Map Making Options and Single Player

[Daynarr]

- is it possible to assign theme to an AI?

There is command to set a theme for each nation. It's "#specdom" command, but you will see it in manual.

- are AI of imp difficulty choosing more often themes?

Any AI on any difficulty can choose any theme, so you never know what are you up against. Themes are not unbalancing because they cost design points (well, most of them).

- is the AI able to perform blood hunt and rituals if situation permit, or is it restricted (hardcoded) to a few nations. Thinking here of Marignon with diabolical faith, or any other nations given circle master, either at start in scenario making or with a site.

Devs will know answer better then me.

- are the wrap around maps spherical (4 directions ) or cylindrical (2 directions) in their wrap?

Spherical (4 directions).

[Pocus]

thanks for the answers.

Originally posted by Daynarr:

quote:

---

- are the wrap around maps spherical (4 directions ) or cylindrical (2 directions) in their wrap?

Spherical (4 directions).

---

I have problem understanding what exactly does wrap-around. As province linking can be altered to our own choice (eg linking the provinces of two opposite edges), I suppose that the wraparound option is only used for scrolling purpose?

Also, am I right in assuming that you have no link detection algorithm in doms II, or does the one of Doms I still present, but optional?

What is a good map size? I was thinking of 4 1024x768 screen total, so 2048 x 1536 ? I know that with zoom it is not much an issue, but what are the average size of doms II maps made so far?

will we have a library of pre made sprites for forests and mountains? If no, do you feel its ok (for a fan made map) to use graphics from old games, like Heroes of Might and Magic III? I dont want to be accused of copyright infrigment (sp?)...

Last, what are the resolutions supported by doms II? 1024 is ok?

thank you again in sharing these infos.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Daynarr:

quote:

---

- are the wrap around maps spherical (4 directions ) or cylindrical (2 directions) in their wrap?

Spherical (4 directions). [/QB]

---

Not to nitpick (OK, who am I kidding? I am nitpicking ), but the typical wraparound theme (left to right and top to bottom) is not spherical; rather, it turns the map into a torus.

If you want a sphere, you should set thing up so that any "northernmost" Province is adjacent to every "northernmost" Province, and the same for "southernmost" Provinces - just like it is with big maps of the whole Earth.

[Pocus]

thats my fault, I'm loosy when it comes to 3D

[geo981010]

In regards to the "#neighbors" being mandatory:
Pros and Cons, Gandalf, which I think you've said before

It is a big con for your random map making, and I'd imagine it'd be pretty annoying for making new maps too. Since they have a Dom1 system that does this mapping, however, hopefully the mapedit tools can include a program to generate the neighbors it would have caught, and output them to a text file? I suppose Dom1 must have that matrix loaded into memory, so potentially just load a game with the file, and then some memory dump spelunking. Or the source code/algorithm/etc so a third party could do it

It's a big pro, however, for any third party map tools. With the neighbors list, you have all you need in the .map file to generate a complete distance matrix! Seperate post for that one coming (might be long)

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Pocus:


Some additional questions for further map making :
- is the AI able to perform blood hunt and rituals if situation permit, or is it restricted (hardcoded) to a few nations. Thinking here of Marignon with diabolical faith, or any other nations given circle master, either at start in scenario making or with a site.
- are the wrap around maps spherical (4 directions ) or cylindrical (2 directions) in their wrap?
- in doms I mountains didnt add resources to a province (to my dismay!). How terrain recognition and effect has changed? Will forests and mountains provinces have high resources intrinsicaly in Doms II?

Thanks in advance

- The AI performs bloodhunts and sacrifices if it has blood mages. In Dom I there was no blood hunts at all.

- Doughnut (4 directions)

- Mountains did increase resources in Dom I. Every province had a random die in resource value. Mountain pixels added to the die value, thus mountains was often but not always more resource rich. A similar mechanic applies to Dom II. There is a random resource value that is higher in mountains or forests.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Pocus:
I have problem understanding what exactly does wrap-around. As province linking can be altered to our own choice (eg linking the provinces of two opposite edges), I suppose that the wraparound option is only used for scrolling purpose?

Also, am I right in assuming that you have no link detection algorithm in doms II, or does the one of Doms I still present, but optional?

