Map Making Options and Single Player

[Pocus]

Originally posted by geo981010:
(snip)
The good news is with the game going Gold, at least now Illwinter will likely start adding features shortly So perhaps sometimes soon these issues will be addressed... The advanced start might be tricky to add, but the castle and startup troops would seem to be not that complex (said as a person who has never seen their code, of course!).

as for the advanced start (multi starting provinces), some randomisation of what is in the provinces, and random shuffling (disabling/enabling some AIs without player knowledge), this can be done with an external utility which modify the map file. In fact such utility is nearly done (I will release it with the Rlyeh/Dreamlands map that is under way - I aim for december).

[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

[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 ]

[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)