[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
A good place to start might be with the source code for the old map generator.
http://www.ont.com/~keldon/dommap.html

Well, that might indeed be a good place to start, but instead I'm going to mostly ignore it and write a new program from the ground up in C++. Mostly because C++ has the STL and decent string handling routines, and OO design will allow me to write cleaner, more extensible code.

For those who haven't already guessed: this is an announcement that dom2map, a random map generator for Dominions II, is now in development. Some of you may know me from the newsgroup - I made some modifications to Keldon's Dom I RMG, including unique province names based on terrain (this may be unnecessary in Dom II but I'll wait and see), config file support, compressed Targa support and others I won't take up too much space by listing here.

Design goals for dom2map:

• Should be able to run on any system dom2 itself will run on. I hope to be able to achieve this easily by using standard C++ that will compile under a variety of freely available compilers for various platforms, and a command line interface (but see below).
• The first release Version will be able to generate playable maps. Probably the first Version will do no more map scripting than is necessary for playability, and increased scripting capabilities will be added in later Versions.
• As much as possible will be user-configurable using files that can be edited with common text editors (possibly XML, if I can find a good library for handling XML - does anyone here know of one?).
• To be added (hopefully) soon after release: support for wraparound maps, increased scripting capabilities (like some of the things Gandalf is talking about on this and other threads), island hop/sea tunnel links, land/sea borders drawn offshore (like most hand drawn maps), force pop/income/res/supply based on terrain/area (if possible).
• If there is demand I may try to write a frontend that makes it easier to modify some options and launch dom2map from the frontend. Such a frontend would probably be less portable, though - although I will try to use cross-platform libraries if I can. The frontend is definitely (for me) a lower priority than the generator itself, though.

I don't have a release date yet - obviously it will have to be sometime after I get my hands on the full DomII map specs, but I also have a lot of coding left to do.