Elementerra - Random Map Generator

By cephalo on September 6, 2010 12:53:20 AM from

Elemental Forums

cephalo

Join Date 01/2009

+75

Announcement: This map generator has been updated. Go here for the new version.

Hi all,

I have here probably the first random map generator for Elemental! Follow the link below to download.

Elementerra random map generator - mirror

Elemental Window

This application requires the .NET framework runtime version 3.5 to run. Most people have this already, but if you don't you can get it through Windows Update.

To use the map generator, just play with all the funny sliders until you have something you like, then press one of the 'Publish' buttons. The 'Publish Random Map' button will publish a map with the current settings, but scrambles the map and does not show it to you. When asked for a location to save the file, usually you want to save it in the 'Documents/My Games/Elemental/Maps' directory. If you have mods turned on in the game options, you should then be able to load the map in game.

Most of the controls are self explanatory, but there are three noise fields that might need some explanation. For the landforms, there is a noise field and a turbulence field that are weighted against each other with their weight sliders. The climate uses a separate noise field. The 'Frequency' control adjusts the size of the noise features. High frequency makes small features and low frequency makes large features. The roughness slider controls the 'bumpyness' of the noise field. Low roughness makes very smooth transitions, high roughness increases the randomness and gives a grainy appearance.

The 'Calculate Start Positions' button shows you the start locations, but it is not necessary to press it. Start locations are always calculated on publish, but since it takes some time to calculate them, I didn't do real time updates. The button is there just for early feedback.

Let me know if you have any problems or bugs. Enjoy!

The maps generated by this application are somewhat different than the normal Elemental maps, as the following screenshots will show. For one thing, I eliminated the coastal cliffs altogether. The map looks better without them and they aren't required for gameplay. For swamps I added some props from the campaign map and also lowered their altitude so that they are slightly under the water level so you can see the ripple effect. Characters can still walk on it and use it as normal, and it looks very swampy! I also punched up the mountains a bit to make them big and dramatic. Fantasy worlds need big, big mountains!

One thing that still needs to be done is the placement of resources. I expect that the rules will be changing a great deal in the near future, so I'm holding off on that. Currently they will be placed randomly at game start, sometimes in huge clusters, and considering their enormous importance that is obviously not ideal. I'll tackle that issue once I learn more about it. If anyone has any opinions on how resources ought to be placed, please post them. I've noticed that I've never seen an Elementium resource in any game I've played, not sure why.

One difficulty here is that I do not know that it's possible to turn off the random resource spawns. If I place resources on the map in the cartography room, they end up randomized anyway. If anyone knows how to turn that off I'd like to hear it.

Take a look...

Floating in the bay

Fallen Lands

Surrounded!

Version History

1.2 - Wrote floating point numbers correctly for non-US operating systems.

1.1 - Matched the XML encoding from Elementerra to the one that Elemental uses.

Congratulations!

I wanted to post about some progress we made in another thread, which you may or may not find interesting.

It's in regards to defended world resources, which I know has been discussed earlier in this thread. We figured out a decent work-around. What we did was put a particular goodiehut on the map, and let that goodiehut have defenders. Then, once the monsters were cleared, the player could visit the adventure location and we could spawn a resource on the same spot.

It's not perfect by any measure, but it does allow us to create something that is "like" monster-defended world resources. For the sake of balance, we could give it a required notable location from 0 to 5 (0 meaning no requirement, just need to visit).

We're working on populating the adventure content pack right now with some of these, to spawn randomly at high adventure levels (fleshing out the adventure tree). If you are interested in including something like this in your generated maps, let us know.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 226

Congratulations!

I wanted to post about some progress we made in another thread, which you may or may not find interesting.

It's in regards to defended world resources, which I know has been discussed earlier in this thread. We figured out a decent work-around. What we did was put a particular goodiehut on the map, and let that goodiehut have defenders. Then, once the monsters were cleared, the player could visit the adventure location and we could spawn a resource on the same spot.

It's not perfect by any measure, but it does allow us to create something that is "like" monster-defended world resources. For the sake of balance, we could give it a required notable location from 0 to 5 (0 meaning no requirement, just need to visit).

We're working on populating the adventure content pack right now with some of these, to spawn randomly at high adventure levels (fleshing out the adventure tree). If you are interested in including something like this in your generated maps, let us know.

I've never liked the idea that resources spawn in after the fact. In Civ, you do need tech to see various resources, but they are in fact already placed at the beginning of the game. Once you gain the tech, you can see them in all explored territory including enemy territory. This creates conflict over resources.

In Elemental, resources kinda spawn into the players territory who discovered the tech as kindof a freebie. I think that is an entirely different concept, and much less desireable than the way Civ does it. Your not discovering reality with your tech, you are creating reality. There can still be conflict over resources, but at that point its a bit superfluous because you will generally get your own upon teching up. Also, you can't go to war over a resource that you know about, but your enemy doesn't because he doesn't have the tech. In that case, the resource doesn't actually exist, which is a huge problem in my opinion. I'd like to see this mechanic go away.

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Yes, that is all entirely true.

However, with this approach, you could place the goodiehuts->monsters->resources as you would normal resources. It is merely a workaround to pre-place defended world resources in the generated map.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 228

Yes, that is all entirely true.

However, with this approach, you could place the goodiehuts->monsters->resources as you would normal resources. It is merely a workaround to pre-place defended world resources in the generated map.

