Terrain Mod Questions--High Cliff!

[noahclem]

Hello all, I've been exploring terrain mod stuff off and on for awhile and recently got back into the thick of things. David's (djp's) recent post regarding the WMP websites and files led to me browsing their site again and finally discovering ShockTherapy's incredible rock mods and I decided then that I'd like to find a place in my terrain mod for all 5 of them. While I've been tinkering with terrain mods for many years, adjusting various values and substituting or altering textures, it was only yesterday that I created my first TM texture from scratch, a fairly simple grass texture that I'm still working on, especially wrt coloring so it both looks great and matches other textures well. I'm now trying to gather the basic TM grass textures and grass lot textures for comparison as well as all the TM textures I use or am consider using in order to determine the best color for my grass and to map out how changes in "temperature" and "moisture" cause the game to display different textures adjacent to each other. While messing around in TM controller files, mainly to review the .ini that controls what textures go where, I noticed something new (to me) as well as some old things I'd never quite sussed out.

1. A "high cliff" texture is included in all of the terrain types. Does anyone know if this is usable or what it does and how it works? I'd love to have additional cliff/rock options but couldn't find this referenced anywhere else in the mods.
2. "Shore cliffs"--how do these work, what texture do they use, and does it have anything to do with the above mentioned "high cliffs"?
3. "Deep sea bed" textures--same as above. I've noticed on occasion when terraforming deeper water areas to the surface that an unfamiliar darker texture can show up that seems like it might be associated with this but I've never been able to make it visible in normal play. Anyone have any experience with this or know how it might be usable? An additional seabed texture besides the beach one could be really useful in a variety of situations.
4. All TMs I'm familiar with use the "tropical" texture table in the .ini--has anyone ever used the "temperate", "desert", or "arctic" tables/types?

I'd love to hear back from anyone on any of these things, even if there's the smallest chance I might learn something from it. I'd also love to discuss TM possibilities regarding the areas of my questions or anything else really. I've no intent to "reinvent the wheel" or anything with my TM work but finally sorting out some things that have long proven difficult to get just right could be an exciting process and no doubt a better one if there's more feedback and ideas involved

PS, as a final point of curiosity, what do people think about the way TMs handle textures in different zooms? The most common method seems to be using the same texture for all levels which seems non-ideal at the least. I'll be creating my own textures at 2048 to allow at least 3 zoom levels without big tiling problems and exploring using smaller texture images for further zooms.

EDIT: More questions: LowKey wrote that he could never really get the driest two columns of the .ini to show up in game and mentioned similar difficulty with the warmest, to the extent that he posited suggesting a lowering of sea level to map makers. Does the same hold true for the wettest layers? In the case of the coldest it seems they're easily reached when one approaches the max elevation set in the terrain mod controller file.