Tile/Map-Based Game Techniques: Handling Terrain Transitions
This article is another in my series of Tile/Map-based Game Techniques. In this article I discuss a method for handling terrain transitions on your main map display.
First off, by "terrain" I am referring to the background or base layer of graphics for the map display. Terrain might refer to normal terrain types, such as grasslands or forests, but it is not limited to this. In a science-fiction game, for instance, the terrain could be bare metal or even the landscape features of another planet.
The Problem
The problem of terrain transitioning grows out of the need for a single type of terrain to be able to mesh with itself and still look good when placed next to another terrain. A forest tile should fit together with other forest tiles so that the forest proceeds seamlessly from one map cell to the next. But what happens when the forest tile is placed next to another type of terrain, such as mountains or grassland? Without some form "transitioning" the map looks very blocky and artificial.
Figure 1: Terrain Without Transitions
One solution to the problem is to create specialized transition tiles that "blend" sections of each terrain into a single tile. However, the need for all terrains to transition into any other means that the number of specialized tiles escalates quickly.