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[Rose]

I think purple clouds or mist would be better.

[Meph]

you mean as a layer, or as RL-looking clouds that hover over the biome?

[Rose]

Basically similar to the stripes example, but instead of stripes, it's mists?

Spoiler: Something like this? (click to show/hide)

[Manveru Taurënér]

Two examples with smaller trees. Half size and quarter size.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Personally vote for the half size version, definitely looks nicer than the full size one imo, but smaller than that and the ability to immediately see that it's supposed to be trees is lost (and also doesn't look as nice).

As for the evilness, probably the best/easiest solution for now. Just an idea that probably would be a bit much work for now but maybe for the M&M future, would it be possible to do the "sphere color" on the outline of the biome features, so trees/hills/mountains with a purple border in this case, along with the edge of the area like that? (since I assume the full saturation was too much). Might not look as cool in practice as in my head of course. Though I suppose depending on what we end up with it might warrant some unique sprites rather at some point.

[Grimbot]

As a noob, I'm digging it. I can accept that a few trees equal a forest the same way that I can accept that a bunch of semicolons are rocky badlands.

[Death Dragon]

My personal choice would be something like this for evil/good biomes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This looks way too jarring to me. It looks like a construction site or a restricted area. Could end up too distracting on the world map.
If it's toggleable, then I guess it doesn't matter, but I'm still kinda hoping for individual sprite sets (or at least something that meshes better with the rest of the map) because screenshots of DF world maps get shared a lot and it would be cool if those showed off every bit of individualism the world has to offer without needing some overlay.

Two examples with smaller trees. Half size and quarter size.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think I prefered the bigger trees, but my real problem with these are the repetitive patterns on the forest and mountain areas.
Original tree size together with bigger mountains might be my favourite, but we'll see how that will actually look like.

[Meph]

Individual sprites for good/evil work well on grassland or forests (just make feather/glumprong tree sprites, or bubblebulb grass vs tendrils), but it's tough for... oceans. Lakes. rivers. mountains. Anything without a change in vegetation. That's a lot more tricky.

Of course an evil mountain could be more spiky, and a good ocean could be calm, with less waves... but it might not be super obvious to the viewer, especially new players.

[Death Dragon]

Evil ocean could be made murky looking and be given colors like brown, dark-yellow, dark-red for example I suppose, basically what the ASCII graphics do. The mist Japa mentioned also works though. Maybe good areas could have some sort of shiny sparcle effect or a glow.
I agree that it's generally not that easy to see alignment on the map with the ASCII graphics though. Having a map overlay separately that highlights alignment would of course still be useful to have for new players (I guess right now we only really have the search function), but I don't think it should be the only way to see the terrain's alignment on the map.

[Meph]

Mh... animated effects could go a long way. Dense, moving fog for evil, some claws slashing/animal moving for savage areas, sprakles/rays of light for good.

[Rose]

[Manveru Taurënér]

I guess one could have larger sprites indicate savagery (makes sense ish for a larger looking forest to show that there would be giant animals), but same issue there that it only works for some of the biomes.

Animations would certainly help a lot more to show that there's something special about that particular patch of land.

[Doomblade187]

Idea for savage lands: Patches of missing map scattered through the tiles.

[Hommit]

Idea for savage lands: Patches of missing map scattered through the tiles.

wut?

savagery could actually be done with color saturation, which nicely combines with fog/sparkles(rays) for good/evil

[Clatch]

I like the way it looks, though I fret over the details lost on the trees. I've already suggested sparser but bigger mountains, so I'll try to mock it up and we'll see.
I obviously don't want to spend time making too many mockups when it's something we'll be able to work on "live" later on.

I'm more for the over exaggerated art look in my opinion as opposed to a satellite map.

[Doomblade187]

Idea for savage lands: Patches of missing map scattered through the tiles.

wut?

savagery could actually be done with color saturation, which nicely combines with fog/sparkles(rays) for good/evil

Yeah, sorta a fog effect. Basically the concept that a savage biome would be "uncharted".