Hey! I've got another suggestion. A while back, the Biome blending was improved by blurring the borders between them, so a green-yellow area between forested and desert areas. I would say it looks better, but it still looks a little unnatural, like a uniformly thick border of blend between each region. It's trading one unnatural look for a less unnatural look of a different sort. What I suggest is to have varying thickness of this blended area, so it looks more random/natural. It would be nice to see areas of starkly contrasted biomes next to some well blended and gradated biomes. The biome blending does look a hell of a lot better after the Beta patch though, I will say that, but I feel like it could be improved. There could be entire biome areas of intermediary coloration, for instance a half green half yellow biome could be grassland, and have foliage unique to it. It would cover a large area like a forest or desert would. Another thing you can do is take a small yellow desert patch, or dark mountain patch, and apply it to some forested area like a paintbrush, so instead of having a solid, unbroken green area, you'll have some slightly more yellow or darker green patches on that area to break it up a little. So: -Varied transition areas, so the transition border from one biome to another can be great or small to make it look more natural. -Large, intermediary biomes, for instance half green-half yellow for grassland. Intermediary biomes would have unique foliage like grass or cacti. -Random patches of yellow on green, green on yellow, black on green, etc. Just to break up the uniformity a small bit. Additionally, I've been working on a pack of foliage models for a planned mod, but I thought they might be of some use to the actual game. I tried styling them so they would blend in with the current in-game assets, even using the in-game textures to do so: Hydrothermal vents for volcanic & undersea biomes. Stromatelites, rocky crystals, salty desert crystals, and cacti. In addition to the stromatalites, I was going to make some coral reef models. I figure the crystals can have different colors, or glow in the dark. Meadow grass, bushes, and spiny jungle bush. Yellow grass, agave + bloom. Columnar basalt for volcanic & undersea biomes, and desert grass tufts. That's what I have so far, it's still very much a WIP. Please let me know what you think about these, or if you would be interested in using these models.
I like the little additions, though I'd probably like the ability to turn them off for performance reasons. What, other than aesthetics, would be gained from having smoother blending? Would there be any unique land features that would exist in these intermediary zones that would be something that couldn't exist in a "pure" biome? If it could add unique features then I could see it be an interesting element to add. It would certainly be more variables to twiddle and debug though as well.
It would be for aesthetics, kind of like biome blending in the first place, but more natural looking blending than what is currently in game. It would be both smoother, and less smooth blending, varied at different biome intersections to make it look more random. I was hoping that there would be foliage unique to certain biomes like grassland and alpine. Actually, thinking back on this, it might be better to have MORE biomes, sub biomes, instead of biomes made form large blurred areas. The new biomes would be similar to the current biomes, maybe a little off color, like slightly more yellow green, or slightly more orange arid biome. Sub biomes would always connect with biomes of the same type. So instead of having one uniform green patch with trees, it would be broken up into smaller areas with trees, grass, etc. For arid or Ice, you can have tundra or desert scrub sub biomes with their own unique foliage.
