Wishlist: the Mappers Wishlist

[Gandalf Parker]

Im pasting the original first message here. Hopefully I will get around to editing the first messge to be more in style with the prefered format for wishlists and bug reports.

#patrol

This would allow for castles to be added to the map and the units placed there to be put on patrol instead of inside and on defence.

The way it is now, a castled province is actually weaker. It can be taken by a single scout and then taxed to death.

terrain markers

There are projects going on for automated naming or automated placing of provinces. We can find specific terrains but its hard to find specific features.

Such as DomMap added. Such as L4 would say that its bordered by 4 land. If its a water province then it can be named a pond or lake. If its a W4 marker on a land province then its an island. A W3L1 might mean a penninsula. It would also make it easier to auto-find chokepoints and dead-ends

Since the map-generator "knows" this info when it makes a map then it would be nice if it recorded it

#ifavailable X

The map is "digested" after all of the gods are turned in, and a fthrland file is created in the game directory for the game to play off of. At the moment things are abit confusing because a game-start screen will show ALL of the nations available, and it will let you pick any of them. But if you select one that is set as an AI in the map commands then your choice is just ignored which you dont find out until later (this is on server games).

If we had a command that could set an AI into the game IF its not taken by a human player then some fun scenarios could be created. A map could fill ALL of the AIs allowing players to choose what they want and then filling in everything else with computer players.

I will think of more later.

[Gandalf Parker]

Or someone else that wants to can start a proper one for stickiness and this one can be unstickied as the dicussion thread

[Gandalf Parker]

I wish that the terrain "fresh water" when used by itself would mean fresh water. Lake or pond, not seawater. At the moment, it means there is some freshwater in the province such as a river or pond but you also have to flag it as some other land terrain. IF you set it for fresh water by itself, the game cosniders it to be plains (the default no-tag terrain) and puts land poptypes in it.

[Saint_Dude]

I wish it were possible to modify maps such that each player can only see the portions of the map where they have either positive dominion or a physical presence (province control or scout). Neighboring provinces to those under control would also be visable.

In this way it would be possible to simulate a dungeon or labyrinth, where one truely does not know the layout of the land prior to exploration. Scouts would be at a very high premium.

The only significant impact on game mechanics would be that it would be impossible to target spells at provinces that one did not know about.

[Gandalf Parker]

Of course we dont have that but to get closer to it, keep in mind that the game doesnt care much about the graphic image of the map. On the graphic, the only thing that HAS to be there are the white dots. You could make the dungeon a completely black map.

Hmmm that wouldnt work that well because the white dots would be pretty obvious. You could scatter lots and lots of grey dots for the white dots to hide in.

Or make the entire dungeon part of the map into one big almost-white square. No walls, no borders etc. The white dot has to be 255/255/255 and I think that in usual single-minded computer program logic that is not the same as 254/255/255. Too bad we cant do it with black instead of white but it still should be interesting.

[Edi]

Uh, Gandalf, it doesn't show in the game. The game actually reads the color of the pixel next to the white pixel and overlays it on the white pixel in the map display, so you won't see which province is where on a completely black map.

[Gandalf Parker]

Kewl. I always have those flags showing so I took it for granted that it was under the flag. Even better. We can make the dungeon section of the map black on black.

[Saint_Dude]

Sounds like that would be fun to experiment with.

[Saint_Dude]

Are there any sites that could be added to the provinces (or any other map modding mechanism) in order to make all battles in those provinces subject to darkness. I am thinking along the lines of the Agarthan cave city, but without the fortress or other effects. Dungeons should be dark, no?

I am not thinking about an entirely black/dark map, but rather a map with dungeon sections.

[Gandalf Parker]

The new terrain of cave should do that. Im not sure how much its been implemented but thats what its supposed to be fore.