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[Outcast Orange]

Woah! Hold on a second there guys.
You are all misunderstanding me?
When I said slope, I meant over-all slope.
The tiles will be squares.
I'm not willing to change that at this point.
This is a tile based game after all, gone 3D.
I want the maps to be more smooth and round, on a larger scale.

Before:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now I need to follow through with Armok's suggestion to get theses maps playable.
There are still a couple cases like in the image above, where you find hard edges, but most all of them are gone.
The other type of roundness I need to improve (if I feel like it) is top-down roundness.
From the sky, these map-tiles meet at perfect edges.
I need to work on an edge reconcile to get more organic shapes.
I'm not going to be able to work on this until tomorrow morning, so be patient.
I don't want rounded tiles,
because then it would be hard to stand on them,
and they would complicate a lot of things I will be working on in the future.
I don't want my AI to have to learn ramps.
That is a scary smelling animal.

EDIT:
The edges aren't as bad as I thought, but they are still squarish.

[Duke 2.0]

 My only problem with this game(Well, more like a world generation simulation at this point) is how jagged it is. Those tiles seems to jut up sharply enough to make the landscape resemble a 3D representation of sound wave to a rocking tune.

[Alexhans]

Oh... I get it now... lol.

Anyway... keep in mind the idea of making the 8 different shapes for the future.  It would give a much more pleasant look to the map.

But it's just an aesthetic change so it's not that important.

What you're trying to achieve seems pretty hard too...

EDIT:  I forgot to add that the bending would involve lot's of polygons that would probably slow down your performance.  There's a way to work around this with lightning and normals but I'm not yet familiarized with it.

[Armok]

WOAH!!! That is EPIC!!
These will look SOOOO great once you do the median stuff.

Hmm, do you read MSPA? The way this is tile based makes absolute realism kinda hard and you don't seem to be even attempting it, but the looks of these things would be PERFECT for teleportation and general mindfuck along the lines of the MSPA settings. Hmm... in fact, depending on how fast it is and if you are going to line of sight and such, this might be vary well merged with an idea for a time-travel based game idea I have had...

(basically there are portals that work like wormholes, and can go in the past, and time is actualy treated like a 4th dimension, and it gets around time paradoxes by simulating something that actually reminds of quantum uncertainty, and you can even cooperate with past/future selves throughout an "expectation" mechanic... it's rather complicated to explain, but should work out better in code.)

[Outcast Orange]

Rawr! I'm responding on a Monday evening.

Armok... I don't think I want to push the memory barrier that much.
I would like some mind-hurting stuff maybe, but no time effects.
Time is going to be hard to deal with already.
I'm not sure if I want this to be turn based, or ever flowing.
Let's take this one step at a time.

I'm going to add in the median idea you keep bludgeoning me with.
(I say that in a humorous light, not an angry one)
That way the maps won't look like soundwaves any more.

I've thought up the perfect way to enact my cohesion loop,
so that upside down maps down instantly cave in.
I'd like to be able to make a hanging village
on the underside of things in the future.

Basically, I want this game to be super difficult,
so you are always forced into a cave, or to some other great legths,
just to insure your game lasts longer than ten minutes.
I forsee many structures built with underwater entrances.
That would protect you from a lot of stuff.

I want it to be hard to accomplish anything, so you will try ver hard,
just to accomplish simple things, like that 3x3 house I built.

Let me finish median smoothing, cohesion, support,
and put in a couple more functions for Orange.
Then I will give you all a few demo scenarios that should get you interested.

Cohesion is definitely next, because it is greatly required to make this game playable,
otherwise, caves are impossible.

A support system will make the caves more dangerous.
I intend for caves to stay stable short term, and laborous things must be done
to insure their permanent stability.
Or you can blanket the ceiling in the strange green tiles,
and connect them up with a mini-core.

I have so many ideas, I just need to think about this one step at a time.
If any of you are interested in knowing what the lead cause of death will be,
I leave you with an ambiguous phrase:

Terror above.

[timmeh]

Terror above.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! 

Seriously though, this is really coming along well, awesome work!

[alfie275]

I just though of a cool mission:

A meteorite has fallen to a plate and turned a single tile with grey goo, every day at midnight a grey goo tile has a chance of turning a neighbouring tile into grey goo, the harder the tile the lower the chance but if a tile has more grey goo near it it has a higher chance.

The only way to stop it is to cave in the tiles of grey goo, which will be easy if it lands on the edge of a plate but otherwise you will have kill the golden core of the plate.

Or you could just run away to a completely isolated plate and ignore it.

[Outcast Orange]

I like the grey goo thing, but here is an alternate version of the story.
What if they were called decay tiles, and they had zero cohesion / support characteristics.
Then the land would erode away.
The only way to stop it would be to dig it up, or dig around it, or possibly pour material-x on it.
I would like a more common version of this to happen to player-made structures though.
That would really shake up your world,
 where if you build something too high, it would start crumbling on the bottom.

Just a couple of thoughts though.

[Jack_Bread]

You need something to prevent this:

Spoiler: :( (click to show/hide)

[Alexhans]

I have fooled around a little with one of the executables and was able to make tall columns of water on top of the tiny islands.  This extremely strong cohesion should be changed soon (IIRC it is in your plans)

Advice:  To help people test the engine you should tell them what interesting things they can now try.

It runs pretty smooth.   

[Outcast Orange]

Lol.
You fell off?

Don't worry, things will keep getting better.
I've got a lot to get done today.

[Alexhans]

The sky got me...

Or at least a sucky internet connection 

We'll talk later...

[Outcast Orange]

Hehe.

[Outcast Orange]

Here we go:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Aye! Armok's will be praised.
I didn't use a median curve (saves some speed)
Instead, I used an average curve.
Slightly (very slightly) different.

But it looks pretty good!
No more rock concert sound waves gents.

The only real improvement besides appearance is now you'll find it hard to trap yourselves in pits.
That happens to me a lot.
I feel like building some tower to show off my game.
I'm going to add in a few more controls tonight, then release it for all ye to explore.
Enjoy your time out in the open.
The second this thing starts to look like a game, I'll add in the sky stuffs.

[Outcast Orange]

Also, the one of you to post a screenshot of something you built in my game first gets a cookie.

Remember, rise to the surface of the local map before hitting enter again,
or Orange will spawn underground.
Press space to pick up the tile TO YOUR LEFT.
Sorry, I just picked a random direction when adding in the feature.
Press space again to drop the tile again.
You can press R to get special tiles.
They do not fall.
I look forward to somebody out there figuring out my game.
The link in the first post is newest.