OT: Making a Game System (part 4: A Game World)

[Omnirizon]

my most recent attempt.

As you can see the map looks much better. The cloudyness is gone, and the color ramp is gorgeous.

To my original program, I added functions for linear interpolation of color, and another that allow for an arbitrary number of discrete {scale : color ramp} mappings to be specified. If you look closely you will also notice some of the color ramps blend in a power-law curve, rather than linearly; you can see it where the green is concentrated around the coasts, but quickly blends to a lighter color where the ramping up slows down.

for color I mimicked the Parganos color scheme (the map had just been posted to the forums and was handy

[Aezeal]

I'm not a someone "into it" but I can't imagine a real world would look like that. Having said that the coloring etc does look nice. If there are mountains somwhere in there though I'd say they'd need a seperate and more different color (I'm guessing the most light yellow to be the highest points?) since there is too much light yellow for it all to be mountain.

Once I was looking at maps and there are like whole sites and communities dedicated to map making (often for DnD) maybe you should ask someone in one of those to make a map? (if they will do it for their name somewhere)

Just a suggestion since I'm thinking this project of your is quite big and you'll have lots to do and so asking a "specialist" to do things from time to time might
A save you time to work on other stuff
B improve the result

[Soyweiser]

Aezeal, he is making a roguelike, and one of the big things of that genre is making random maps. So asking someone else to make a map isn't going to work. He wants (I think) a random map generator.

[Aezeal]

From his previous descriptions/threads I didn't get that (need for random maps) yet anyway if he does he need to get a formula that makes the landmasses somewhat more realistic IMHO. If you have a fixed map it would allow for much better background for all of his nations and races I'd say just doing like dungeons or something with random maps could be enough.

Somehow I'm thinking of this game that it's intented to be a daggerfall like game I don't know why... anyway... that is why I was thinking about a fixed map (with all or some of the LA nations on there) and then well whatever he wants...

[Omnirizon]

there might be some algorithms to combine with the perlin noise that produce better results. I've read Fractional Brownian Motion is used in conjunction with Perlin Noise to get rid of the way the noise seems to move in that grid like pattern (the way the land and water are in corridors).

[Soyweiser]

I must confess that I haven't read the previous threads. But random environments is a huge thing for roguelikes. (The first one of the Berlin interpretation (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopme...Interpretation). So based on my knowledge of what a roguelike is, and what Omnirizon was doing, I assumed that he wanted nice looking random maps.

My interpretation:
So each time you play the game, the map is different, but the nations are the ones from dom3, but also with different interactions between each nations. (Just like in dwarf fortress, random interaction between the different nations).

Of course, I'm not Omnirizon. I don't know what he is planning to do. (And I'm more of a bottom up developer, first the local region, world map later).

[Omnirizon]

I'm finding auto generating a world map frustrating.

* I want it do to things like make sensible placements for cities (put them in bays and other areas where cities would actually be built. Teaching the computer to locate bays seemed difficult, I could just barely begin to think how (I was figuring a bay could be located by attempting to draw triangles with vertices on land, legs of some minimum length, and area of the triangle some minimum amount of water). Of course, with possibly 4000x2500 plus pixels, and the computer needs to check within some kernel around the entire convex hull of all water areas, it seemed computationally intense.

* I had also originally wanted some transformation to rearrange height points around to form actual mountain ranges, rather then clusters. I had the idea of using clustering algorithms (like those used in data mining) to locate clusters and then drawing a regression line (another technique in data mining) and moving 'peaks' in the clusters toward this line, forming a range. This, however, left the problem of me needing to look up and implement a clustering algorithm. Educational for sure, but not something I feel like doing right now.

In the end, it was giving me a headache and only serving to disuade me from wanting to work on the stuff, so I dropped these fantasies and will settle with a manually defined world for now.

I'm off to making site building algorithms now though, it is a little easier. I started with generating cities and buildings. A little house first. Random dimensions, random chance to have 'addons' what give the houses different shapes ('L' 'T', etc, so not just a bunch of squares). Randomly generated rooms, with some constraints like 'mainroom' and 'kitchen' parameters that force certain size and placed rooms to exist, then pretty much uniform 'bedrooms' built around those.

I do have a question that someone might be able to help with. It seems reasonable that big houses would have kitchens and mainrooms with multiple bedrooms, but that must be an exception. What is the typical house in, say, London, like circa 1500-1700? Single room? do they have a set 'kitchen' room? Were these houses or was everything sort of like an apartment? What were the range of dimensions for these houses? small and big ones. I just don't know.

[LDiCesare]

I believe at the time houses were still mostly tight two-three storey wooden buildings with different families living on each level, having one or two room. I know in Paris until the 19th century people mostly lived outdoors because it was too crowded inside. Kitchens and bedrooms would probably be the only kinds of rooms, except for richer places, which could be mansions with lots of rooms, including separate stairs for the nobility and the stairs for the servants and bathrooms. Water closets were outside.

Regarding random world generation, if you're interested, I could try to adapt something I did for you. Mountain ranges are workable, although I never thought of gulf detection algorithms.

[lch]

Yeah, around that time most people had only one room where they'd sleep, cook and eat AFAIK. The house might have had a cellar for storage and a ceiling to dry clothes, those would be shared if there was more than one family living in the building. The pot was outside. Anything more than that and you'd be wealthy.

[Omnirizon]

ok great. what about the ubiquitous peasant village: did such things exist? what about farmsteads; were there isolated farm houses, or did people always cluster into villages? by the 1500-1700 were there things like bandits and raiders that would threaten villages and individual farmsteads?

lastly, for layout, were these things just clusterflucks? A recursive splitting algorithm (split space into two sub-dungeons, then likewise split sub-dungeons, then split sub-sub-dungeons, so on recursively until no split is larger than some set minimum on any one dimension) tends to make decent looking dungeons, and even halfway sensible city/village layouts, but they will be no means be a grid. Is this probably realistic for villages and maybe a sector of town, and then maybe some parts of towns start with a grid and randomly merge some cells?