Quote:
Originally Posted by VedalkenBear
If someone could explain the underlying logic of SemiRandom, I could try programming it in Java.
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Here is the original page from the old Dom2Minions site.
http://www.dom3minions.com/~minion/SemiRandom.shtml
The program is based on the fact that map commands allow much more management than most maps use. Some, such as Faerun, have programmed provinces with logical population choices, defenders, magic sites, name, etc. Those are great (and way too few) but the pro and con is that there is some loss to replayability. My totally chaoticized maps are called "interesting" but they can be irritating in the total lack of logic in what it throws into the map.
This projects concept is allowing all players to design a province. Such as: "The Shire" with a population of hoburgs, magic sites boosting supplies, and some interesting defenders. These are converted to Dom3 map commands and placed in a file where the name of the file includes codes to specify something such as "farmland" to control its placement.
So the SemiRandom program reads a map file and randomly places these planned provinces. You can tell it the percentage you want as designed vs being left to the games randomizer. As SemiRandom reads the map file, if it finds a farmland province then it chooses a farmland file and inserts it there. When it writes out the modified version of the .map file there will be special provinces included.
Thats the basic of it (pun intended). Of course Ballbarian has added wonderful extensions. The @ sign allowing for a small list so something like the guards equipment or name can be randomly selected from a short group of logical choices. And recognition of special provinces such as island, lake, peninsula, volcano, cave, etc. And lately the ability to add pre-designed logical gods/scales for AIs
The effectiveness of the program depends on having many pre-designed provinces and god files. Enough that we dont seem to keep running into the same things over and over. I think we are getting close to that but Id love to see more people turn in some so we can get more variety.
Gandalf Parker
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The Socializing Soloist, the Mad Mapper and the Minimalist Modder, the Lord of Chaos, the Prophet for Random, Experimenter of Extremes, He Who Will Not Normalize Standardize Specialize (or Finalize), He Who Public Domains All.