[POLL] Swirls and Cliffs - 'Coastal Texture' Slider?

I made this suggestion in Le Aesthetics Thread and I'm curious as to whether the community would like to use it, and whether UBER think it doable/worthwhile/affordable. Skip the next two paragraphs for the TLDR.

The more control players have in designing the maps they play, the more fun they'll have. A good example of this were Warcraft III's (now somewhat dated) custom maps, which were the highlight of the game for many players, myself helplessly included.
This degree of control ensures the community can continue to contribute to the game after release, making sure it's always got something fresh and provides new opportunities for modding. In WCIII's case, this even gave rise to an entirely new genre played by millions - the MOBA.

I also played a lot of Spore and loved the degree of control it offered when editing worlds - the common micro-world aesthetic was one of the things which first made PA's planets so appealing to me.
UBER's System Editor has surpassed Spore's editing in many respects, and I'm always fiddling around in the Planet Editor - it's a frickin' awesome and beautiful tool for a game to have.
Anyway!

TLDR:
The idea is to provide a 1-100 slider in the Planet Generator which controls how Smooth or Rough a continent's coasts are - a "Coastal Texture" variable;

0 Very Smooth --- 25 Smooth --- 50 Earth-Like --- 75 Rough --- 100 Very Rough

• Very Smooth: Sandy Coastal Swirls, as per the kickstarter*.
• Smooth: As we have continents now, with sandy beaches and rounded continents.
  
• Earth-Like: A mixture of beaches and cliffs as Neutrino indicated he wanted.
• Rough: More cliffs.
• Very Rough: Cliffs practically everywhere, perhaps jagged rocks off the coast. More geometric, rocky edged continents.

* I know the current aesthetic has moved away from the Kickstarter but hey, to me procedural stuff is all about different aesthetics interacting to create unique aesthetics every time.

Height Range could interact with these to influence Dune height in Smooth planets, and Cliff height in Rough planets.

This suggestion would allow us to mix up continent shapes and create awesome variation on alien coasts

<3 u UBER.

Edit: All 'uwotm8's are invited to my country residence, where I'll bash their fookin' 'eds in.

/Sighed .. interesting Biome and a new awesome space skybox would be great.. get on that uber you magnificent bastards.

Chuckled at the poll.

But yeah, this would definitely be bretty gud.
Also, aesthetics in french is a feminine word, so it's la.
So HA.
(I don't actually know why I or anyone would consider this a "so HA" moment... so... yeah... Why are you still reading my imbecilic rambling?)

I er. I got detentions every Friday from my old sow of a French teacher so... ICH KONNTE KEIN FRANSOSICH SPRECHEN.

I love that you liked my post, posted in the affirmative and voted against hahaa

well yeah.. its been a long day.. i was like got dam it.. o well..

/Signed; as if there was ever any doubt.

Yes eventually it would be nice. I can see it as a post-launch future.

I suppose it would be possible post-launch, but some of the features like cliffs have been hinted at for release.

If Coasts are done in a biome-related way like mountains/mesas are (I personally think these should be tied to height range), or even a random way, as opposed to having their own slider, it may be extra work to go back afterwards and change the way things generate to allow more control in the generator.

The more variables there are which can be player-determined, the more beautiful/varied things are gonna get ^^

cliffs = TACTICS INNIT. Glad to see Neutrino is keen anyway. So to get this straight, this poll is for the inclusion of user definable cliffs, as opposed to generic uber created cliffs?

Yup. It's to have a slider which determines what the coasts are like - swirly and sandy, or rocky and straight - and everything in between. That way we'd be able to create more varied planets. Neutrino said he wanted Cliffs to come in, I was hoping to get some control over how much cliff and how much swirly sand we get ^^

I was so tempted to hit the uwotm8 option just for the invite to your country residence- although I'd need some sturdy headgear (wouldn't pwning me at PA be a better punishment anyways?!)... That said I'm all for more options and mixing the maps up a bit so I'm with you on this one!

A slider to control the frequency of cliffs is a good idea and I'm sure we'll get something like that. I'm not sure about a "coastal texture" slider though, I suspect cliff frequency would be good enough, and I doubt we'll have a slider to introduce 'swirls' in terrain height.

Edit: for some more discussion on cliffs, there was also This Thread. There's more than one approach to handling cliffs, and different approaches have different limitations, so we'll see how it goes

I really hope that we do see some option to change sandy coastlines. It might not need to be huge swirls, but some way to change the shape/shoreline of continents would be awesome. Maybe a disintegration factor, where you start getting lots of Atolls/Small islands on the coast?

Judging by that thread you link to, to have variable cliff heights would need to have brushes which could be worked and squished/stretched by height changes, or have multiple brushes, some of which only appeared in higher settings. Or a maybe even combination of both. That way you could have those unusual, geometric rock formations on 'Very Rocky'.