What is a good map size? I was thinking of 4 1024x768 screen total, so 2048 x 1536 ? I know that with zoom it is not much an issue, but what are the average size of doms II maps made so far?

will we have a library of pre made sprites for forests and mountains? If no, do you feel its ok (for a fan made map) to use graphics from old games, like Heroes of Might and Magic III? I dont want to be accused of copyright infrigment (sp?)...

Last, what are the resolutions supported by doms II? 1024 is ok?

Mainly for scrolling purposes. You must still add borders of the un-wrapped map edges.

Border detect is still present, but you can choose not to use it.

The largest maps of Dom II are 2400x1800 IIRC. There is no particular limit that I know of.

I intend to make a forest/mountain/feature library when I have time.

We do not have any issues with player contributed maps infringing on other works. As I have stated earlier, I would gladly play on a Middle Earth map.

Resolutions is not a problem. The game supports more resoulutions than I could ever care to use.

[Pocus]

Thanks for the answers, they were instructive.

About mountains in doms I, I have seen many provinces which were very poor resources wise. Perhaps the random value added was too small.
If you say that they are boosted in doms II fine.

if you ever implement a #income and #resource like #population, that would be an interesting feature btw.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted :
- are the wrap around maps spherical (4 directions ) or cylindrical (2 directions) in their wrap?
-- Spherical (4 directions).
--- I have problem understanding what exactly does wrap-around. As province linking can be altered to our own choice (eg linking the provinces of two opposite edges), I suppose that the wraparound option is only used for scrolling purpose?

Im guessing so. Since they have removed the "guessing" part of Dom 1 where you didnt have to specify which provinces are neighbors to each other. Now its a mandatory part of the map (something Im expecting to growl about). So its probably just that IF you build your map to be wrap-around then you can tell the game to allow the players to scroll the map. Which also means that the answer of spherical, cylindrical, or torus, doesnt really apply. The map maker can decide to do any of these.

Also, am I right in assuming that you have no link detection algorithm in doms II, or does the one of Doms I still present, but optional?

Right, for some reason they seem to have taken that out. They felt it "didnt work right" which I really never noticed. I played maps all the time where I had no neighbor commands without seeing any more irritating non-connects than existed purposely on player-made maps. And the old way you could always add a neighbor line to fix one rather than have a ton of them. I hate to see what the map file for one of my 450 province maps are going to be like now.

will we have a library of pre made sprites for forests and mountains? If no, do you feel its ok (for a fan made map) to use graphics from old games, like Heroes of Might and Magic III? I dont want to be accused of copyright infrigment (sp?)...

They said they would provide some but it might take abit for all the formating. It will probably be just a TGA file you can take from but you can do that with the maps that come with the game, or the demo. Maybe a GIMP brush file since thats what seems to be used (good choice) and then eventually the Users will create brush files for photo shop and corel draw and others.
You could grab the Dom2 example they put out and snag whats in the eye.tga

I printed out the eye.tga and have it here while I search the net trying to find a close match. Some sort of random generator would be great. Maybe some other old game that had a utility to generate maps that look at least close to what the Dom2 maps have. So far "close to" is about 50% off-target.

[ October 24, 2003, 13:01: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Im so impatient for the demo, and for the full copy Ive already ordered. If this goes anything like Dom 1 releases we all will instantly start generating wish-lists. (Hopefully we will all remember to say thank you for what is there before we start saying please)

Such as, I see screenshots of maps with the numbers displayed. Cool. Very handy. Is this view available in the editor or the game? Are the numbers from the map file or is there an option to see numbers as the game algorythm would guess them? Can the image be saved with the numbers for outside use? For that matter ALL of the view filters, since the maps can be so huge, can they be viewed all at once so they can be screen captured? can they be written out to a tga file? within the editor? within the game? No need to answer really, I will just twiddle my thumbs impatiently until I can find out for myself. They are probably very obvious and stupid (or already answered) questions.

Oh yeah, and can it be done with a command line switch for automation? I see so many possibles here. None of which Id expect to already be in. Im just thinking about outside editors, gimp scripts, and Online journals. "How I spent my holiday vacation as the Lord Pretender of the Marignon Nation"

-- Get a life? No thanks, just had one. Im retired now and get to play games all day.

[ October 25, 2003, 13:49: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]