Any interest in a RMG?

[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?

[Agrajag]

Using the present form when calling it a RMG is somewhat misleading, since so far it generates only an image

But as to your question, the code is cross-platform compatible, so it will work on a mac if someone will compile it on a mac. (And obviously, same for linux)

[Gandalf Parker]

Excellent. I find that RMGs tend to die. People dont want to bother to learn how to use them. What lives is a web-based shopping mall.
Middle of the night generation of many maps in many sizes, colorations, settings. Offer a webpage of thumbnails, clicking a thumbnail takes you to a larger view with a link to download the zip file of the map.

Something like this although my better examples were on the server which is down.
http://game.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/mids/Mids.htm

What I wanted eventually was to have daily offers of Dominions 3 generated maps like those shown. And DomMap rmg versions, and Harbringers rmg. And versions of maps with Ballbarians randomizer, and Leifs randomizers, and of course my own randomizers. If it can run on linux without a gui, from text parameters in a file or on the command line, then it will fit in easily. I can already automate the nightly run, the thumbnails, the zipping, the web pages, etc.

[llamabeast]

Well whether or not most people learn how to use them, a few of us can make some really good maps using it and get them widely used. Wraparound maps in particular are in very short supply.

Actually I think I might be making a similar point to Gandalf.

[Agrajag]

Re: Gandalf Parker
That's a good idea, and it might be a motivating thought that even if no one downloads my potential RMG, people will still enjoy maps made by it.
And there's no reason why it couldn't work without a GUI. I'm tending towards a config file more than command line, because it is much easier to assume that the config file is correct (and much easier to mess around with).
One thing I'm not sure about, though, is if it will be possible to generate many maps every midnight, because going through the entire process of making a fully playable map might take a lot of time. (Especially that part where borders are calculated and drawn, because the algorithm I have in mind might be quite slow [it would go through each pixel on the map at least 4 or 5 times])
I'm also not very familiar with threading, so no taking advantage of multiple cores
And of course, sadly, you can't automate anything yet seeing as how the server is dead
Re: Llamabeast
Are you sure you are making a point?
And do you really think you could transform a random map into a really good map? Would you even need all the stages involved? (Or would you only need a base image to prettify and work on)

[Gandalf Parker]

Servers are perfect for such things. Projects which can take a full day of computing would be fine. Im not tying up my desktop or slowing my usual activities by having it do some major project in the background all day. Ive often wished that more projects actually took that into account. Generators often give up excellent actions because it makes the generation time too long for anyone to put up with. PbEM style games (like Dominions) often cut out some options because the devs feel that most players would not put up with the time it takes (such as extensive AI thinking). I cant really argue their logic but often I wish it stayed in at least as an option. After all its not like the community here NEEDS 30 maps daily in each of tiny, small, medium, large, huge, mega sizes. Even if I only generated ONE map a day it would be a huge boost.

One example is that the DomMap generator was forever without a blur routine even though it made the maps much easier on the eyes. I wrote a script to take the generated maps, save the white pixels, blur the map, restore the white pixels, and resave. It was very time intensive but added a nice new optional group to the maps.

Oh and only one of my servers went down. The main one. The old one (which originally housed Dom2minions) is still up and still running games. I could shift everything to it but I dont expect the main server to be down that much longer.