[Utility] Atlas Map Generator

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
*bumps because of new version*
Lots of changes and fixes, see the website for a complete changelog.

@padillah:
And? Have you started yet? A bit of friendly competition sounds fine, but I think you need to catch up over 300 hours of work..

Tell me about it! Do you mind if I steal your idea of placing a starting point and growing the land from there? (I liked some of the cellular automita stuff I found in your links.)

I've been trying to build a "neural" decision tree that learns chess so I've got a leg up as far as understanding it... now I just need 300 hours of free time.

I've got some ideas on how I can use the "bitboard" concept from chess to help with some of the ploting...

I think I'll turn off some of the "new" features and release a version that at least works ( One of my biggest downfalls is I work on stuff but never release it 'cause it's never "done". My own personal "scope creep hell")

Gotta get the actual save part to work and (like your first one) resources aren't ready yet (gotta get on those bitboards). But it will make a barren map.

Tom P.
I also need a cool splash screen like you have... and a name, I really need a name. You took the real good one.

[Zuul]

Nice work :-). I really like that you listen to my ideas :-). Noticed a bug: not showing terrain still shows terrain under forrest jungle if you also doesn't show them.

Nice info screen. I guess you will add more info on it like peak percentage and resource plots.

The costal waters works much better now, especially varied mode. Even though a ultra/super/mega (or some other power word ) of calm/wild would be nice to have in (and maybe very varied). I guess trying to have many connected islands with coast will be too hard, too many calculations. But adding shallow underwater islands could be nice.

Maybe add some whide and thin standard sizes.

Add at least a x2 size on all plots (else titan and such shows too small plots).

Show hid icecaps/goodie huts.

Again, nice work.

[Junuxx]

*bumps because of new version*
Lots of changes and fixes, see the website for a complete changelog.

@padillah:
And? Have you started yet? A bit of friendly competition sounds fine, but I think you need to catch up over 300 hours of work..

@Zuul:
You were right. I changed the way the coastal waters settings works and added the settings ' very calm ' and ' very wild'

[Zuul]

Originally posted by Junuxx you can already set how much coast there should be (coastal waters in the World tab)

There is little difference in the different settings of this one. Almost always just 1 tile thick (with some places that have 2), but almost never 3 or more, or 0. And almost never are islands connected with a long coast.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
@padillah:
I used this tutorial on the WBS files by Dale.
I don't know where to find all these routines you mention, that's one of the reasons why I wrote a stand-alone app instead of a mod or script using Civ's python stuff.

Thanks!

I didn't even realise they were text files.

Well, you up for a little freindly competition? I need something to do to "cut my teeth" on VS 2005 so I'm gonna try this.

You have such a huge jump on me I'll never catch you anyway...

That, and I have very little time to work on this... but I can dream, can't I?

Tom P.

[Junuxx]

Oh I just love to receive long comments like that! Don't worry about that! I'm glad you generally like it, and your remarks are of the type that keep me sharp, they're really useful.

Concerning the starting locations number in Atlas and in-game: Atlas writes the correct number of starting positions to the WBS file, but unfortunately Civ places a number of civs (seemingly) dependent only on the map's size ( too be precise, the line "world size=" in the map section). I hope to find a way around this.

Resources indeed give a different experience than usual. I will add a resource check in evaluating starting positions. In my experience ( I played 2 Atlas map games to completion) initial growth is slow, but there's some real empire-building later in the game with plenty of most, and shortage of some resources.

You're not exactly right about the method of continent generation. A few single-tile land square are placed and then expanded using a cellular automata technique (See the links section on the Atlas Website for more info on this). Also, Impaler is working on a better method using tectonics and stuff.

Still, I agree that setting many small continents, which overlap and so, indeed generate the most interesting shapes. You can expect continent and island generationto keep improving with future versions

Thanks again!

[Jack Frost]

well, i just spent an hour or two playing around with it. Very promising, but not quite ready for primetime:

I'm sure it does set the specified starting locations - but when actually loading the game - it does not use the specified number of civilizations (so, I set 18 starting locations on a standard sized map, and the game starts with anywhere from 6-10 civs).

Resources are a mixed bag - since I haven't actually played a full game using an Atlas map I can't comment on how playable the more more random placement of resources works (it may very well make for a more exciting game). But at least, coastal resources need to be more available. I think of the 7 or so games I loaded (all using coastal start) none had a water resource that could be used within the first 20 turns.

I love the islands. I think they work very well, and well designed islands are a very important missing element in the vanilla civ4 map generator.

The map generation seems to work best in larger maps, correct me if I'm wrong but basically the approach you're using is:

For each continent, place a vaguely round shaped body of land at a random point. Usually these round land masses will collide, and this will form an interestingly shaped continent.

I think this is a great approach, its very simple, yet generates interesting and varied bodies of land.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but I believe the way it generally works is that you take a single circle blob of land, and generate an angle, then place a few 'extender' blobs of land, each placing another extender blob at the same angle. If the angle is very sharp, then 3-4 blobs of land will make a circle, and form a single interesting continent, if the angle is more or less straight then each blob of land will connect to form a thinner straight land mass. Often you see semi circles of land blobs.

