Any interest in a RMG?

[Gandalf Parker]

Interesting. The fact that a rectangle will only wrap one way is actually a plus. In some of the serious map conversations it was brought up that the wrapping isnt realistic to a globe. The most realistic "wrap" would be that west-west wrapped, all of the northern would connect to each other (polar) and all ofthe southern connect to each other. Your rectangle arrangement makes that really easy.

It also reminds me that I found a really cool utility that would make a spinning globe GIF out of a map. I was going to use it on the leading webpage for the next monstrous Dom3 game I setup.

Something else that comes up...
I take it that you plan the same limits? 1500 provinces? Smaller maps people can provide to the community but the really monstrous ones are usually generated. One thing that can be a problem is the "grouping" of terrains. People tend to want grouping to be water vs land (large continents and large bodies of water) but small grouping of all other terrains. In other words they want each nation to to have easy access to each of those terrains. Small chance of landing in mountains surrounded by mountains, or landing in waste surrounded by waste, etc. Is there a controllable variable for the "shotgun" effect of each terrain seperately?

[Gandalf Parker]

I just noticed something in rereading your initial post. Keeping the segments of the program separate. Thats wonderful! Does this mean that it can be used to try to make logical provinces on a found image? Thats going to allow for some very interesting maps from people as lazy as I am.

[Agrajag]

Re: Limits.
The only limit is your patience in waiting for the thing to churn out such a gigantic image (Unless you want something like 512x512 for 1500 provinces, which doesn't sound brilliant to me).
You might also run out of RAM if you try and generate something like a 32768x32768 map (Though that won't really stop you, unless you also run out of swap space )
Summary: Limited only by processing power.

Re: Shotgunning.
Well, currently the program generates two "maps", one is for altitude, and one is for precipitation. The altitude map determines whether a pixel is deep ocean, ocean, land or mountain, and the precipitation map determines whether a pixel is waste,plains,farmlands,forest or swamp.
This means that you can control each set of data separately. If there was demand, it would be trivial to even make a single "map" for each terrain type, though I think that might end up looking terrible. (And imagine the possible outcomes, a mountain/forest/waste/swamp/farm province :S)
I suppose it might make sense to decouple mountains from altitude and make a "cragginess" map.
As for the shotgun effect, you can control how rough each map will be, and you can control what boundaries of precipitation (for example) will create each terrain type, but you will most likely end up with one terrain type surrounded by the other (wastes will always be surrounded by normal provinces [as in, not forest/farm/swamp], because to get from the precipitation required for a waste to that of a forest it must pass through "normal" first).
So in summation, yes you can create a shotgun effect, to certain limits, which can be changed by popular demand.

Re: Logical provinces on a found image.
Unless you generate the map with the generator, it won't be able to determine the terrain type of each pixel, so it won't be able to draw borders based on logical boundaries (such as the edges of mountains), but it will be able to draw borders between provinces based on distance (it might look something like this), and it also won't be able to write down province type to a .map file (though will be able to write down neighbours).
However, if when you made your map you started with a layer that describes the type of each pixel using one color (for example, if you started with something that looks like what my program outputs right now, but painted over it with effects/sprites/fluff/etc.), then it would be trivial for me to write a program that would take that base image and convert it into my own format, which would then enable you to pipe that into the province placer along with your finished image, and it will be able to work its magic.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm all for more random maps, especially if you can generate really big (1200-1500 province) maps in which the oceans/waters always connect to each other, and that include good cave systems and chokepoints-also random maps that automatically added in better provinces (better independents, meaningful names, anything to make them more special) and stronger independent nations, if that's possible. I'm all for more images too, especially if they have in-game meaning.

Can you do semi-randoms? I wouldn't mind a feature that allowed me to take-for example-the maps that come with the game and add X amount of randomly generated cave provinces that link Province A to Province B.

Or maybe something that generated little tiny random maps?-say 1-16 province things-and then allowed me to jigsaw them all together, or just attach them to larger maps. I'm thinking caves, deep ocean, extra-dimensional spaces, etc. but I'm sure there are lots of uses for this.

[Gandalf Parker]

Just remembered something I have missed from the days of DomMap in Dom2. Can you save the initial random number and refeed it to the program with new parameters? Its not a big deal but at this stage of development if it can be worked in it would be nice.

One of the main uses would be to generate the same map with different colors. A winterized one, or a destroyed one for creating multimap scenarios. Or a blank one with just the continents, waters, borders, and no images in order to do a game progress map for online viewing coloring each province with the color of the player who controls it. Or one with much less detail to create a thumbnail or icon from. Like I said, not a big deal since those can all be done manually.

[Agrajag]

Re: HoneyBadger, probably "no" for all of what you said.
It is possible technically to make provinces have random properties (like different guards/populations), but it would be hard to do properly (unless you don't mind having a province guarded by 50 tartarians, another by 100 arch druids, another by 30 princes of death, and another by 10 militia), and so I would rather not do it at all. And besides, doesn't SemiRandom do that already?
As for adding icons and names that would signify something in the province, it is possible to decide randomly that some provinces will have any of the additional province flags (manysites,firesite,holysite etc.) and symbolize that with some icon, image or other visual change, but significant names would require me inventing significant names, and any creativity from me is not a good idea
I could make a program that scans a .map file and a .tga file and slaps a few icons on the map according to stuff that appears in the map file (so provinces with predetermined sites would have a certain icon for example), but that doesn't seem very useful or interesting to me.
It is possible to generate small maps, but they would still be rectangular, so if you wanted to create a random link between two provinces on an existing map, you would have to generate a small map, erase some province on the maps outer rim (so the square edges won't be visible), and then hand glue them in the existing map.

Re: Gandalf Parker
Yeah, definitely possible.
Though if you want to create several versions of an identical map, your best bet would be to generate one map with the generator, and then use that map several times in the imager, each time producing a different image for the exact same map.


So far there seems to be little interest, so I'll just work on it whenever the mood strikes. Which would probably mean it will never be completed, or at least take a whole lot of time
Thanks for your comments everyone.

Oh, and there's no reason to close the thread or stop responding, I'd still love to hear more opinions and ideas, especially the kind that would suggest new ideas for features, like Gandalf that reminded me I needed to fix my wrapping.

[AlgaeNymph]

Does your RMG work on a Macintosh?