new map generator

[paradoxharbinger]

fyi, started to put in the dom3 terrain types

[paradoxharbinger]

fyi, i put a new site together, wiki format. in my oppinion much easier to maintain and develop, which means it is updated pretty often. plus forums, much more storage and no bandwidth limitations. so the old one has been pretty much abandoned, link to the new one in my sig.

[paradoxharbinger]

i am getting very close to releasing an alpha windows version of mapgen. but in the meantime, i'm going to post a few maps for all of you to play around with. right now there are no sprites, but the maps are playable.

this first is a 1600x1200, 294 provinces (176 land, 118 sea), wrap around.

as always, any comments are deeply appreciated.

[DrPraetorious]

I actually like the clean, crisp colors on maps like this, but I've always had a certain minimalist aesthetic with maps.

Certainly, given the amount of time I expect to spend staring thoughtfully at these, it'll be nice to have variety.

FYI - on a map like this, this is how many start sites fit:
Minimum Distance , Minimum Neighbors , # of starts total (water)
4 , 4 , 10(2)
4 , 6 , 5(1)
5 , 4 , 9(1)
5 , 6 , 5(1)
6 , 4 , 8(5)
6 , 6 , 5(1)
7 , 4 , 6(3)
7 , 6 , 4(2)

Anyway, I think it looks cool, but has a bit too much water to be well-balanced, unless the number of start sites is quite low. Of course, as just a map to play on, it's great.

Thanks for the great work!

--TNDP

[Agrajag]

I like it, it looks neat, and should be very easy to edit if you want something with more flavour.
My one criticism would be that some water provinces have tiny little islands floating in them, that are a bit too small to be considered a province, and yet bigger than what you see in other maps, which gives those provinces a bit of a "dirty" feel to them.

[paradoxharbinger]

@ DrP
i'm not sure what your table means, at least the minimum distance column, provinces to pass through to reach one start site from another? in any case, start sites are not something that the algorithms account for at present. something may be able to be implemented that looks for possible start locations and then removes neighbors, provinces that were next to the removed one could then be grown into the gap. perhaps reducing the number of overall provinces could be a quick fix here.

@ Agrajag
personally, i like to see little islands floating about. it would be pretty sweet if we had an island terrain type. i think it would be possible to remove them, though fairly expensive in terms of processing time.

i'm posting these without the sprites so that if someone does want to add some sprites and such to spice them up, the are more than welcome to.

here's another wrapping map. more provinces, but about a 4:1 land:water ratio. 1600x1200, 491 provinces (384 land, 107 water)

[DrPraetorious]

Paradoxbringer - yes, that's it exactly.

I don't think the RMG needs to know about start sites - but the parameters can be varied so that you get the number of start sites you want. A high water:land ratio on a map with a lot of start sites will tend to put more than 2 in the water, which is a problem because they can't be occupied.