I’ve been ill for a lot of the last week (and am still suffering from the dregs of that), but I wanted to show a couple screenshots.

Amongst other things, I’ve been working on making paths between regions. Originally, my plan had been to simply make simple tunnels — when creating a path from region A to region B, you’d end up with a path from region A to the border, and then a “tunnel entrance” model, with a separate “tunnel entrance” model on the other side, followed by another path. This has the benefit that each path is entirely inside a single region, which is really convenient for quick searches across nearby paths.

But I wasn’t really happy with that solution. Many MMORPGs will use tunnels to travel from one region to another sometimes, but I really wanted to be able to actually carve passes through the mountain borders, and see the environment settings change as you move from one region to another. The above was my first attempt at carving such a pass. Needless to say, it didn’t work as I’d intended; it looks more like I’ve driven over the mountain range with some large tracked vehicle. There’s definitely a track that’s been left, but it doesn’t look like something that could be traveled on by someone on foot.

My next attempt was a little simpler; just completely flatten the terrain into a flat, rectangular “pass”. It’s ugly, and the coloration is basically the same as the terrain pre-flattening, but at least it looks like someone could walk on it.

Of course, the real problem with it is those sheer cliff edges. That’s not the look I want; I don’t really want a narrow chasm chiseled through the mountains; I want this to look like a natural break in the mountains, which a path might run through. For that, I need smoother mountain slopes at the sides; the pass should look more natural, and be blended into the terrain nicely on both ends, as well as all along its length.

In the end, I came up with a system which sort of works, and generates somewhat believable passes through the mountain ranges. I still need to decide how the UI for laying down these passes should work, but I can finally create a seamless pass between two regions, and watch the sky and fog blend as I move from one region to the other. Next step: figuring out how to fit a mountain pass into the game’s road network.