Editing terrain mod parameters existing region

[MissVanleider 1,850]

Hello.

My question is quick and easy with a long buildup. Question bit is below in bold for any people expert enough to have a crack at answering with minimal information

 

I have in the past used the below guide to edit the parameters of my terrain mod, which is fantastic as without this guide i would be lost!

In the guide, @blunder states the below:

"2.  MaxNormalYForCliff.  Max what for what?  This is the variable that controls whether or not the texture you see on each tile comes from your rock mod or your terrain mod.  The LOWER this variable is, the STEEPER your terrain must be before it is given rock texture instead of terrain texture.  This may sound counter-intuitive but it's because a 'normal' -like in the variable name- is a vector orthogonal to the tangent plane of a surface and... ok never mind i'll just tell you what you should do with this.

If you use a 15m Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod (DJEM)and you are perfectly happy with that, you can set this to .77 and just walk away.  If you aren't familiar with a DJEM, it makes the terrain 'snap' to a nice line when making diagonal cliffs of a certain height; very useful for sunken highways and raised transit networks.  If you want to use a DJEM for 7.5m overpasses if and when the NAM team manages to fully implement that system then the value you want is .95.  Please note however that this comes with a huge trade-off where even the gentlest of slopes will become entirely rocky.  Not recommended unless you're building on a map that is flat as Holland.

Also note that just using .77 (the 15m DJEM value) does not look the best on hilly and mountain areas.  It creates inconsistency in where the rocks appear and makes your terrain look weird; especially mountains.  So for mountain areas i like to use something between .60 and .65.  It really depends on the specific geology of your map."

//quote

 

I set my value to .77 which indeed works brilliantly for retaining walls / reducing the jagged edge effect but the rocks do tend to appear everywhere as mentioned and making my attempts at nature look totally horrid.

If i change the value to .60 for my exisiting, developed tiles and then load the tiles, will this work or break my save? - I ask because i first edited the values first time before starting work in a region and after i break it, it will be too late

Edit:

Gave it a go. World appears to be still on its axis and cliffs look nicer. Mods, if you can kill this post, please do so.

  Edited February 21, 2017 by MissVanleider  
YOLO

[twalsh102 1,601]

I'm certainly not an expert on terrain mods, or any of the settings mentioned by blunder.  Having said that, I suspect that even blunder would tell you that the best answer anyone can give is "It depends."

Actually, I think the answer would be the same as to the question of "What would happen if I install a Terrain Mod in an already developed region?"  I certainly haven't read or heard of any entreaties of "Do not ever install any Terrain Mods except in new undeveloped regions!" 

Since, in effect, the settings in question only affect which textures show in which types of terrain, I can't imagine that changing that value would cause a city to "break.'

I would suggest that the only sure way to find out is to actually do it.  Since many of the effects of things like Terrain Modes, Rock Mods, and Water Mods are texture related and won't affect any given city tile until you have actually opened it and saved it, nothing would be permanent until you saved a city after making the changes you're anticipating.  Having a savegame file located someplace other than in your Regions folder (so it can't be overwritten) would be your worse-case scenario fall back position.   If the city "breaks", it's not too late;  you can just not save it, exit the game, and change the values back to what they were.  If the game crashes, and you suspect that your savegame file for that city became corrupted, again just change the parameters back, and then replace the suspect savegame file with the one you stashed away.

[rsc204 21,806]

As twalsh102 points out, in all such scenarios, there is no harm from trying a thing out. But to be safe, make a backup of your region's savefiles first, so if something goes wrong, you've not lost anything.

However in this case I can confirm (as your test seems to have gone), nothing will go wrong. It just adjusts the perspective of how things are. So you might find that suddenly all your diagonal wall lots look funny or mountains look different. But this isn't one of those settings that actually changes things in a way that can do harm.

[blunder 1,079]

On 2/21/2017 at 2:22 PM, rsc204 said:

However in this case I can confirm (as your test seems to have gone), nothing will go wrong. It just adjusts the perspective of how things are. So you might find that suddenly all your diagonal wall lots look funny or mountains look different. But this isn't one of those settings that actually changes things in a way that can do harm.

This. It will 100% not impair your saves from loading to do this.  I've done it a lot.

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 2/21/2017 at 10:23 AM, MissVanleider said:

MaxNormalYForCliff.  Max what for what?

From what I can read, this parameter sets a ceiling on the gain in height between adjacent squares before the rock texture is applied. Less than this delta-Y, and you should see grass etc. More than this delta-Y, and you should see exposed stone (or whatever your terrain mod provides for cliff-sides).

Since this controls display rather than modeling action, you should have a relatively free hand in modifying it to suit your personal tastes.

[CT14 2,486]

@MissVanleider As an aside, usually it's best not to kill posts like this, because even if you answered your own question, it is valuable information for others with the same question. Thanks for following through with the solution.