new map generator

[DrPraetorious]

I actually like the clean, crisp colors on maps like this, but I've always had a certain minimalist aesthetic with maps.

Certainly, given the amount of time I expect to spend staring thoughtfully at these, it'll be nice to have variety.

FYI - on a map like this, this is how many start sites fit:
Minimum Distance , Minimum Neighbors , # of starts total (water)
4 , 4 , 10(2)
4 , 6 , 5(1)
5 , 4 , 9(1)
5 , 6 , 5(1)
6 , 4 , 8(5)
6 , 6 , 5(1)
7 , 4 , 6(3)
7 , 6 , 4(2)

Anyway, I think it looks cool, but has a bit too much water to be well-balanced, unless the number of start sites is quite low. Of course, as just a map to play on, it's great.

Thanks for the great work!

--TNDP

[Agrajag]

I like it, it looks neat, and should be very easy to edit if you want something with more flavour.
My one criticism would be that some water provinces have tiny little islands floating in them, that are a bit too small to be considered a province, and yet bigger than what you see in other maps, which gives those provinces a bit of a "dirty" feel to them.

[paradoxharbinger]

@ DrP
i'm not sure what your table means, at least the minimum distance column, provinces to pass through to reach one start site from another? in any case, start sites are not something that the algorithms account for at present. something may be able to be implemented that looks for possible start locations and then removes neighbors, provinces that were next to the removed one could then be grown into the gap. perhaps reducing the number of overall provinces could be a quick fix here.

@ Agrajag
personally, i like to see little islands floating about. it would be pretty sweet if we had an island terrain type. i think it would be possible to remove them, though fairly expensive in terms of processing time.

i'm posting these without the sprites so that if someone does want to add some sprites and such to spice them up, the are more than welcome to.

here's another wrapping map. more provinces, but about a 4:1 land:water ratio. 1600x1200, 491 provinces (384 land, 107 water)

[DrPraetorious]

Paradoxbringer - yes, that's it exactly.

I don't think the RMG needs to know about start sites - but the parameters can be varied so that you get the number of start sites you want. A high water:land ratio on a map with a lot of start sites will tend to put more than 2 in the water, which is a problem because they can't be occupied.

[paradoxharbinger]

i think that it may be possible to give mapgen the desired number of start sites. and after having thought about it, it is probably also possible to constrain the number of neighbours to start sites and provinces between. i will have investigate.

[paradoxharbinger]

alright, so i'm finishing up putting in the script functions that i want to see in the alpha, and i'd like to know what kinds of province generation algorithms you all think are important, because if i keep going on like this, i'll sit on it untill i get all of the algorithms i want in there. so here are some options:

(1) simple: all provinces are about the same size (likely to included anyway)
(2) water / land size: all water provinces are about the same size as other water provinces and all land provinces are about the same size as other land provinces (already included)
(3) distribution: give a size for small, medium and large provinces and specify the distribution of province sizes for land and water provinces (lots of arguments)
(4) start sites: give the number of land and water startsites, number of provinces around the start sites, and the number of provinces between start sites (not likely for the alpha, maybe if there is a lot of demand)
(5) anything else you can dream up

[paradoxharbinger]

no takers? then i will just go for the first two for now

[paradoxharbinger]

working on finishing the mapgen alpha, which as of now is just making sure that the province generation algorithms work, and i made this map, thought it was interesting and that i'd post it.

two main islands, they look fairly balanced. 45 land, 12 water, 800x600

[paradoxharbinger]

ok, here is the alpha release of mapgen. the readme pretty much covers everything you need to know to use it. as far as i know, this thing is stable, but if you start trying to make enormous maps on your pre-pentium machine, i'm not making any promises, but any self-respecting pc ought to be able to run this no problem. if something goes awry, give me some feed back and post the debug file so i can try and figure out what happened. also, please provide feedback in general including but not limited to features you think are missing, default parameters, and improvement areas.

edit: removed attachment, new zip further down

[Ballbarian]

Not working for me paradox. Is script.spt supposed to be blank? I am using WinXP and I get an "application configuration is incorrect" error.