Utility: SemiRandom version 095

[Endoperez]

Gandalf Parker said:
WOW THANKS for figuring out that castle defence thing! Do you mind if I make extensive use of that immeadiately on all my map routines?
(slap head, cant believe I didnt try that long ago).

I don't mind that at all. The original idea I had for this province was just to make an example that would let others create their own castled, double-defended provinces for SemiRandom. It grew a bit from that.

[Ballbarian]

It's in the early stages still, but here are a couple of examples to give a visual of the start distribution.

This one is a 103 province map with 6 players and a 4 province minimum distance buffer.


This one is a 145 province tower style map with 9 players and a 4 province minimum distance buffer.


Both maps were processed using the current default SemiRandom settings of 15 provinces per player & minimum neighbor count of 4 land for land starts, or 4 water for water starts.

Until this weekend, I had been too busy to work on it more than 30 minutes here and 30 minutes there. Very hard to stay focused that way.

[Gandalf Parker]

It looks good. Excellent coding.
Personally Im going to want more of a spread than that.
Will it evenly distribute on larger maps?

[Ballbarian]

You will be able to increase the spread by specifying a smaller number of players. It seems to distribute well on your MegaMap, but I am not happy with the water start consistency. That is being corrected now. I am also working on a little fidgeter to make the start placements less "optimized" and more random on multiple generations of the same map.

[Ballbarian]

It has been hard finding time for coding, but finally have enough working to sit back for a little while and enjoy a test game. Decided to use the Eventide random map that is being used in a multiplayer game. They have 18 players in that game, 16 being land and 2 being water. With the settings that I used, my distribution was a bit looser, so I ended up with 11 land & 2 water starts. Trying out a SC Gorgon with one of my favorite nations... Pangaea.

So pardon my laziness for a little while.

I intend to look more at some method for supporting "kingdoms" or thematic province clusters. The base is there, but I haven't decided quite how I want to approach the format via the GAN files. Then there are those pesky multi provinces for varied terrains.