traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Ok the site has been up for abit. Here are the impressions I get from the logs.

RandomOps.exe high interest
WEvsTHEM scenario some interest
Poke in the Eye scenario low interest

MAPS:
tiny
small
medium
large most of the interest is in Large
huge some interest in Huge
epic

OK so I guess I need to look at the program for randomly generating opponents to maybe improve it. But Im afraid that most of the improvments are GUI (user menu). Thats not really my area or the programming langauge I use (raw basic). Maybe some Visual (basic or C) programmer can take a look at it. Even a web interface can be used if some perl or java person wants to discuss it.

WE vs THEM can be improved. From other indications, putting it on a different map might help. A large map instead of epic size? I havent heard feedback on WEvsTHEM. Does anyone have suggestions for making atlantis, ermor, rlyeh, stronger AI opponents?

Im alittle disappointed at the showing on PokeEye. That type of random game was one of my favorite to work on. Any suggestions? Comments?

The maps are showing me to be right (well ok and abit wrong). I figured that the small, medium, large maps would be covered pretty well by the manual map makers. Doing the really big maps is probably more work than its worth manually. OK I knew that I was probably one of the few who really enjoyed the maximum-sized (Epic) maps. I like to manage my nation for quite awhile before going to war. But it looks like most of you feel that large is good enough, huge maybe. I also see a fair amount of tiny maps being grabbed which I guess I should have counted on also. Everyone should have a tiny map. Im kindof surprised no one has created a "good" one (manual, artistic) yet.

Come on people. "Users have forgotten how to pay for free things anymore". Lets prove that wrong OK? Not just me but all the fan sites. Praise where it pleased you, suggestions where it didnt, information if it was broke, and generally let the people who are doing the stuff on the fan sites know that someone is paying attention. We need to "pay" for their work if we want to see more.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

The problem with poke in the eye is, after you have played it and laught about it, you wont play it again. In addition, I could imagine many of the more serious gamers here find the Idea of map with so many random attributes much to confusing/against their play still to even download it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ May 06, 2004, 19:32: Message edited by: PrinzMegaherz ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

I'm a "slow" and easily distracted gamer (->wife, job, other hobbys etc.). I have the game now for ...4 months and haven't even come around to play every nation.

Between the beautiful new maps that are being made by fans, some really interesting and time consuming mods, and your fine (albeit "raw")maps, there is just not enough time to use everything to the extend I wish I could.
But be asured that I really like the random maps, ESPECIALLY the epic ones. (Though I have to admit I haven't finished a game on epic yet.)
I haven't tried poke in the eye.... yet.

[Sigh. I just don't have enough time to do everything I want to.]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Poke in the Eye has been around a bit longer too. Maybe the lower hits are an indication of that more than overall interest? People already have it, etc.?

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">When I want to test stuff I usally use Clash of the Titans. Pretty small.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ooh but its no fun to play over and over. The .map part of it is re-randomized every day at the site. Its a fast download. I would hope they would pick up a fresh one once in awhile.

Im to the point now that I could actually write a tiny program they could download and re-randomize it on their machine but I was trying to get an idea of where the interests were.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

I've got a Poke In The Eye game going. It has been very fun and interesting, though there are some silly things, but that's ok. I got stuck in a very long Man vs. Soul Gate war of attrition. I have two independent castles which I have not been able to spare the forces to capture, so they just contribute half taxes while their forts remain full of scary random units. Some invading AI armies have also come and tried to siege them, but failed. That's actually rather amusing. Also amusing is I started with a cadre of undead units that Man usually wouldn't have. Some vampires which only my Pretender (druid) is capable of leading around, and some mummies which I got to learn the hard way would disease my own troops in battle (so I had some commanders with regeration items waiting around for me to research Gift of Health, which is always amusing in an SP game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ). I think it adds some spice, and not too much nonsense. The starting magic items were amusing too.

Room for improvement would be if you can limit it so that random forts don't appear in the wrong type for their terrain (land forts underwater), and it might be a good idea not to overwrite the nation's capital fort, though I guess that might be ok. My Man started out with something that looks and acts like an Emorian citadel, but has no name.

In general though, I'd recommend giving Poke a try. It's interesting and provides some unusual combinations and circumstances, and some tough independents.

I too didn't realize that more random Versions were available all the time.

