Designing A Realistic Forest

To be clear, there are nearly unlimited ways to design a quality forest – this will just show you one such method.

First, you should divide your screen into land and water portions, if you want to have such a division. If you want all land, then that’s fine as well!

Second, you should mix various terrains in reasonable proportions around the area you want your forest in. Some good choices are Grass 1, 2, and 3, Dirt 2 and 3, and the Leaves terrain. If you have water, then mix the shallow, medium, and deep water types accordingly.

Third, you can start placing your trees. You want a variety of oaks, pines, and the Trees A through TD. There are a few things to remember:

1. Don’t try to place all trees on certain terrains in the mix you have (e.g. don’t place them all on the Leaves or the Dirt 2). Go for some variety! It’s more realistic and the end result is better anyway.
2. If you’re like me and are obsessed with lush, green forests, then you want all of your trees to be green (though maybe you can add a couple bare trees here and there). You can achieve this by rotating the trees before placing by spamming the arrow keys in the object list to switch objects until you have a green tree. This is a better system than placing and then rotating the objects, as the rotation system is fiddly and it’s easy to accidentally rotate the wrong tree. Rotate with arrow keys, place, and repeat ad infinitum.
3. Space out your trees a little – you want units to walk through it so you can enjoy your work! There are some cases in which a thick, impassible forest may fit better (especially in generic B&D scenarios), but for this tutorial we’ll focus on a more open forest.

Fourth – add a little eyecandy. I tend to prefer aptly placed plants, flowers, and flower beds the most, but other things can fit here as well, like stumps and animals. When to add elevation is up to personal preference – I’m personally inconsistent about whether I do it during the second step or this step, so do whatever works for you!

You can view the finished product below – I’m using it in my current collaborative design project: Galderton Hill RP, which will feature many nifty design tricks in addition to this one! Now go forth and shock thy fellow designers and players with thy newfound knowledge!

Do you want to comment on this article? Thank the author? Tribute resources for its improvement? Raze it to the ground?

Come by and visit its thread in the University Forum!