This works surprisingly well - probably my favorite setting is 20 continents size 2 with 8 mixed islands - as this allows for some great land shapes (this is using the standard map size, which behaves poorly using larger continents). But if I may make a couple suggestions:

You need to change the name of that control most people associate 'continents' with "large bodies of land seperated from other bodies of land by oceans or mountains". So selecting 4 continents should make 4 main land masses, ideally with at least 2 seperated by ocean.

Various landblobs of *various size* are then used to construct these main bodies of land (much like they do now), while keeping checks available to control distance from other continents. Maybe even split the map up into x hemispheres and generate a distinct land body in each space.

Another way to do it would be to produce various landblobs all attached to eachother - then seperate various contiguous groupings of them in random direction and distance (creating the jigsaw like structure the real planet has).

Anyway - my final note:
Your islands are amazing. I love em. But its really rare that you get japan/england style islands, which is too bad. Adding some logic to make a couple lonely style islands generate close to coastlines would be awesome.

PS - sorry for the very long commentary - and I hope this didn't come across as complaining. Hoping it comes out more like contributing

[Junuxx]

Thank you.

Show forest/jungle is a good thing. Added to my to do list
Thanks especially for bringing the infinite loop under my attention. Will fix it.
Zooming will be difficult, don't know if I will do that. The rest of your suggestions is already on my to do list, and you can already set how much coast there should be (coastal waters in the World tab)

[Zuul]

Nice :-). Testing it now and see some things that would be nice to have in:

Show forrest/jungle.

Be able to zoom in map image (and maybe use some small icons for each terrain type), set to wrap to window or not.

Missing some game settings like always peace, and start age.

Set how much resources there should be in total (and of each).

Set how good start locations there should be.

Lot of icecaps generates a strange square-like pattern.

Set how varing/smooth the terrain should be.

Set how much coast there should be (connected islands, some coastlines with no coast, reefes (coast without islands near), and so on).

Infinite loop on land percentage 0.0 and costal start locations.

[Junuxx]

@padillah:
I used this tutorial on the WBS files by Dale.
I don't know where to find all these routines you mention, that's one of the reasons why I wrote a stand-alone app instead of a mod or script using Civ's python stuff.

@Jack Frost:
Thanks a lot. and by the way: There are resources now! It's done, yay!
And controlling custom game settings was an awesome idea, I included it too.

[Jack Frost]

I downloaded it - looks great. I wish there were resources, because the standard maps totally blow - and I'd really rather be able to see if its a map I like before playing it. Huge improvement on vanilla civ map gen -- sorta insane that someone had to mod up a really good map generator considering how critical good maps are to good game experience -- they should have paid you to do it right. So kudos to you.

My one concern - and I think this is really important for this app to become standard in everyones civ folder:

Need to be able to run custom game settings. I really hate tech trading, and to not be able to turn it off would ruin the game for me. Ditto with diplo victory, and some other changes.

If I'm just stupid and theres already a way to run custom maps using custom game settings, then nevermind.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
Still don't know what you meant by "Where are the mapbuilder specs? " btw

Junuxx

I'm trying to figure out where all these people gt all this information.

How do you know how to write a map file? Where did you get the info from? Locutus has a list of all the Python classes and their methods, where the heck did he get that? How do I find the savegame routine? How do I find the Strategy Layer?

One thing I'd like to do is add the Strategy Layer and GridState to the save game so you can actually use the things. But I've got nothing to go on and no idea where to start.

I've looked throught the python code and can't even find the bloody button for the strategy layer! I can find the "Ping" button and most other buttons that get put on the sdcreen but not the ones for GlobalView. They are obfuscated by this silly "widget" construct and I have no idea how to make heads or tails out of it.

Ugh!

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, yeah, no problem. If you get to a point let me know.

Tom P.

[Junuxx]

Originally posted by padillah
Just trying to help.

Tom P.

I know, I know, I appreciate it, really. Please don't misunderstand.
It's just that no particular component pops to (my) mind that could easily be, how do you say, transferred to another contributor.

But if you think "well, this or that area should be improved and I have an idea how to do so" then your help is very welcome of course!

Still don't know what you meant by "Where are the mapbuilder specs? " btw

Junuxx

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
Hey padillah. I'm not quite sure what you mean. What specs?

What would you like to contribute on? Have any ideas?
I'm going to do the resources soon and I hope Impaler is going to help me on the continent and hills/mountains part (sent you an e-mail back Impaler, thnx). It will be mostly complete after that, save for some interface improvements etc. Oh, and rivers and goodies. Then again, when it's finished I might organize the code in a more modular form so that people can easily write, say, their own jungle placement method.

I'm not rejecting your offer to contribute but I'm not sure what you could do for the project either! Feel free to suggest!

Junuxx

Well, when you say it that way it...

Just trying to help.

Tom P.

[Impaler[WrG]]

E-Mail recived thanks for the quick response, all looks in order and I should be able to start soon if my class finals done get in the way. Wish me luck