A variant of Poke where the changes weren't entirely random, could be good, too. Something with random placement and specifics, but with more controlled and perhaps thematic units and items instead of pure random. "Dragon Sprinkle", for example. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Or how about "After the Vampire Wars" (All the provinces start out with bunches of extra priests, friars, Just Man's Crosses, Herald Lances, enchanted swords, Flambeaux, Angels, lifeless constructs... remainders of a need for everyone do develop anti-vampire equipment. Of course, it would have the amusing side-effect of discouraging people from taking undead nations and pretenders... might be popular amongst MP folks wanting to avoid having to deal with VQ's. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

PvK

[ May 07, 2004, 20:25: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

.
.
.
THANKS for the great comments. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Im getting capable of that now. I had to relearn "bit math" to translate that terrain command. I guess I could do it now since castles would be a fairly small table. I was thinking mostly of the units. You might not have seen it but in the first round of the game (did it seem to think a really long time) many units drowned. Water units on land, and land units in water. But then thats also why some of the provinces seemed to have no special troops, maybe thats a "feature" instead of a bug. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Is that an old download? I thought I fixed that. It was much worse. I had started some games where I didnt even own my starting province. I would be under seige right away, or sometimes I was the seiger of someone elses castle. That was a strange game, starting right away with someone elses gem income instea of mine.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I had a concept for a Semi-Random game but no one showed an interest in helping.
http://www.dom2minions.com/SemiRandom.shtml

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sounds like Leif's random generator would be good for that. He has one that uses theme files to set alot of variables.

[ May 07, 2004, 20:44: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I did notice that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I started out with an acquatic commander, which is how I started with a Sceptre of Authority, which I stole from him immediately, and game in handy against the Soul Gate forces later. I started out in a costal province and ordered him to sea on turn one, but IIRC although he took the order, he didn't make it even to go die against the independent forces there.

Still, I think it's actually a feature as you said, even if it is weird. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Quote:

... Is that an old download? I thought I fixed that. It was much worse. I had started some games where I didnt even own my starting province. I would be under seige right away, or sometimes I was the seiger of someone elses castle. That was a strange game, starting right away with someone elses gem income instea of mine.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It was 2-4 months old. I think I have the right gem income for Man (air, nature, whatever...) but a funky unnamed death castle. Maybe my castle was stomped by a random castle, but it wouldn't always happen?

Quote:

I had a concept for a Semi-Random game but no one showed an interest in helping. http://www.dom2minions.com/SemiRandom.shtml

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ya that's exactly what I had in mind. What kind of help were you looking for?

Quote:

... Sounds like Leif's random generator would be good for that. He has one that uses theme files to set alot of variables.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Again, sounds like the same sort of thing. Now, if I just had a pile of free time... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well I keep starting it and going nowhere. I started going thru all the monsters and grouping them into lots of categories. Mountains, water, plains, dragons, flyers, undead, devils. Doing that started the creative juices going for special provinces. I never did finish that part, nor did I get into the sites, populations, castles, and equipment.

The actual code for it wouldnt be hard but some kindof sorting system needs to be decided on. Once a few get started I was thinking of using it as a "starting point" for new mappers. Getting them interested in using the map commands to fuly design just one province at a time and adding it to the pile for random placements.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Ok. Perhaps it could start with a list of the things that are found on most maps - the flags like terrain types, large, magic rich, etc. Each special would have a set of those as a prerequisite, and a rarity or commonness factor.

The program could take two input files:

* One input file would be the map file from a typical non-special map. This would allow any map file to be embellished with semi-randoms. Ideally, any provinces already given special items would not be modified.

* The other input file would be a list of special types of site with any special names, starting units, or sites to add. This would allow different files to be generated for different kinds of effects.

The output file would be a map file with a different name from the original.

I don't know if writing this is helpful, or if you had already figured out a (possibly different) scheme. Just trying to help.

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Actually it can get alittle more specific than that. A program could read in the map and figure the terrains for each providence. Then it could read in all the neighbor lines. Now it should be possible to find a province which is Mountain or Swamp, and one which is an Island (surrounded by water neighbors), or a lake (water surrounded by land), or a shoreline province, or maybe even decent chokepoints on the map.

Im picturing seperate province files that can be randomly selected and inserted into the .map such as
#land XX
#landname "there be DRAGONS HERE"
#poptype XX (trolls)
#magicsite "something appropriate here"
#magicsite "something appropriate here"
#magicsite "something appropriate here"
#commander "Carrion Dragon"
#equip "anti-magic amulet"
#bodygrd 10 "Iron Dragon"
#units 20 "Dragon Men"
#commander "Red Dragon"
#units 20 "fire drake"
etc etc etc

If there was a decent way of marking the province files. Such as "Dragons Lair" being for mountains, and the "BoogeyMan Bog" being for swamp, the "Crystal Spires" for an island. That way the program can randomly select from the many (hopefully a ton of player offered) province files, then try to find an approprite location for it and insert it there. If we get up to having a hundred files, and I randomly insert 10-20 in each of the daily random generated games then it seems like it could be a worthwhile project.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Gandalf,
I normally lurk on this forum, but I wanted to stick my head in to say I *really* appreciate your set of nation specific random opponents maps. Being able to download a map and jump right into an interesting game with whatever nation I wanted to play is great.

