Level Design i hate terrains.

[Swift-Brutal-Death]

I've seen the tuts. I've tried for literally hours. Nothing works. Sometimes I get them to show up, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I can use smooth, sometimes I can't. What the hell gives? I don't understand what's going on when I create a layer or what name should be given. I build all and rebuild all to see if anything is happening...what the **** is with this stupid ****.
At what point do I just give up here? It's like random things happen based on the time of day I work with them. Like the lunar cycle affects whether or not terrains will work.

There's a zoneinfo in place with terrain set to true. blah blah blah **** this...I've figured out literally a thousand quirks with SDK so that I can run it for hours without crashes happening and have finally met my nemesis.

 

[avp2501]

Hey man try not to stress. Terrains are a bit of a pain to get to grips with but are easy once you know all their quirky inner workings.

The reason your terrain keeps disappearing is due to zones. If you ever get a zoning issue in a map you will instantly see the terrain disappear. Just find the leak in your zoning and the terrain will come back.

Go into the zone view and look for the Dark Blue zone, this is the most likey source of the problem, if you can't find the problem in the Dark Blue zone then follow the zone slices to other most likely causes.

 

[Murphy]

If smooth doesn't work make sure you have selected what you want to smooth! If you want to smooth the height, make sure you select the height-map picture at the terrain selection! If you want to smooth a layer, select the layer!

If your terrain is invisible it can be due to a number of reasons:

• there is no layer on it. Make sure there is one and make sure it's painted on the terrain too (or make its alpha fill completely white)
• you made it invisible. The visibility tool can make your terrain invisible. Right-click makes invisible, left-click makes visible. Make sure it's visible.
• It's too low! Enable wireframe view and look up or down. If teh terrain is too low or too high, drag the TerrainInfo up or down. If you can't drag it up or down enough because you'd be leaving your Zone with it, use the Painting Tool on the heightmap and mold your terrain to the correct height at one point and then use flatten from there.
• It's not in a valid Zone. If you have BSP-errors and Zones spill out, so to speak, this might be a problem. Similarily, if you move your TerrainInfo into matter (i.e. into an Add brush) the terrain will be disabled too! So make sure it's both out in the open and in a Zone that is a TerrainZone. If you just placed this ZoneInfo try rebuilding your geometry too.

I find terrains work relatively well.
Most problems really are user-related. Not really the user's fault, because the Terrain Tools aren't as self-explanatory and as easy to use as they should be, but once you get used to them you'll rarely run into problems with them.
My main problem is that you can't easily undo steps that have to do with terrain transformation. Saving often helps, but it's not as convenient as it could be.

 

[Swift-Brutal-Death]

If smooth doesn't work make sure you have selected what you want to smooth! If you want to smooth the height, make sure you select the height-map picture at the terrain selection! If you want to smooth a layer, select the layer!

Oh Murphay you always know just what to say!! I can't believe it was so simple. It never occurred to me that I need to be selecting layer/terrains. I couldn't quite tell what the difference really was. Thank you!

Edit: This morning is great! I'm playing with a terrain and it's working. First time since mid june when i started with UED. Things are going to be smooth sailing...until TWI makes campaign levels more accessible and I have to start scripting events/triggers.