WRAPPED MAPS AVAILABLE

[Gandalf Parker]

Quoting you from before (I hope you understand because I didnt really follow)

yes, sizing the map properly can be a bit of a hassle. as of now, you would have to scale the psize, tsize, zoom etc with the dimensions of the map. to keep the same look/feel of the default settings, if you were to double the dimensions (for example) you would double all of the distance related arguments, except for zoom, which would be halved. think of the dimensions of the map as a window. changing the size of the window allows you to see more. zoom represents the distance from the landscape you are viewing. i originally had all of the settings dependent upon the zoom, but decided to change it so that terrain/province sizes were not too dependent upon heightmap. perhaps a command to scale arguments from default depending on map dimensions would help?

That does seem to be the problem Im running into though. When I find settings that work for one map size, I cant change to doing a different size map without having to start over trying to find the right settings on all of them. You do list a couple of formulas on your help page (foreign language to me). That just drove me to write a program that randomized the settings, did a map, randomized, did a map.. hoping to accidentally hit the right numbers.

[paradoxharbinger]

okay, so looking back at things, zoom only directly affects the heightmap, i.e. how far your face is from the surface of the map, not how big terrains or provinces could potentially be, the exception being mountains and water, which are part of the heightmap.

so letting x and y be the dimensions of the map and z being your zoom factor, and d1 and d2 be the arguments for tsize:

d1 = sqrt(x * y) / (10 * z)
d2 = d1 / 3

leave tchance alone.

i think that you probably ought to follow a similar procedure for psize. using pcount was always sort of tricky because there was no way to guarantee what the land-to-water ratio was. so if you want 5 water provinces and got a map that was nearly all water, the map sucked.

hopefully that'll help out a bit gandalf

[Gandalf Parker]

paradoxharbinger said:
d1 = sqrt(x * y) / (10 * z)
d2 = d1 / 3

hopefully that'll help out a bit gandalf

Not really. Im thrilled that you can do things like that but for me.. well.. thats what programs are for. I guess Im going to have to write a program to help me use your program

test.bas
x=2000
y=1800
z=.25
d1 = sqrt(x * y) / (10 * z)
d2 = d1 / 3

print d1, d2


so the answer is 758.947 252.982?

[Gandalf Parker]

On the above formula;
for some reason it seems to work better for me if I divide them by 10. So the final answer was..
print int(d1/10), int(d2/10)

Well Im back to trying to make some useful maps for everyone with this program. But it takes a long time for someone whose methodology is "random until it looks right". Here are some I consider usable in the 300 to 400 province range. All are fully wrapped maps. More should be on the way as I fiddle with the program some more.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Mid_Wrapped/
Feel free to snag one and use it as a template. Fix the colors, add icons, etc.

Feel free to also comment on things like colors and map sizes. What is needed and wanted?

[Stavis_L]

Is the mapgen utility mentioned in this thread available anywhere? It doesn't seem to be available at the wiki site by Paradoxharbinger that's in his .sig (at least, it's not in the downloads section or anywhere that seems reasonable by doing a "show all pages" list.)

Also, does it do the kinds of terrain sprites that are in the examples at that wiki, vs. the rather "political map" looking examples in this thread?

[Gandalf Parker]

The MapGen thread is here.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=30337

Pro:
It has nice extra features such as offering to heavily annotate the .map file. And it does great wrappable maps. And the layouts are very different than any other mapgen Ive seen which makes for a nice change. The strange shapes can create strategically important provinces which are great for solo play.

Con:
It almost impossible to generate a map acceptable for multiplay due to those strange province shapes. At the moment it only does those "political" looking maps so I would consider it mostly useful to create a map template for anyone who is more into graphic programs than word programs. It does much of the hard work if someone wants to fill them in with some nice eye-candy.

I have generated some batches at my site.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps
and if anyone wants to snag one to modify then just let me know which one you grab. I will remove it from the server to give you exclusive rights to it.

This is WAY different than any other mapgen Ive used. Even the generators in GIMP were easier to figure out. So many of the commands in this program interact with other commands using formulas I cant understand.
Here is a fairly decent result.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Cor/Cor_059.jpg
I was asked to generate 900 province maps. After much effort I found the right sets of commands to get decent results but I still had to generate a hundred maps and hope for a few good ones.

But changing one thing, such as size or prov number, throws it all off and you have to start over tweaking all of the commands. It will take someone far more analytical than I to learn how to use this progam well at this stage of its development IMHO. I offer my crappy notes and scripts to anyone who wants to take a stab at it.

The screenshots with sprites are his next stage. The program which includes the sprite-fill commands are not in the program version we can get.

[lch]

Biggest con of the map generator: Development has stopped one and a half years ago and the source code isn't available for others to pick up where paradoxharbinger left. Did the last release that was made available have support for textures, from the last page?

[Gandalf Parker]

It says it is.
But I havent gotten it to work yet. Ive tried many ways of doing the command. I will keep trying variations.