Poke in the Eye appeals less to me because it is so clearly different from MP games. The random opponent maps I can see as sort of practice in dealing with unexpected situations that might actually arise in a normal game. Poke in the Eye creates obviously impossible initial conditions.

That being said, I also enjoyed Orania Nasty Edition and think the semi-random map idea sounds wonderful; which I guess contradicts my complaint about impossible initial conditions in Poke in the Eye.

I have some experience programming in Python and made a brief attempt to code an automatic map modifier to play with, but I ran into trouble based on not really understanding the rules of map commands.

I’d be interested in contributing to an attempt at a semi random map generator if I were not so busy with school. As it stands now I don’t really have time to play Dominions in the first place.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

I really liked the idea behind the "Poke in the Eye" map. I just don't like the map itself that much. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

But if you ever need help with creating "province theme parks" you can sign me right up. I've done a few scenarios based on a similar idea with themed provinces. Just decide upon a suitable format and we could start a thread on the subject.

[ May 08, 2004, 08:37: Message edited by: Wauthan ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks, I needed that. Its always good to have someone "pay" for the free stuff with a comment or two.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually the random opponents thing is the shortest and simplest of the ones Ive done. I can send you my code and you could take a stab at Pythoning a Versionf or yourself. Something where you can say which nations you dont want AI's and which map to use.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, this game is dangerously addictive. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I understand that. When I did it the only thing out was the demo. Ive been tempted to choose a tiny/small/medium/large/huge/epic map from the generator piles and do a Version of each. Or maybe re-write it into a stand-alone program where you can download it and run it choosing which map to use.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Im beginning to get interested in that again. I see alot of benefits from it. Not only do I think it might make interesting game-maps but might also start a wave of new map-makers. Let them start small and work up to a themed map. Hmmmm Theme Parks. I like that. Maybe we have a name for the project. Better than the Semi-Random Map Project.

The problem is that I have alot more ideas than I have get-up-and-go http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ May 08, 2004, 14:56: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I threw together a Dragon Sprinkle .ran set-up, and included it in http://home.Online.no/~rmoldskr/Domi...DomScripts.zip The randomized maps on my page won't be randomized for some hours yet, but when they are they'll include a Dragon Sprinkle variant.

I might see about an "After the Vampire Wars" tomorrow.

Edited to add:

I've added an After the Vampire Wars randomization as well. The maps have been regenerated, so you can check out both of those randomizations in action by downloading any of the maps at http://home.Online.no/~rmoldskr/Domi...nion_maps.html

[ May 09, 2004, 12:03: Message edited by: Leif_- ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Wow, Leif, that's great! Now I must figure out how to rob some time so I can try them out!

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I threw together a Dragon Sprinkle .ran set-up, and included it in

I've added an After the Vampire Wars randomization as well. The maps have been regenerated, so you can check out both of those randomizations in action by downloading any of the maps at http://home.Online.no/~rmoldskr/Domi...nion_maps.html </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Leif, you are taking the Lord of Randoms title away from me. I better get back to upgrading some of my projects.

One note by the way, some of your random maps I really like but I cant get a full view. It might say 220 provinces, and I can see about how much water there is, but I dont want to download it to find out if 120 of those are crammed into the water. Can you add land/water numbers to the thumbnail views?

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure, just give me a couple of days. (Oh, and you might also be interested to know that I store the command-line for dommap in a text-file in the .zip together with the map.)

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Implemented and applied.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Implemented and applied. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heehee. And just had to go over the top didnt you? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Well Ok I see how you generated the numbers there. Hmmmm abit much bit-math for me but I might steal the idea someday http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Hmmm I wonder if the web-based game site might not incorporate some of the randomizer routines as game options. As far as I know the players must have the .tga but not the .map file.

Also not a bad thought for challenge play. Generate a map (or select one from our sets) and make the tga available for download but offer a game without letting the players have access to the .map file. I wonder how many "expert" players that might mess up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ May 11, 2004, 19:35: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">*chuckles* Not really. I had to parse the .map file and do some bit-fickling on the terrain value to get an accurant count of the number of land and sea provinces in the map anyway, so there wasn't really any extra work in adding the rest of the data.

