new map generator

[Smauler]

I think my eyesight must be going - completely missed the semicolon at the end. I just tested it, and it works fine now. I'll probably play around with it more tomorrow. Thanks.

[Gandalf Parker]

Here is a first effort of mine (well the first Im willing to show)
a Mid-Sized Wrapped Map
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap..._Wrappable.jpg
and it can be downloaded here..
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap..._Wrappable.zip

Its a 168 provinces and wraps both top-to-bottom and east-to-west. Its not very nice to water nations Im afraid.

Im eagerly waiting for things like sprites, and bunching up continents abit.

Id like it if the dom2title would use the map name. If I run a batch of 12 MidMap then I get MidMap_001 thru MidMap_012 but in the game start menu they all show up as PHMAP.

Will the seed be recorded in the .map file?
If I redo the map with the same seed but turn off features, will it affect the order that randoms get used? In other words, is everything that can be randomized using the seed even if its not turned on so that the end result will look the same even if that feature is turned off on the next run?

Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

OK after a day of playing with paradoxharbinger's MapGen I have come up with something I like. Its 2000x1500 pixels.
1055 provinces of 895 land and 160 water
land players have a ratio of 49 prov each for 18 players
water players have a ratio of 53 each for 3 players

Its a fully wrapped map. That means the top connects to the bottom and the sides connect to each other.

Here is a view of it
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Max_001.jpg
and here is the download link if you want the map
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Max_001.zip

Gandalf Parker

[paradoxharbinger]

@ gandalf

the sedds arent recorded in the map file, that would be the .sds file i believe, its been so long i forge the extension. i also forget whether i actually implemented the bit that would load those seed files, probably not. but the maps will regenerate exactly as they first did. the point of using them was to generate as small file that could be easily sent, over dial-up say, instead of a monstrous image file.

the PHMAP, business, yeah that needs to be fixed, i'll take care of that as soon as possible, as well as getting the seed file to load up, that is really just a matter of deciding how i want to implement it, which is conflicting with a few things that have alrady been in place for a while, so needs a bit of planning.

as far as sprites go, they are working, i just do not have a set that i can distribute. and being a programmer rather than an artist, i dont really have the talent required to create a set, if i did you would probably rather i hadnt. so if any intrepid artists out there would like to donate some sprites for inclusion, all credit given to you, feel free to get in touch with me.

@ all

my semester has finally ended. ive been on hiedous because of the craploads of work all of the profs want to stuff into the last couple weeks, so apologies. that being said, i'm gearing up to start my summer job, which means all of the time i needed to spend for school after getting home from school can start to be allocated back to personal projects (mapgen, unit maker).

so i have been able to get a bit of work done (see above) in moving over to a new generating method, most of the groundwork is pretty much done, which means that all of the line segments know which other line segments they are connectedd to and all of the triangles and polygons know who their neighbours are, which is a good bit of what needs to be done. the next bit is getting things generate in a convincing manner, which actually the easier part, in my experience. any how, ive already got what i think is a pretty good river algorithm put together.

so for the next update, which may be the last incarnation of mapgen before it moves on to new the new algorithms, should include regenerating from seed files, the fixed map names and possibly some better script checking. small details to be sure, but after that, bigger better things.

ive said that the new algorithms would be alot faster, and they seem to be a lot faster. if that proves to be true, i'm looking at migrating the code from c++ to c# and then using mono (pending some testing, mentioned in the unit maker thread) to get the multi-platform release going.

alright i think that covers everything, im sort of on vacation now, so that release with the fixes might be out sometime next week, we'll see how work goes.

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm thats not what I was hoping from seeds. I was hoping for something like DomMap had. One seed number which defined the map. I could run a full color map for display, then a subtler one for play, and one for it again as blank provinces or borders only for special game progression displays.

[lch]

I have now got this program working under Linux via wine, too. You have to download http://www.sweetpotatosoftware.com/f...t.vc80.crt.zip and unzip and move the DLL files and the manifest file into the MapGen directory, then it works:

Code:

---

~/446398-MapGen_0.52.03082007 $ wine MapGen_0.52.03082007.exe

fixme:actctx:FindActCtxSectionStringW 00000000 (null) 2 L"msvcr80.dll" 0x347acc

ParadoxHarbinger's MapGen

Version 0.51.03082007

Copyright 2007, Jason Makay



generating height-map..........done

generating terrain-map.............done

generating province-map.........done

generating sprite-mapdone

saving image...done

saving map...done

saving seeds...done

freeing memory...done

---

Tested with MapGen 0.52 and wine 0.9.35 and wine 0.9.29. For an explanation of the error message and why the native DLLs do not work yet, look at the wine mailing list: It's the function loading/check mechanism that gives trouble.

Because this is a C++ program which uses the Windows API and makes calls to the MSVC DLLs this program will never work with Mono (unlike the Unit editor written in C#), you'll have to use wine.

[paradoxharbinger]

@gandalf

well the seeds can be loaded and the options can be changed via the scripts, if that's what your getting at.

[Gandalf Parker]

lovia thaded?

[paradoxharbinger]

oh, my bad that got screwed up, should say reloaded, not used to having to avoid the goofy pad thing on laptops.

[paradoxharbinger]

well, been a while since i posted, here's a quick update on goings-ons. im creating a gui in c# so that for those uninterested in such things, scripting will become uneccessary. i believe it was ich who mentioned that installing mono will allow for people on the major systems to run c# apps, so this will hopefully also solve the crossplatform dilemna. not much else other than that, more info when it's available