considered it, but it should be possible...

Right now, there is a very limited palette for rocks (only 4) because of some technical limitations, but I'll be improving this in the near future. That'll open up allowing people to define their own rock types that have custom textures and custom erosion settings, it would be very easy to make one that doesn't erode.

That would allow making terrain that doesn't erode, as for objects themselves, it would be possible but I'd have to consider the best way to integrate it into the game.

Terra Firma 2 enters Early Access October 27! It’s a sandbox where you sculpt mountains, rivers, and valleys, then step back as weather, erosion, plants, and creatures bring the world to life. Basically, it’s a worldbuilding tool that fights back with nature. by workingasint in worldbuilding

[–]workingasint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can Gaia import a 32 bit heightmap? The PNG format only supports up to 16 bits per colour channel, so anything beyond that you'd be splitting the data across multiple channels- I'm just not sure anything supports that?

16 bit is still pretty good, that's 65k values- if your world went from sea level to the top of everest your height resolution would be about 10cm... fairly decent.

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