Wishlist: the Mappers Wishlist

[Singularity24601]

I would love it if a map generator could randomly place a moddable list of scripted provinces such that eg, we might encounter "The Pillar of the World" (creatures, sites, map icon) from Orania in any map -> a scenario generator. Each scripted province should have specific requirements (no forests + no mountains, underwater only, etc) and a rarity level.

[Gandalf Parker]

We can actually do that on our own. There was a project for it in Dom2 but it didnt get very far.
http://www.dom2minions.com/SemiRandom.shtml

I was going to ask for peoples special provinces and create a directory for them which would allow them to be randomly selected and inserted into random maps.

[Singularity24601]

Interesting. What is the status of the project for Dominions 3? You could use the Orania special provinces as a default database for testing. I don't know much about the program, but other than rarity, terrain required, etc, would it be easy to define each special province simply as you would in a .MAP file, which the generator just copies and pastes?

Perhaps a program the analyses a plain .MAP file with its terrain types and outputs a .MAP file with some randomised special provinces?

[Gandalf Parker]

That was the concept.

Terrain, neighbors, and nostarts could be analyzed. That way special recognition could be given to
forest
mountain
swamp
combos such as forest/mountain
lakes (water with all land neighbors)
islands (land with all water neighbors)
nostart (not enough neighbors, possible choke points on map)
dead ends (only one neighbor)
cut offs till late game (no neighbors)

It doesnt matter to me how long it takes or how much "thinking" the programming needs to do. I can leave it running on my server and make the map available each time it finishes. It can take a full day to generate a map. It could take a week.

[paradoxharbinger]

the things you mentioned analyzing the *.map for don't seem like they ought to take that long, unless i'm missing something. why would this ever take more than a few seconds to run, even with many provinces?

[Gandalf Parker]

It wouldnt. Im just saying that Id be willing to pile on as many rewrites as I can. They could all be worked up seperately and then chained to run one after the other on a randomly created map (the really large ones can take 2 to 3 hours to generate just the initial map)

Such as examining terrains and adding logical names for forests, swamps, islands, etc etc as you saw in another post of mine.

Or resetting the native populations to different balances.

Or adding additional armies to independent provinces logically based on the terrains or the native populations. Giving them each helpful additional leaders. For some a mage, others a priest, and others a combat leader depending on what was lacking. Possibly giving the additional leaders a full load of randomly selected equipment.

Or adding specific sites, such as some minor cave site, and declaring it to be a secret passage from a province to another matching cave site far away. (anyone remember playing chutes and ladders?)

Or matching it up with a randomly generated MOD and working them both in together for a surprise game that no one can be prepared for.

Hmmmm what else can I come up with to extend the processing time.

[Gandalf Parker]

Is there a reason that some commands work as MODs but not as MAPs?

What Im thinking is... on a map I can name a province, name a commander, name a god. But I cant name a nation. If I could give a name to the empty modding slots then that would be great for the games Im planning. Much easier than having everyone download a mod just to play that game with.

[YuanShi]

Centered land mass surrounded by sea.

This means that the map generator would convert the provinces directly on the border into sea/deep sea provinces.

The desired effect would be to be able to generate random maps that would generate perfect wrap-around giving the impression of a globe and avoiding the ugly and unrealistic "border province" effect, that makes the playing experience less inmersive as it makes you think that you are playing on a virtual game board instead of transporting you to a virtual world.

[Jack_Trowell]

Singularity24601 said:
Interesting. What is the status of the project for Dominions 3? You could use the Orania special provinces as a default database for testing. I don't know much about the program, but other than rarity, terrain required, etc, would it be easy to define each special province simply as you would in a .MAP file, which the generator just copies and pastes?

Perhaps a program the analyses a plain .MAP file with its terrain types and outputs a .MAP file with some randomised special provinces?

I started such a project recently, and it is now available online at http://dominions.realites.org
(you can also download the whole source code if you wish)

The project has started recently so the list of special provinces is still small (http://dominions.realites.org/?actio...cial_provinces), but you're welcome to make suggestions of new provinces and their terrain types requirements.

[Gandalf Parker]

To my counting there are now 3 such projects being actively worked on.