Comprehensive Biome Overhaul - Realism/theme focus

I feel like the biomes as they currently are appear very dated regarding varied assets and overall density of environmental textures and objects.

I really love the MPLogue's Better Biomes but feel the density there is just too thick and really gets in the way over gameplay.

Today I decided to mash my Wasteland Biome mod in with a custom Better Biome's object density and this is what I came up with.

This is the transition from Forest to Wasteland, and a few Wasteland alone pics. I'm itching to do this with all the biomes. Let me know what you folks think.

 

[Riamus]

Looks good. I'd have to see how it worked for driving off-road through it, though. It looks nice, but if I'm having to constantly dodge trees like we used to have to dodge iron in the wasteland, I would end up not using it. More variety of tree and plant assets can be a better option than getting too crazy with density. That, or use plants and bushes that don't block movement to increase density rather than trees. Since I am always off-road unless I'm in town (and often then as well), anything that makes that a hassle doesn't thrill me, no matter how nice it looks.

I haven't used Better Biomes, partially because it looked a bit too dense and partially because of all the fallen trees that would make driving a pain, but I have used Dashu Trees and that one looks really nice, though it's only for forest and desert. It isn't that dense, but it gives you a lot of variety, which I think helps more than density.

 

[warmer]

Looks good. I'd have to see how it worked for driving off-road through it, though. It looks nice, but if I'm having to constantly dodge trees like we used to have to dodge iron in the wasteland, I would end up not using it. More variety of tree and plant assets can be a better option than getting too crazy with density. That, or use plants and bushes that don't block movement to increase density rather than trees. Since I am always off-road unless I'm in town (and often then as well), anything that makes that a hassle doesn't thrill me, no matter how nice it looks.

I haven't used Better Biomes, partially because it looked a bit too dense and partially because of all the fallen trees that would make driving a pain, but I have used Dashu Trees and that one looks really nice, though it's only for forest and desert. It isn't that dense, but it gives you a lot of variety, which I think helps more than density.

Better Biomes is definitely impossible to drive through due to the density. I have cut everything down to about 1/5 to 1/6 of it's typical spawn rate and it still feels really thick and wild. Making your way through with a bicycle is fairly easy, which feels realistic. I haven't tried with anything else yet.

I live in a pretty untamed forest that hasn't seen any maintenance in the 25 yrs before I bought the property, and in all honesty, Better Biomes is very realistic in that regard, it just takes away from the fun because your line of sight is so short.

 

[Riamus]

Better Biomes is very realistic in that regard

I agree that it can be realistic, depending what kind of forest you're in. But realism isn't as important to me as being able to easily drive around the map. That was a reason I liked Dashu Trees. I did modify it a bit to remove a couple trees that didn't fit the location and most seeds so I wasn't gathering a ton of different seeds every time I cut something down - I wasn't going to plant them anyhow. But it definitely improved how the game looked without messing up being able to easily drive around the map, even with a supercharger.

 

[EvilPolygons]

I did the same sort of thing with Better Biomes, but for different reasons as I prefer the extra gameplay difficulties that come with the mod. Basically, I wrote a python script that parses through the better biomes xml, reduces all its probability values by xx% (I'm using 20% reduction currently) and then automatically generates an override mod instead of altering the original mod.

The realism of better biomes is why I love it, but the performance hit was just enough to start causing latency issues when using frame generation. So for me it was all about fps and input latency. With a 20% reduction in deco density, it noticeably improved performance but honestly the visual difference is barely noticeable.

I've considered tweaking it so the desert biome specifically gets a much larger reduction though. The low Sonoran desert areas in Arizona have some vegetation, sure, but not like that!