Feral Heart

Yes I have read the *read this if you have trouble with heightmaps* thread. A dozen times. I have also made a dozen successful heightmaps.

That's why this is annoying. Because it might just be that my computer sucks and there's absolutely nothing I can do to fix it.

So I got some new brushes yesterday and had fun making new heightmaps. I made some heightmaps, put them into mapmaker, and they worked, but they kind of sucked. So I made two new ones today - one with the new brushes, slightly blurred, and another version of the same one super-blurred, because I didn't know how smooth I wanted it. After a certain point of smoothness the rivers start turning into divets and mountains into molehills, so I usually have two copies.

After trying to put the heightmaps in six or seven times, I finally realize "Geeze.....I did everything wrong. XD 2000x2000 res, RGB mode, .JPG files." So they are now 513x513 grayscale .PNGs. Saved into the terrains folder.

I open FH mapmaker and I can load some of the other heightmaps I have made, and can load the slightly-blurred heightmap. Sometimes. Sometimes it just crashes. Other times it crashes when I try to resize the map. Other times I get this, no matter what heightmap I have loaded.

Just that. I make a map - it can be anything from waterfalls to stone mushrooms, castles, palm trees, anything I use.

I have a map with a 'rock garden' type thing, elephant skull, etc...Just finished playing around with it cos I was making height maps on Gimp and found one that was fun to jump around in without being overly irritating...Anyhow!

That map is titled Rigidity.

I played around in object maker after that, making a castle, making new textures for the rocks, etc. So then I make a height map for the half-finished castle.

I open the new heightmap in mapmaker, all looks well, I add some ocean and click 'test' to go run around and explore, see if there's any tall places or deep places that make the map a horrible failure. And there are plenty of deep places that can be tricky to get out of, but no deathtraps like I've made in other maps that require one to recall home to escape XD lmao....In the upper left corner I purposely made a place where there are tall rock outcrops, and deep hotspring-like pools...

I get out of Test and the objects from Rigidity have appeared. Floating castle, objects within the castle, giant mushrooms, trees, caves, more trees, stone trees, carved wooden figure like trees, stone mushrooms, real mushrooms, tiny mushrooms, stone bushes, etc. All these mushrooms, stone plants, go into a fairly sized (at least half of a 10,000 width map) rock/statue garden type thing. Most are either miniaturized, average wolf-height, or giant.

So of course my entire miniaturized rock garden pops into the hotsprings. e.o Usually it's not a terribly big deal - last time (the first time) this happened I need only delete four large and easily spotted waterfalls (and they kept appearing until I saved a new map - now the new map appears instead.) Finding sixty or seventy half-buried and underwater items in a map that should otherwise be empty? Is no fun task. The worst part is knowing that I cannot make another map properly unless I delete every single one of those items.

Now, yes, simple - kill the heightmap, delete everything on a flat plain, put the heightmap back in. All is solved, yes? Good, good? I did this. I put in some of my items, some trees, some plants, start thinking about a terrain map, wonder if I can make the water bubble or steam...Test it out again to make sure the trees aren't overwhelmingly huge...Get back out of test and EVERY single one of those seventy-some mini-items were back, along with the castle and such. I'm usually a very patient person, but my patience breaks when creativity is stifled by this redundant and time-consuming glitch.

Please help. o.o Suggestions? I know my maps will only grow increasingly complex (and become better put-together, rather than a mashup of random objects and various species of mutant trees... XD) as I get better at heightmaps and textures and other item-creation tasks...

And I'm also just noticing that this is one of the first times I've used the forum since joining the game. o.o So hello. *waves* I'm Aedre...I tend to talk a lot, as you've probably noticed. Hehe...