The Random Map Generator and Maps - Page 3

Pocus · #21 October 27th, 2003, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Johan K:

Mountain and forest provinces are already more difficult to pass through in dom II, so it should not be necessary to reduce their size too.

I suppose it means less supplies? Because I always wondered what the 'strategic move' line in dom 2 progress page meant?

Kristoffer O · #22 October 27th, 2003, 09:05 AM

Strategic move is the number of provinces your units can move. Basically: HI=1, LI=2, LC=3. If your army enters a forest it stops unless it has forest survival. Thus Pangaea is not hindered by forests where the knights of Ulm would move one province a turn.

Undead and lighter flying units usually have a move of 3.

Movement is less generous than in Dom I, but terrains have greater inpact on your army movements and reqruitment.

Pocus · #23 October 27th, 2003, 10:33 AM

wow, major feature change that went unoticed until now!

so I suppose strategic move is the friendly move of doms I (no decision making - shall I strat move or not - in fact).
Does this means that Pythium no longer have his +1 move range?

thats change quite a bit the gameplay.

user feedback pet peeve: I have a group of Cardaces and Hoplites. Can I know, before trying, that I will strat move one province because of Hoplites, or is it trial and error process until you know which unit belong to which group?

Kristoffer O · #24 October 27th, 2003, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pocus:
wow, major feature change that went unoticed until now!

so I suppose strategic move is the friendly move of doms I (no decision making - shall I strat move or not - in fact).
Does this means that Pythium no longer have his +1 move range?

thats change quite a bit the gameplay.

user feedback pet peeve: I have a group of Cardaces and Hoplites. Can I know, before trying, that I will strat move one province because of Hoplites, or is it trial and error process until you know which unit belong to which group?

Legionaires have 2 strat move, not 1 as other HI.
It is displayed as: Move 1/8 (1=strat move 8=battle ap)

There is no warning saying that you are trying to move too far when I come to think about it. But your commander will not change from defend -> move unless a move is possible.

Pocus · #25 October 28th, 2003, 02:01 AM

fair enough this dual AP info.
thanks.

TomWChick · #26 October 28th, 2003, 02:05 AM

Quote:

user feedback pet peeve: I have a group of Cardaces and Hoplites. Can I know, before trying, that I will strat move one province because of Hoplites, or is it trial and error process until you know which unit belong to which group?

Pocus,

It can be baffling at first. Before I read the manual, I was dinking around with the game wondering why I couldn't move my units two spaces in friendly terrain a la Dom I.

But once you grokk the whole strategic move thing, it becomes second nature when you're arranging your armies. Also, IMO, the new terrain rules about forests, mountains, and swamps make fliers that much more valuable. Ultimately, I think it gives the maps a lot more personality.

-Tom

Pocus · #27 October 28th, 2003, 02:16 AM

I would be overjoyed to read the manual

(the demo has none)

Gandalf Parker · #28 November 25th, 2003, 04:01 PM

I played with the DomMap-0.9 source abit. (it was never released as a windows Version, only linux raw source code)

I can get it to create a Dom2 map (one that will come up in the Dom2 MapEditor). Alot can be done there without really being a C-programmer but it looks like it will take a programmer to make it really work well.

The .map file it writes is WAY off. Apparently Dom1 and Dom2 number the provinces in a different pattern? So even though it does write out the #neighbors they are all over the map. Interesting for one game maybe but not useful.

Dom2 allows maps of any size but the DomMap limits it to the old 600x800. I may be able to find that variable and get it to accept higher values.

Certain warnings such as "too many neighbors" need to be updated to the new limits also.

From the looks of the code it appears that he had started on some of the other ideas that were discussed. Such as terrain notes for each province. But it seems to be from the conversations prior to Illwinter deciding to add it. It also looks like he was possibly working on incorporating some of my stuff as far as adding the ability to put in additional units based on sensible placing from the terrain notes.

Well I will keep twiddling with it. If you want to keep track of where Im at so far keep checking
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion/random.tga
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion/random.map
which is where Im dumping my test runs.

Gandalf Parker · #29 November 25th, 2003, 04:38 PM

OK I got the targa to be bigger but I have a problem. The old code made the targa 600x800 with the map being variable size inside that image.

If I want to allow for the increased image handling of Dom2 then I have to pick a new image size. What would be good for a random map? Dom2 now allows 500 provinces. I was thinking of 1024x2048

Gandalf Parker · #30 November 25th, 2003, 05:10 PM

OK Im liking the results so far. Im running with a targa size of 1600x1200 because it was one of the screen sizes my monitor allowed so Im thinking its a common size.

This is generating some very interesting maps. Of course people can create maps with less than 500 provinces. And with a map-image within the targa less than the max which gives them a black boundary they can write things or add pictures in. I LOVE how interesting the province shapes are getting. Very strategic

Unfortunately the .map it creates is still fairly worthless. But it still wont be bad as a starting point. An idea spur for people who want to manually do maps.

Now if we can just get some GIMP brushes for landscape items

[ November 25, 2003, 15:27: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]