Map rendering: cutting corners #

I was drawing tile maps in Flash and found a cheap trick that improved the appearance of the maps, so I thought I'd share. Here's how I had been drawing the tile map:

Normal rendering of a tile map

In a bitmap-based graphics engine, you can smooth the edges of the tiles either by adding transition tiles (see this article or this article or this article) or by using a blending mask between adjacent tiles.

Flash, OpenGL, and DirectX are vector-based engines. The bitmap techniques still work, but there are new possibilities available. I'm drawing each square tile by filling a square polygon with a bitmap texture. The engine doesn't care that it's square; it works on any polygon. I'm taking advantage of this with what I call “vertex displacement”:

Tile map with corners cut by displacing vertices

I look at the four tiles touching each vertex. If three of them are the same and the fourth is different, I move the vertex to expand the area of the three common tiles and shrink the area of the uncommon one. It's easier to see the effect with the polygon borders:

Grid showing how vertices are displaced to cut corners

It turns out there are other fun things you can do with this trick. For example, a little bit of random noise on each vertex makes for a map that looks a little more hand drawn:

Grid showing how vertices can be displaced randomly

I've also used it to animate the boundary between the ocean and the beach. I added vertex displacement to my simple map generator; see the demo (Flash). Try changing the corner setting to adjust how much the corners get moved when three tiles are the same, and the random setting to adjust how much vertices get randomly moved. I have a separate demo (also Flash) to show the animated coastline.

The technique has its limitations. Terrain boundaries that don't fall on a 45° angle look wavy (see example). Some terrain types shouldn't meet in this way. And the biggest limitation is that it only applies when the terrain texture has no major features (such as trees, rocks, etc.). But it's a cheap enough trick that it's worth keeping in my toolbox.

Update: [2012-03-30] Also see Marching squares.

Labels: