[Map Script] SmartMap

[DougM]

version 8.4A released

Sorry folks, little bug with player placement that could cause and endless loop. Fixed.
Get it on the main page as usual. Again, sorry for the inconvenience, the endless loop only happens on certain maps, and I didn't happen to catch it on any of the ones I tried (only happens on maps with a small number of continents, and even then only in certain situations).



# 8.4A
# Quick Fix for problem with placing players on pangea maps introduced in 8.4
# (would cause an endless loop, freezing civ iv on pangea and certain other
# maps where it couldn't decide the best continental distribution of players)

[Elustrian]

Re: Re: Re: [Map Script] SmartMap

Originally posted by DougM


Try pm'ing elustrian, he was the one who requested it. I've not actually tried any. I've seen screenshots of a couple at CFC, you could try checking in the creation forum there.

That's the problem. Haven't seen any good space mods out there yet (not that they are not out there), so thought first crack at modding would be down that alley.

This addition to SmartMap will let us try out new units and tactics as we develop but believe me, we are a long way from having anything together.

[Elustrian]

Finally had a chance to try the single tile option and works great.

Only clitch I saw was in the selection screen I could not quite see the last option but could get the mouse to pick it up (some type of culture override). Pulled the slider as far down as possible on my screen.

Again, thanks for adding the single tile option.

Elustrian

[DougM]

Originally posted by Elustrian
Finally had a chance to try the single tile option and works great.

Only clitch I saw was in the selection screen I could not quite see the last option but could get the mouse to pick it up (some type of culture override). Pulled the slider as far down as possible on my screen.

Again, thanks for adding the single tile option.

Elustrian

Unfortunately, that's civiv's ui code, not mine, so I can't fix that. Glad it is working otherwise!

[DougM]

version 8.5 released

On the front page. This is a pretty minor update, to fix some slowness people playing on big maps have experienced.

# 8.5
# Performance improvements.
# Improved hill placement for a huge/65ocean/30hills map from 12 seconds to 2.
# Improved huge/65ocean/many resources from 90 seconds to 30.

[DougM]

it's fine with 1.61

Works just fine in 1.61. They haven't improved the memory required per tile though, so it doesn't look like you can play on really big maps yet.

[Qwertqwert]

I wnat a 42X26 4X4 Map. That is what I set to be Huge in the XML files, but when I do smart map it doesn't work like that. So how do I do this?

[DougM]

Originally posted by Qwertqwert
I wnat a 42X26 4X4 Map. That is what I set to be Huge in the XML files, but when I do smart map it doesn't work like that. So how do I do this?

I assume that means you want final map dimensions of 168 x 104 tiles?

If so, the closest you can come (easily) is to set override width to 160 (or 180), and override height to 100 (or 120).

That will get you pretty close to the exact map dimensions you want. (Note: be sure to still set your world size to 'huge' or whatever you want, as that affects the research rate).

If you are adventurous and want to get those precise dimensions, you could edit smartmap.py. Go down about 2/3rds of the way through the script, and edit the override entries:

	                   ["140",35,False],
	                   ["160",40,False],
	                   ["180",45,False],

Just add additional lines with the exact number you are interested in. for example,

	                   ["104",26,False],
	                   ["168",42,False],

Be sure to add your entries to both the width and height lists. You can do this in notepad quite easily.

I do feel that it is unfortunate that map scripts are expected to override the XML, but that's how firaxis did it.

[Qwertqwert]

Thanks, I'll probabally go with 180X120, a little extra extra huge.

[DougM]

version 8.6 released

Get it from the front page.


# 8.6
# Correct the override width/height entries to reflect the 'standard'
# width and height numbers (previously this was rough, now it is exact).
# So these numbers now match what scripts that use the base XML produce.
# Added extra plains / extra grass options to the terrain options, which
# will produce more of that type of terrain.
# Added 'new world' coastal/inland start options, which will place start
# positions in the east (as new world) but also favor coastal or inland
# starts.
# Added 'no block' peak options. This forbids peaks from having ocean
# on both sides either vertically of horizontally. This prevents certain
# common cases of resource blocking that some people found annoying.
# Any such peak is reduced to a hill, as a result you will have less total
# peaks on your map.
# Improved performance of land placement in low sea width (removed unneeded checks).
# Improved performance of land placement in high sea width by spatially
# hashing the previously placed lands, and reducing the search for conflicting
# lands to nearby hash entries. This makes a huge difference on big maps with
# high sea levels selected (>50% faster).
# Improved distribution of hills and peaks so that small continents don't get
# a disproportionate amount of them.
# Tweaked up likelihood of floodplains slightly. You may see a bit more desert
# in temperate maps. If you don't like desert much you can of course turn it
# off or switch to tropical which has much less desert.
# Improved performance for placing resources on large maps with lots of resources.
# Overall performance improvements will no generate the most difficult type of map
# (huge, land heavy, high sea level map with 2 or more continents) in less than
# a minute on my p4m-1.8ghz.

