DomMap - new Version

[LintMan]

A few weeks ago, I started looking into the DomMap random map generator program to take a look at how it works (it's a pretty cool program), and I thought it might be fun to add some features and fixes while I was in there. I had a few ideas and asked Gandalf for some ideas as well, which he was happy to share.

So I've been plugging away at it for a while, having some fun, and it's about time to let some other people besides Gandalf have a crack at it.

I've updated the Version to 2.12 (yeah, I've gone through multiple rounds of changes/fixes with Gandalf beta-testing for me (thanks, Gandalf!).) You can find the zip file with both the source and a Windows executable at: http://www.dom2minions.com/DomMap/DomMap212.zip

So what's new? I haven't kept an explicit change log of what I've done, but I'll try to remember the notable details...

- Impassable borders option: you can specify a fraction of the province neighbor connections to be made uncrossable (ie: like the Cradle map) to create some bottlenecks and chokepoints. Uncrossable borders are marked with a thicker (2-3x) border. DomMap will ensure that all provinces are interconnected and reachable from each other no matter what fraction of impassable borders you set. Optionally sea-sea borders can also be randomly made impassable.

- The province capital placement algorithm is revamped to be far more able to find islands, peninsulas, and landlocked lakes much more frequently. I've also tweaked the default settings to help with this as well.

- large/small provinces - there are new options to set thresholds for provinces being marked as large or small based on their pixel sizes in relation to the average land or sea province size. Some statistics about land/sea province sizes and the number of large/small provs is now output to the .map file.

- manysite provinces - you can set a fraction of all provinces to be set with the ManySites flag bit, which will cause it to be more likely to contain special sites.

- fixed bug in the random generation code that was causing (in Visual C++ anyway) some odd square map artifacts and was also causing the shadow map shading to not work correctly.

- I also discovered the rand() random number generator isn't so great (at least under VC++), and can only generate 32K different values (no so hot when one large map can easily use 6 million+ random values). I've integrated the "Mersenne Twister psuedorandom number generator" as a superior random number generator (it's not GPL, but it's freely distributable - just need to preserve their copyright notice).

- added new default terrain/border colors chosen by Gandalf

- Sea provinces can now contain land, so tiny islands are not bordered off as unusable islands or converted into sea pixels.

- Fixed some problems with the land/sea border color options not working correctly.

- Fixed a bug that sometimes resulted is a province not being marked #nostart when it should have been.

- borders were stopping 1 pixel short of the map edges - fixed.

- sea provinces can now have special shapes just like land ones do.

- The #terrain lines in the .map file are now annotated with a text comment showing province land/sea type, and its number of land/sea connections, in the form of: L-S2L3 for a land province with 2 sea and 3 land neighbors. This was a request from Gandalf to help people who do further work on the random maps (adding independents, etc).

- added -blank option to create maps with only plains terrain for those that use the random maps as an outline basis to paint their own maps on.

There's probably a few small things I missed, but that's the bulk of it.

You can run DomMap with -help to get a listing of all the command line options. I can help explain them further if anyone want to know what they do. Gandalf has generated a set of small maps with the same random seed but other, different parameters which can help show what some of their effects are. That's at: http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...ojects/DomMap/

Let me know if you have any other questions/problems with DomMap, and I can try to help.

-LintMan


Edit: fixed link to small example maps

[deccan]

The link is incorrect.

[LintMan]

Oops, sorry! It should be fixed now.

[Arryn]

LintMan said:
You can find the zip file with both the source and a Windows executable at: http://www.dom2minions.com/DomMap/DomMap212.zip

Is the Windows .exe in your archive compatible with the already-existing Windows GUI front-end for DomMap (by Mark Garnett, available on my website)? If so, I can remove the binary I compiled back in late February in favor of your latest one.

[Gandalf Parker]

Here is a quicky list of command switches....

