OT: Starcraft II and Elemental

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by sector24

Yes, the same seed will give an identical land mass, just unique goodie huts and resources and neutral monsters, etc. In the current version there are about...15 seeds across all 4 map sizes? Something very small. There is of course the promise of "dozens" of map seeds coming, but still that's not quite random. To equate it to dominions, it's like having dozens of pre-set maps (Parganos, Silent Seas, etc.) but with random magic sites. I would not call that random map generation, and I don't think any Dominions player would either.

Pros and Cons. There are times that I wish the mapgen in Dom3 would take a seed.

There is usually a seed. You just dont always get access to it. Unless it randomly reseeds in mid generation its the same whether you know there is a seed or not. Creating a true random in programming languages is a history subject all its own.

And a seed generally means at least 65535 options. Thats alot of maps.

If properly used a seeded generator can create a map hundreds of times larger than other games without adding to the size of the game, cpu load, or memory use.