[DougM]

version 8.7 released

On the front page.

# 8.7
# Added 3 great lakes options (few, normal, many). This will generate a map with a number
# of large lakes (large enough to typically have ocean tiles).
# Edge sea and corner sea were reversed in what they generated, fixed.
# Corrected the usage of cardinal directions, thanks to Sto for noticing. This turned out to
# be harmless, but would show up in the xml error log.
# Fixed bug with generating inland sea maps, thanks DG for noticing.
# Corrected minor math error in hill placement that was generating more hills than specified.
# Corrected disagreement between ocean percentage and size of central sea in such maps.
# Fixed problem with counting number of available sea resource spots that would place too
# many sea resources on certain styles of maps.
# Removed all used of CyPlot.isCoastalLand() because this method doesn't do what you'd expect.
# Forced central sea maps to keep the central sea away from the poles to prevent splitting
# the map in two.
# Speed up altitude calculation by simplifying the search for nearby ocean.
# Speed up wetness calculation by skipping water tiles.
# Speed up hash lookups by increasing step size.
# These speed improvements should knock about 10-20% off the total generation time.

[Spocko]

Impressive and beautiful!

Great work! I just downloaded v87 and created the most beautiful map yet - not so round, many fragments. The landscape looks beautiful and interesting to look at (what can I say, I'm a geographer!!).

Cheers and thanks,
Spocko

[Snotty]

Looks great! cant wait to try the funky options out on some multiplayer victims

[DougM]

smartmap version 9.0 released!

On the front page now! Enjoy the fun over the weekend!
I left version8.7 there also, just in case there are any problems.

# 9.0
# New land layout: earth. Selecting this will generate the earth, with source data
# from a blue marble projection. This is a highly accurate earth layout, with peaks
# and hills somewhat fuzzed to make for a more playable map.
# Also added: north america, south america, africa, europe, asia, australia
# All of the new maps are based on blue marble data, and so are going to be more accurate
# than they are going to be strategically well designed, and resource placement will
# be random rather than historically accurate. The current version will also have
# generated terrain, but the next version will probably include an option to use
# terrain sampled from blue marble data.
# New resource placement options: very many (places a _lot_ of resources), crazy, and
# crazy many. The crazy options place resources on any workable tile. This makes for
# a rather different gameplay experience.
# New terrain placement option: crazy which will place terrains randomly.
# New feature placement option: crazy which will place features randomly.
# Protected read / write of the smartmap config file so file errors won't cause a script
# error, and moved the config file to the user dir, which should help people not playing
# as admin on windows.
# Improved odds of generating flood plains in desert river tiles.
# Changed the grid infos to be compatible with mods with arbitrary number of map sizes, which
# will make smartmap compatible with mods that have more than the usual number of map sizes.
# This change also makes SmartMap maps closer to the usual size.
# Improved speed for calculating the altitude of plots on very land heavy maps.
# Call the python garbage collector and clean up memory usage to allow larger maps. I can
# now generate maps somewhere around 10% larger than before. I can now generate a map
# with twice the area of the usual huge, and start it on my 1G computer.
# Base CivIV = 200M, 280x84, 65% ocean = 500M, 280x84 0% ocean = 700M, that's roughly
# 13K or so per additional land tile allocated by CivIV, so keep that in mind when
# deciding on your ocean levels.
# Fixed a bug that tried to place continents too close to the map edges some times.
# Fixed a bug with regenerate map that occurs if you load a first turn savegame and then
# immediately try to regenerate it, thanks skovran for the report.
# Cleaned up code in player placement, improved speed.
# Added catches to player placement to prevent overlapping starts. If an
# overlapping start is somehow generated (a bug reported a couple of times),
# it will now fallback to standard placement mode. I'm unsure how an overlapping start
# can ever happen in the first place, but this should really guarantee it is impossible
# for it to get through and actually place the players that way.
# Fixed a bug that would sometimes misjudge whether or not to place additional players
# on a large continent.
# Improved the way continents are calculated to be more accurate in certain cases around
# blocking peaks, and improved performance.

[DougM]

SmartMap version 9.1 released

This version now loads WBS files for land form and terrain! Also has blue marble sampled terrain for the earth maps.

Get it on the front page as usual.

# 9.1
# Added support for loading and resizing Civ4WorldBuilderSave files (WBS files), you'll
# find them in the 'continents' menu since they define the land shape for the map.
# Added support for loading terrains from map (WBS) see option: 'use map data' in terrain menu.
# This should resolve the 'unrealistic terrain' problem for the BlueMarble based maps as well.
# Sampled terrain from blue marble data for earth based maps.
# Tweaked 'earth' map option to remove useless antarctica.
# Tweaked player placement to be less willing to place players near the poles.
# Changed crazy resource option to place land/water resources only on those tiles.
# Split resource placement rules from resource density controls. The combination of the
# two was creating too much confusion over what option did what to resources. Hopefully
# the resource controls will be both clearer and give you more options now.
#