Usage: ./dommap <options>
-v (for verbose mode)
-h <map height> (100-2400)
-w <map width> (100-3200
-n <map name>
-s <random seed>
-r <terrain ruggedness>
-sr <Shadow map ruggedness>
-wl <water line (0-100)>
-tl <tree line (0-100)>
-ml <mountain line (0-100)>
-pl <poverty line (0-100)>
-rl <rich line (0-100)>
-d <terrain dithering>
-ns <num of sea provinces>
-nl <num of land provinces>
-ps <percent special shape provinces>
-sa <min distance from shore (sea)>
-la <min distance from shore (land)>
-ss <distance between sea provinces>
-ls <distance between land provinces>
-sc <cost for spreading over shore>
-tc <cost for spreading over terrain>
-sm <amount of border smoothing>
-ln <minimum neighbours for starting (land)>
-sn <minimum neighbours for starting (sea)>
-imp <fraction impassable borders (0.0-1.0)>
-th3 (use triple-thickness for impassable borders (default))
-th2 (use double-thickness for impassable borders (default))
-ssi <1 = allow sea-sea impassable borders, 0 = not allowed>
-ms <fraction provinces marked as ManySite (0.0-1.0)>
-nfw (do not prevent all land pixels in sea provinces - default)
-fw (all land pixels in sea provinces are converted to sea if smoothing is on)
-ba <on|off> Turns additional shading on or off (default is on)
-bw <on|off> Turns additional shading of water on or off (default is off)
-beb <0-255> Max amount to brighten a color due to elevation-map
-bes <0-255> Max amount to shade a color due to elevation
-bsb <0-255> Max amount to brighten a color due to shadow-map
-bss <0-255> Max amount to shade a color due to shadow-map
-c_plains <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of plains to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_water <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of water to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_mountain <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of mountains to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_farmland <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of farmland to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_forest <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of forests to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_swamp <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of swamp to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_tundra <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of tundra to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_wasteland <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of wasteland to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_land_border <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of land borders to the specified RGB hex value>
-c_sea_border <0xrrggbb Sets the colour of sea borders to the specified RGB hex value>
-sps <max fraction of average province size to be a small province (0.0-1.0)
-lps <min multiple of average province size to be a large province (1.0+)
-blank (produce a 'blank' map: no (visible) terrain except sea, plains)

[Gandalf Parker]

If anyone wants to suggest a better color set feel free to while we are still fairly un-distributed. The colors are mostly my fault.

On the examples:
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...ojects/DomMap/

by setting them all to the same random "seed" of 7 it allowed me to run the same map with different switches. While doing that I realized that one neat thing someone might do is a dark and light map. Such as, on the map I did there are two continents. Run it with no coloration of water and a set water color. Once lightened, and once darkened. Then cut-n-paste one continent from each run onto one map. Could be a neat effect.

Now that we are released I will try to get around to changing the nightly maps run to use the new program. Maybe I will have each size do it partially to slide into it.

[LintMan]

Arryn said:
Is the Windows .exe in your archive compatible with the already-existing Windows GUI front-end for DomMap (by Mark Garnett, available on my website)? If so, I can remove the binary I compiled back in late February in favor of your latest one.

I just dl'd the GUI, and it does work, but of course it doesn't have controls for the latest switches I've added, which means until/unless it's updated, you're stuck with the defaults for those settings. That probably won't matter much except that impassable borders is turned on by default, which some people may not want.

If you'd like, I can build a new windows exe with different defaults that may suit the GUI better.
In fact, let me do that right now and just attach it here...

Or not. For some reason it keeps telling me it can only attach files with certain extensions (including .exe), but I'm trying to upload a .exe file. Should I just email you the exe, Arryn?

-LintMan

[Arryn]

Yes, please email me the .exe and I'll update your archive with it before I host your archive on my site.

Perhaps, if we're lucky, Mark will update his GUI to include your new controls. (If he doesn't, and if there's enough demand, I could always write a new GUI myself, though I'd probably do it in Java so that everyone could use it.)

[LintMan]

Arryn: sent.

[Arryn]

Thanks. I've updated my site accordingly.