Edi's Projects: Requests & Commentary

[Edi]

This thread is intended for discussing any and all things related to any projects in the Map Projects thread and any other issues that might have relevance.

Discussion and commentary of the Dom3 DB is also welcome here, since if anybody needs to specifically ask me any questions, this will be a good place for it. So, fire away.

[normalphil]

A general request.

You're right, the random map generator as is is great. It's amazing. It completely defeats the purpose of taking existing scans and image files, opening up in photoshop, and putting little 1x1 pixel white dots everywhere.

So the thing I'm interested in seeing is the thing that the random map generator just can't do- /worlds/.

Something huge, watery-while-not-having-so-many-actual-water-provinces-you-might-as-well-surrender-to-oceana-on-turn-one (much bigger water provinces than the random generator), and /wrap-around/ (horizontally).

[BandarLover]

All right.Dom 3 DB question time...

How come everytime I try to open it, it is gibberish? What program do I need to get at this stuff? I've tried notepad, crimson editor, word....

[Ballbarian]

You need Open Office:
http://www.openoffice.org/

[Edi]

Thanks, for covering that, Ballbarian.

normalphil, that's a good point. You might be interested in knowing then that the new big Faerun is going to have more sea provinces than even the old 424 version, and a fair number of them will also be big. The idea is to put enough sea room to comfortably fit all the UW nations on the map.

Something else that the RMG also can't do is thematic maps, but I suppose that is a synonym for worlds in this context. I Suppose there will be a demand for user made maps, as evidenced by e.g. Loemendor, because instead of being completely random, they are designed, often with something particular in mind.

The RMG also gets a big boost from Ballbarian's RanDom utility, because it allows setting border width to 0, running whatever map you want with whatever parameters and then you can just fire the thing up in GIMP or whatever, use replace by color to turn all the white dots to background color and redesign the map from the ground up on the basis of the map graphic. To reproduce that same map in different colors, just pluck the random seed from the map file and write it down, then run RanDom with as many variations as you want.

[BandarLover]

Thanx.

Have I mentioned lately all you guys are awesome?

[Sombre]

We don't get tired of hearing it, trust me.

[Gandalf Parker]

An interesting thing that RanDom will also allow is to run a map with multiple color sets. So you can do a fancy map for a web page of a long running game, and one thats abit more bare for actual play (easier on the eyes). Even one thats just borders and try to color it in for who has what province as the game progresses.

[Edi]

To reiterate what I said in the Thuggity Thug thread when people asked about the Faerun map, the first Dom3 version is fairly well along the way. Province borders were finished yesterday, now all that needs be done is place the white dots, do terrain assignment in the map editor and then add special provinces and it'll be ready to roll. Give me two or three weeks and it'll be done, after which I can get to work on a smaller version. This one is going to have 500+ provinces at a guesstimate.

[MaxWilson]

That's great! I'm not so much about new mod nations, but I really enjoy poking through new maps, and I enjoyed the Forgotten Realms gold box games from a couple of decades ago.

-Max