[Utility] WorldPainter Released!

[padillah]

This has really come a long way from the begining.

WorldPainter currently supports:

• Starting locations are now controled by a slider on the Map tab.
• Mountains (as a mountain range)
• Hills, Tundra, Snow, Coast, Icecaps...
• Map display dynamically resizes.
• Manual editing of plots! Just double-click a plot in the bitmap and edit all the attributes. (Almost all attributes are supported now!!)
• Loading of existing maps ( .Civ4WorldBuilderSave files)
• Jungles, Deserts, Forests...
• Resources
• Goodie Huts
• RIVERS!!!

This requires .NET Framework 2.0

Comming attractions!

• Game and Team editing options.
• Better editing features...
• ...and more!

Please let me know of any bugs or feature requests you have.

I hope this is even remotly useful to someone.

Special thanks to Junuxx for giving me the inspiration to try this.

Tom P.

WordlPainter v 0.3.0

[Gramphos]

Do you have a screenshot?

[padillah]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Do you have a screenshot?

Doh!

[Junuxx]

Good to see some results

I'll try it out later tonight

[Junuxx]

I get some errors, both at startup and when I press 'Generate Map'

At startup:
System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'F:\My Documents\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4WorldInfo.xml'.

My Civ directory is F:\Games\Civ IV. Seems it can't handle that...

When I press Generate, I get "System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." and no map is generated.

Any ideas what's causing this?

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
I get some errors, both at startup and when I press 'Generate Map'

At startup:
System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'F:\My Documents\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4WorldInfo.xml'.

My Civ directory is F:\Games\Civ IV. Seems it can't handle that...

When I press Generate, I get "System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." and no map is generated.

Any ideas what's causing this?

Yeah. Smart guy that I am I'm looking up some of the values in the XML files. I am hoping to make this extensable so that it will work with resource MODs and such later. (that's why I wanted to figure out if you could add terrain)

I've got the XML file path hardcoded and never did implement the lookup logic.

Thanks for that. I'll fix it tonight.

Tom P.

[padillah]

Bug Fixed!

Coasts added! (Check the Terrain subtab.)
Icecaps started! (need to find out why they don't go farther than 2 tiles in but...)

Thanks for the feedback!

Tom P.

[Junuxx]

Yes! It works
It's very much like Atlas in its early stages


I see Tundra is in too, already. And I like the smooth coastlines you get sometimes.
I noticed one thing that was pretty odd. Try setting continents very high and continent size very low. You will get a narrow band of islands near the equator with loads of starting locations.
A final start location placement algoritm can wait, but I suggest that at least you limit their number to 18.

[Junuxx]

Another CRUCIAL thing.

It looks like calculation time is directly related to window size. When I run WorldPainter fullscreen it takes well over 2 seconds to generate a map

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
Another CRUCIAL thing.

It looks like calculation time is directly related to window size. When I run WorldPainter fullscreen it takes well over 2 seconds to generate a map

This is a direct result of resizing the bitmap. I've been thinking of putting in a size limit or a progress bar but what I realy need is a farster way to resize the bitmap and keep the "grid"-ness.

If you look quickly you should see a "Generating Map..." label flash for a split second. That's the time it takes to generate the actual map. Everything else is resizing the bitmap.

It's a pretty simple algorithem (sp) that just increases the pixels by a set ratio:

b.SetPixel(x, y, bTemp.GetPixel((int)(Math.Floor(x * nXFactor)), (int)(Math.Floor(y * nYFactor))));

The problem comes in having to loop through (on my screen for example) 1280 * 1024 = 1,310,720 pixels. I really need a faster resize but without bilinear filtering. If I let the bitmap object do the resize it softens everything.

I think I'm just going to go with a set maximum size and stop there.

Any suggestions?

Tom P.

[Junuxx]

I think the problem is that you are modifying the onscreen object. Not once, but 1,3 million times. I'm not used to .NET, but I think that making a copy of the onscreen picture, modifying that instead, and put it back onscreen would solve the problem.

But I'm sure there must be a resize method included without bilinear filtering

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
Yes! It works
It's very much like Atlas in its early stages

I did take quite a few ideas from your examples and stuff. But some I just made up, like the coast algorythim.
I did credit you with the color scheme, I'm no artist and this would have taken me all year.

I see Tundra is in too, already. And I like the smooth coastlines you get sometimes.

I like the Coastline(%) slider best so far. It's the percentage chance that the coastline will freak out. Set it at 30+ and see what you come up with. You can also set it at 1 and just have coast for one tile around any grassland that touches ocean.

I noticed one thing that was pretty odd. Try setting continents very high and continent size very low. You will get a narrow band of islands near the equator with loads of starting locations.
A final start location placement algoritm can wait, but I suggest that at least you limit their number to 18.

Doh! I currently have it attached to the "Number of Continents" slider, just until I implement a "Number of Players" and "Starting Locations" sliders. So you can get way more than 18, I hope this doesn't cause a problem. I only write 18 "BeginPlayer" entries in the WBS but there may be more than 18 "StartingPlot"s.

It would have helped a lot had Dale mentioned that the WBS file IS CASE SENSATIVE!!! I spent nearly an hour trying to figure out why CIV kept crashing.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Junuxx
I think the problem is that you are modifying the onscreen object. Not once, but 1,3 million times. I'm not used to .NET, but I think that making a copy of the onscreen picture, modifying that instead, and put it back onscreen would solve the problem.

But I'm sure there must be a resize method included without bilinear filtering

Ha! Found it! I knew there was a hook to GDI+ in there somwhere.

Now it's fast enough I can attach it to the paint event!

I'm looking into some other things so I'll wait on an update.

Tom P.

[padillah]

Finally! I've been trying to release this for three days.

Just couldn't get the time to compile the setup.

WorldPainter v0.0.7 is now complete. See the link in the top post to download.

Thanks to everyone that helped out.

I've got a big surprise planned for next version so it may take me a while. But it will be worth it.

Tom P.

[Bill3000]

Uh, how is this going to differ from Atlas?