Terrain Modification

Before we press on into the Tools menu, we will revisit the File Menu for a moment. Below the "New" option is the "Resize" option. This option lets you resize the map dimensions. This tool has type in boxes for you to enter a new width and length (called height in the editor type in box). There is also a X and Y offset to specify the bottom left corner of the resized map. This feature works much like changing the Canvass size in photoshop (or other professional image processing software). A handy tool here is the "Preview" button. This draws a box (in red) around the location of the resized map, so that you know what the new dimensions will cover. This is important because, if you had already put some objects on the map, this will tell you whether or not some of the objects will get chopped off. If so this is where the X and Y offset setting can save you a lot of work to make sure your resized map covers all your existing objects. Even so, when you resize the map, certain objects will have to be redone. These include territory definitions, certain units, areas and cinematics. When you are finally commited to the new resized map. Just hit the "Apply" button. While we're on map size, you can use the Shift-Arrow key to move around the map much quicker.

Now, The Tools Menu contains the majority of things that a designer will use in creating a scenario. These include a terrain modifier, a tree painter, an object placer, area placer, cinematics splines creator, start position marker, animal placer, and territory painter. You can see these menu selection in the picture below:

The first thing a design will probably use is the Terrain Modifier. You may have started with a plain flat terrain, in which case, you would have a lot of work to do using this tool, or you could just be using this tool to make some specific tweaks to your map.

There are a number of tools in the terrain modifier you can use that are located in different tabs of the terrain tool. The elevation tab lets to raise or lower the terrain elevation. You can change the brush shape, which includes a circle, square or diamond shape. Likewise, you can change size of the brush to work on large or small plots of land. You can also set specific elevation or sample the elevation to determine its height. In addition, you can change the land to water transitional characteristics here.

Terrain Textures

The next tab is used to paint various textures in the landscape. Again you can change the brush shape and size, but also the fill rate. One interesting to note with the Empire Earth terrain painter is that instead of simply applying a single terrain type across the map that reflect a certain climatic or geographic type. The terrain painter works more like a generic painting tool with texturization abilities. There is a palette of various textures that the designer can choose from. These while possessing a default color, is mainly used to create details and bump mapping on the terrain. Some terrain types actually have in-game effects, like the mountain top terrain which prevents units from walking on them. There are two active brushes you can set. The left mouse button will place the terrain shown on the left active palette, and the right mouse button the right active palette. This is very handy when you want to break up the monotony over a patch of land without having to constantly select a different terrain type. You can simply leave the terrains as its natural color, or you can apply and arbitrary tint to it! This essentually allows the designer to create just about any kind of terrain natural or not! As you can see in the pictures below, you can really let your imagination fly, (ok more like silliness in my case). Finally there is a sampler tool attached to the terrain type and tint controls. This is especially handy when you created a terrain effect, but can't quite figure out how you actually got such a great effect. But then thats seems like such an insignificant thing when you can paint a happy face in your scenario! Right?

Water

The next tab is the water painter. Again, you can set different brush shapes and sizes. You can place rivers, oceans and coastal terrains. Rivers generally create shallow water depths, while the ocean terrain are deep water depths. The coastal terrain is used more to create a gentler slope between the land the water terrains. The preview copy we have seems to have a blocked out swamp terrain. Hopefully this will be in the final version cause it sounds it might be interesting to use. You may notice that while you are using the water painter that you can't see any water. This requires two things, one that you close out the terrain modifier screen, and have the water turned on in the View menu.

John from Mad Doc warns that while you designing a scenario to only turn on the water when you really need to see it, because it can be a real resource hog when you are in the scenario editor. You can toggle Water on the scenario editor by going into the View menu and then unchecking the Water option. You can see what the map looks like with the water turned off from the scenario editor view above left.

Cliffs The final tab in the terrain modifier is the Cliffs painter. Again, you can set the brush shape and size, and create cliffs with a specific height. But the more interesting is the Raise and Lower cliffs option. In particular the lower cliffs effect invoked by the right mouse button. You can therefore not only create cliffs, but depressions, chasms or even trenches.

As you can see on the right you can create some very dramatic effects and interesting terrain with this tool. One additional bit of advice I got from John from Mad Doc is that you should use the Roughen tool from the elevation tab to create a more natural feel to your cliffs.