new map generator

[paradoxharbinger]

@manuk

the pcount command is used to specify exactly the number of provinces to generate, so what you typed would create 175 land provinces and 25 water provinces. if you are looking to decrease the total amount of water on the map, try lowering the sea level, use:
tlevel: sea num
right now, sea level is at 38 by default, try lowering the number. or you could use psize to define the relative size of land and water provinces and it will pack as many on as will fit

but the dimensions are messed up because of that comma between the 2000's. the arguments are not separated by commas, just spaces. the syntax is like this:
command: arg1 arg2 arg3 ...;

or in the event that no arguments are required, e.g. verbose:
command;

if this doesnt get you where you need to go, lemme know

@ drP

i'm pretty sure i know where the problem is, i just haven't had time to straighten it out yet. also i am adding in a feature that will allow map regeneration, so if you get a nicely shaped map, but want to change some other settings, you can reuse the random number generator seeds.

[Manuk]

tried with this script:

wraparound: xy;
dimension: 2000 2000;
tlevel: sea 20;

tried with psize and pcount, but still it's even water and land and the map look like islands. no change.

[DrPraetorious]

Manuk - try setting the sea level all the way down to 0.

That gives you just a few lakes.

[paradoxharbinger]

hmmm... try lowering the sea level and zooming in. right now, zoom is not relative to map dimensions. try zoom: .75;

[paradoxharbinger]

btw, mapgen works differently than the dom3 map generator. dom3 looks like it creates terrain around provinces, ie the provinces are created first and then terrain is stuffed in and around them. mapgen does it in reverse order, terrain is created and then provinces are stuffed into the terrain. i did this because i thought it would lead to a more natural result. if you've ever seen a big map made with dom3, there are usually billions of small mountain ranges and forests, because they put these things along province borders. as a result it looks like chaos.

[DrPraetorious]

As a rule it produces nice output.

However, I think that the topography (that produces oceans and mountains) is a little off.

It never produces cliffs (so no coastal mountains) and it seldom produces large, unbroken blocks of land. It looks like post-glacial terrain (lots of narrow lakes) even with the water-content set to the minimum.

It'd nice to make maps, for example, with one, roughly circular lake in them. Maybe just a few different fractal algorithms? The code that generates the land maps in Civ IV is freely available (as python code) if you want to take a look at some alternative fractal math.

This is something of a nitpick, obviously, and I'm not suggesting it should take priority over the other features you have planned. If you set the water content very low you get nicely balanced maps.

Keep up the good work!
--TNDP

[DrPraetorious]

Actually, that's an idea.

If the difference in the "height" of two adjacent province-centers is >X, you declare the border between those two provinces to be a mountain-border. It's impassable and both provinces get the mountain-bordered terrain. How would that work?

[paradoxharbinger]

that would be a good place to start for part of, but you have to ensure that it makes sense with how the map looks. at least one of the provinces would have to be mountain terrain. there might be more conditions that have to be satisfied for the image to make sense with what map file says.

btw, adding a new layer to the heightmap for lakes should not be too difficult, and may actually be able to replace one of the others. in that case, there would be little time cost for adding it, meaning maps would only take slightly longer to generate. this is on the back burner for now.