So basically my little rant was not entirely on topic... You have to understand that I haven't really slept in 8 days, lol.

You're saying that it would be nice if my placement routines were configureable to place anything, not just resources proper. Once my reading comprehension comes back and I'm not seeing rainbow-colored ladybugs scurrying around my visual periphery, I might conceivably find a way to do that.

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I hope you get a good sleep soon! Hopefully there is a medical reason for your sleeplessness *and* it can be fixed very soon. Try not to do any driving while sleepless (as some recent test has shown that it can have a greater effect on reactions and judgement than a reasonable amount of alcohol over the limit!). I know it might be obvious, but a reasonable amount of proper sleep is crucial for practically everything we do, so I hope you get some good stuff soon.

Best regards,
Steven.

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Sleep/Rest well Cephalo. Probably can't say it better than StevenAus, so yeah what he said.

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Steven, I'm guessing the reason for his sleeplessness can be found on the previous page

Congratulations cephalo! I suppose you'll have time to work on elementerra in about 18 years?

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he might be lucky and be able to squease in some time on it in about 3 to 4 years, and then get more time later.

harpo

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Gratz Cephalo!

I say finish Elementerra right away, that little one will be even more demanding in a few years...
And if another one pops out, forget about it...

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Talk about not being in the right context. If you have a new baby, then there's 99% (read: 99.9recurring%) chance that you'll have serious sleeplessness for a while. Still, it would be great if you could fit in some Elementerra stuff sometime in the next few months. But we all understand that's only a "maybe".

Best regards,
Steven.

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First off: Congrats on the baby!!!

Second off: Extra-super stellar job on elementerra....really enjoyed playing around with it prior to the 1.1 patch.

Thirdly: Are there any current limitations or problems with using an "Elementerra" generated map in version 1.1? It seemed to work ok when I tried it, but just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something that had been inputted in 1.1 that is incompatible / unplaced in version 1.1.

Thanks again!!!

Joe

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As far as I can, Elementerra works fine with 1.1. There may be some issues with map size and how the AI handles it (I make maps on Elementerra so big my units can't path find their way across it in one order.)

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Ok, I've started to get back to a more normal routine, and I am currently experimenting with building the world according to rules that are governed by shard placement. I think that if the world is going to be barren, exploration can be more fun if we make it into a puzzle of sorts where you can use the rules to make educated guesses on whats hidden in the fog based on what you have already explored.

Another thing I'm going to try, and this is only speculative right now, is to 'verticalize' the map and eliminate 'hills' as a concept completely. I would like to use varying heights of flat land for passable/buildable tiles and mountains for impassable tiles. This will hopefully allow things like switchback paths over mountain ranges and mountaintop cities overlooking the low lands. In other words, instead of land, hill and mountain, you would have multiple tiered land like a wedding cake. I believe that both the game rules and the engine will support this... we'll see.

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That would be amazing, if you could get it to work. If building on these hills can actually get the terracing effect to work without half your city hanging out into thin air....mountain top cities would look absolutely sweet.

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Hey cephalo, that sounds awesome.

By the way, we found a really bad flaw with the goodiehut->defended resource thing, so I think that's a bad way to go if it can be avoided. But I think you can actually place monsters and resources anyway, so maybe that workaround never made any sense to you. I was still stuck in post-map additions mindset.

I'm not sure how the "don't place objects" tag works, but if I'm correct it stops the game from placing more resources at the start of a game (random placement, that is). If that's the case, it would be cool to have some sort of hook with elementerra to spawn random resources such as the elementium world resource. Although I'm not sure how to make that easy for the user. Possibly just a tab with mods where the user can check if he uses the mod or not. Or another possibility is you just placing them anyway, then they will only appear if the user has the mod installed (memory leaks? who knows). Or a textfile where the user can enter a certain string. /shrug

Also, if someone wants to remove the various stones and stuff that spawn on mountainranges, they can replace their TerrainTypes.xml with the following: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=qMbp0BWr (elemental 1.11)

It's a core file modification, so the game will need to recompile the xml blob once upon startup. And obviously it will affect all maps. Hmm... maybe the "don't spawn objects" thing is making the game not spawn those random props either? If that's the case, obviously replacing the terraintypes.xml is pointless.

edit: props still spawned with the map "don't place objects" tag (with the standard terraintypes.xml).

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I ran into a little snag in my verticalization plan. The problem is that the game automatically places hills of a set altitude between mountains and flat land. Grrrrr. I need to think of a work around for this, and I suspect its gonna be pretty goofy. Here is a screenshot so you can see what I mean. As an experiment, I set the altitude of all land squares and mountains to 200. I placed no hills of any kind and none are in the map xml file. As you can see in the pic, the valleys between land and mountain are actually hills terrain that are not placed by me. If I set the altitude of mountains of land to a low number like 30, then the hills appear as raised areas instead of valleys.

As a modder, I hate when I am pre-empted from making 'mistakes'. The way the heightmap works in this game offers huge possibilities... I sure wish I could explore them!

Auto Hills

EDIT: I can eliminate this problem by using hills instead of mountains, and I think I can make those tiles impassable, but then the game thinks of them as hills and they show up as hills on the cloth map. It might still be worth it though.

EDIT2: Yeah this is working. It may cause some problems with the new terraforming spells, since I'm faking the mountains with hills and impassable tiles, but if it looks good enough maybe we can get the Elemental team to give us the mountains back. Still a few technical challenges left to make this really functional.

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