I've updated the DomScripts.zip, so you can always download it and steal the algorithm from the make_map_description subroutine in run_dom_map.pl

As for adding randomisation in as an option on the web-based game site, I believe that should be relatively straight forward (but don't look at me - I try to stay away from web stuff. It's evil. Evil, I tell you.)

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Today's Random_7 is a very cool-looking map with two continents separated by a sea.

One thing that might be good would be to re-roll the maps and/or tweak the algorithm until you get a bit more spread of terrain types. There are many that have zero provinces with certain terrain types, but tons of another type.

E.g.:
194 provinces in total, of which 5 are sea and 189 are land.
0% farm, 54% forest, 74% mountain, 0% swamp, 0% waste, 0% river.
95% small, 2% large provinces. 6 nostart provinces.

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Also there is a bug somewhere, hopefully just in the web statistics, where it says:

On average a province borders to 2.77 other provinces

It is always 2.something, but visually it is clear that the real average is much higher.

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, actually the paramaters to dommap is choosen randomly for every map, so sometimes the generated maps end up rather unplayable. I should probably tweak the range for the various parameters, but there's so many of them!

Ah, thanks for pointing out the problem with the number of neigbours - I forgot that every #neighbour line affects two provinces. Whoops. :-p

Anyway, you might want to try the current Random_8 for the After the Vampire Wars variant. Should be an appropriate map.

[ May 11, 2004, 20:13: Message edited by: Leif_- ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mine are limited more into a "reasonable" set of ranges http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...andomMaps.html with one group being "chaos" running more in the style Leif does. But Leif's are run thru some gimp routines to pretty them up (the same could be done to mine but manually), and he runs some randomizers to generate alternate playing .map files for each one. Eventually we may move closer to each other in our outputs as we snag each others scripts http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Ya maybe if the map terrain were interpreted before the beautification process were applied, it would come out with a wider spread of province types. Of course, being able to tell what province type it's supposed to be, as a player, could be tough.

So, another idea: a script that was going along and adding names to provinces, could also add the terrain types after the name, perhaps in shorthand. Just a thought.

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not a bad idea. I have some partially done scripts for creating province names.
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...PlainsName.txt
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion/maps/plains.bas
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...orestNames.txt
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion/maps/forest.bas

Since the addition of the terrain codes I havent gone back to use them the way I had planned to name provinces. It would be easy to add a code to the end of each name.

And the "Theme Parks" project (Wauthan renamed it from Semi-Random Map project) does need a shorthand for terrains to be developed. It would overlap nicely.

[ May 12, 2004, 01:09: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The terrain type is assigned by dommap before we run the image through the prettifier, so the problem is really in the range I choose the dommap parameters from.

Terrain-dependant names are a good idea, but you'd have to generate the entire name from scratch, so you'd need some kind of generator for random maps. Quite doable, of course, but I've got a couple of other items higher up on the to-do list.

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

Ok. Interesting. Would it be helpful if someone contributed a list of additional appropriate province names for various terrain?

PvK

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It would be useful to me but I would break it down. Did you look at the code Ive done for that? It just has two lists. One for interesting descriptors. And the other is mostly just the thesaurus list for the type of terrain. Such as..

data "Forever", "Sparse", "Deformed", "Outgrown", "Wishful"
data "Greedy", "Great", "Lilliputian", "Guardian", "Gateway"
data "Giant", "Draconian", "Dionysian", data "Deviant", "Defiant", "Lair", "Fair"
data "Raven", "Bluebird", "Blackbird", data "Twilight", "Midnight", "Woefull"
data "Watching", "Plentiful", "Lawful", "Fruitful"

data "Forest", "Woods", "Copse", "Grove", "Woodlands", "Timber"
data "Timberland", "Woodlot", "Wildwood", "Thicket", "Growth"
data "Trees", "Canopy", "Maze", "Woodland", "Wood", "Forestry"
data "Wilderness", "Willows", "Oaks", "Saplings", "Orchard"

Running the routine gives me alot more variants than a static list would. Im thinking of adding a routine to create some random strings also just for full variety. Im shooting for having no exact matches on my Epic sized maps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: traffic report: [url]www.Dom2minions.com[/url]
 

I hadn't looked at a script yet. Which one should I check out?

So so far the adjectives don't really correlate to anything yet, but just provide variety for the meaningful nouns?

And so far, the nouns only describe single traits of a province, even though a province can have multiple traits, right?

PvK