Using Terrain for a Game

Hi Everyone,

Basically I want to make a game using Terrain for the map instead of Parts.

I am just wondering if there are any down sides to doing this?

I have read that it is less laggy, but is more exploitable? Can it cause other issues?

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Here’s what I come up with:

Water: Water reflects on the objects it’s facing, it will increase the CPU depending on how much you use it. Still, little water won’t hurt the game .

Grass and other materials: The new grass feature will and may or may not cause a bit of lag but it’s barely noticeable. Without the grass feature it will be a standard material like all other materials.

Can it be exploitable?: Yes and no; exploits only run on client so it may and not maybe affect the gameplay for other players. They are just ruining the game for themselves.

Bugs: Sometimes terrain can glitch and it is annoying sometimes. If it does happen, report the bug and pray it that it won’t be permanent.

Conclusion: Using terrain is completely fine only if you don’t overdo it. Terrain will increase the map size, if the map size is too big(more than 10000,10000,10000studs) it will be harder to work on the game, and eventually lead to game file corruption. Terrain is the same as materials like wood, water, grass, slate, metal, etc. Using too many materials will do the same affect as I mentioned above. There will always be some down sides but it is still a useful feature to build wonderful landscapes. If you want to specialize in terrain building, there is a job for that. Terrain Artists are specialized in making unique maps or environment/terrain they are very important as well and some may want to hire you. Terrain is available feature for you to use.

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I agree with most of this, except for the grass. To get the moving blades of grass, you need to manually enable it in the Terrain tab’s properties. Else it’s just normal grass terrain. So hypothetically if you wanted the blades of grass, you would be knowingly setting it up thinking your game can handle it, otherwise you would just keep it as simple grass.

Also for the exploitable part, I do believe parts are more exploitable than terrain as the exploiter could just get a build tools script to let them edit parts, whereas with terrain they need to access the game with studio edits and manually open the terrain tool to edit the terrain of a game.

To add, the level of detail changes drastically when viewed from a distance. This may not be an issue for you but I thought I’d let you know.

Part terrain is fine if you’re making a small map and of it isnt too complex. If its a bit big or complex use regular terrain. Also if you want more realistic visuals pick regular terrain, have you seen the new upcoming materials? They’re so realistic and look amazing. Even if your not with an upcoming update you will be able to add your own materials to it so you can add some stylized materials. Also I think regular terrain would be less of a hassle and you can make amazing landscapes with it and depending on the size the performance would be worth it. And even if it is more exploitable does it really matter that much? Would they really care about the terrain they can do so much worse things then edit the terrain. But right now performance isnt that good on large scale games like 32k by 32k studs but roblox is trying to improve it. Also the water transistion isnt really that good.

Would you be able to give me a link to the new materials?

Also the map is going to be like 7000x7000 studs at most, so I’d imagine that I would be fine using Terrain.

Just saying I think it might lag but parts would probably lag even more depending on the complexity heres a link to the new materials New Terrain, and Parts, and Built-In Materials, Oh my!

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