Custom map generation programs

[zircher]

Cyrien's modifications are interesting. They generate the dense systems that I want. But, due to the nature of the beast, there is a randomness to the ordering. I can see the need to go 'low level' and write to the map file directly to ensure what I want.
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TAZ

[Cyrien]

I am going to try for something a little more complex later... let you know if I get anything outa it.

The warp points with six points at even distribution would have to be modded by hand... unless you can get MM to hard code in an option for that.

Hrmm... still interesting.

As for combat. No worries there. I have found in my own experiments (trying to give Gas Giants a number of moons consistent with what we humans have seen in our own system) that the combat simulator can easily do about 16-20 planets at once in combat without it getting to crowded for ships to find their way. I only play with strategic for the most part and its worked pretty well.

Gives new value to the weapon platforms... each moon might be easy to take out but taken as a whole...

[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 28 September 2001).]

[zircher]

Cyrien:
> I am going to try for something a little
> more complex later... let you know if I
> get anything outa it.

Grand.

> The warp points with six points at even
> distribution would have to be modded by
> hand... unless you can get MM to hard code
> in an option for that.

One reason why I hope to be able to write .MAP files in the future. It would be very tedious to have to do several hundred systems by hand to get the layout that I want. I'd like to be able to write a utility to spawn other layouts like dense grids, triangluar battle fields for a three player arena, or other regular geometric arrangements.

> As for combat. No worries there. I have
> found in my own experiments (trying to
> give Gas Giants a number of moons consistent
> with what we humans have seen in our own
> system) that the combat simulator can
> easily do about 16-20 planets at once in
> combat without it getting to crowded for
> ships to find their way. I only play with
> strategic for the most part and its worked
> pretty well.

That's good to hear.
--
TAZ

[Lemmy]

quote:

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Originally posted by zircher:

...Given the map editor, I could eventually figure out the file spec...

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well, i tried that yesterday, i made a simple map with one system, saved it in two files, test.map and test2.map, and then compared them, guess what, they weren't the same

[geoschmo]

Cyrien,

The error you were getting was no big deal. A simple typo between object 7 and 8 in the Systemtypes.txt. Here's the correction.

Geoschmo

[Cyrien]

Yah I picked it up myself going back through (don't you hate it when your brain goes too far ahead of your typing speed).

Then I made several more and had to redo those. Makes things more interesting.

So far though my biggest triumph is in finding different ways of generating range check errors.

Looks like this is a job that needs to be painstakingly done by hand or accept the naturual failures in the system. Or get MM to code something new in.

I'll look for a little more as I have a few more ideas but I don't think anything is really going to come of it. We shall see though.

[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 29 September 2001).]