[Map Script] Continents and Islands

[jam3]

Well i was happy with the inclusion of the Big and Small map type but wasnt altogether pleased with the results. Mainly the over abdunance of "small" islands and lack of any wide oceans. I tinkered around a bit with the py file and found that essentially allowing the islands to be turned into coninents produced some very interesting results especially when I increased the water value. Basically I got what I have been looking for for awhile the vanilla map/terrain generator using the fractal generator and giving organic looking continents and islands. You can play around and get pangea type maps but still have an island or a tiny chain floating our in the ocean or an abundance of other organic looking type maps. The picture is from the default settings which is large islands, normal continents, and 5% additional water (5% of the original value not 100%).

I was playing around alot with the settings and decided to just go ahead and add it to the menu options and once I did that I figured I'd post it for the community. I also like the community map mods but feel this is more of an enhancement to the vanilla game instead of a complete new mod, like Tectonics.

Please let me know what you think! Also if someone can show me how to properly pass a global variable to the TerrainGenerator Call I will add some options for more less desert, and tundra ice latitudes.


Changes
Raised Tundra and Ice latitude
Decreased Desert by 33% of original Value
Incresed Plains by 33% of original Value
Added options for larger Islands (basically reaching continent size)
What I understand about the "Grain" Value
1: Massive Continent/Island
2: Normal Continent/Island
3: Snaky Continent/Island
4: Normal Island
5: Tiny Island
Changed Default to "Mixed-In Islands" but the seperate Islands gives a hemisphere type of map but more organic than default hemispheres.

Mess around try out the Massive Continents with Massive/Huge/Large Islands with Speration both on and off, crank up sealevel to high and add 15 % water (i havent had time to see all the possible combos, some pretty interesting maps. I think alot of it comes from the creator of Big and Small throwing in some small islands right from the start of the map creation.

[jam3]

[jam3]

Well i was happy with the inclusion of the Big and Small map type but wasnt altogether pleased with the results. Mainly the over abdunance of "small" islands and lack of any wide oceans. I tinkered around a bit with the py file and found that essentially allowing the islands to be turned into coninents produced some very interesting results especially when I increased the water value. Basically I got what I have been looking for for awhile the vanilla map/terrain generator using the fractal generator and giving organic looking continents and islands. You can play around and get pangea type maps but still have an island or a tiny chain floating our in the ocean or an abundance of other organic looking type maps.

I was playing around alot with the settings and decided to just go ahead and add it to the menu options and once I did that I figured I'd post it for the community. This is an enhancement to a default script not an entirely new script like Tectonics.

Please let me know what you think! :goodjob:

V1.1 08-30-07
Fixed
Call to TerrainGenerator
*was incorrectly called in v1.0, was working fine with default values but desert reduction, plains addition, tundra/ice latitude changes were not working.
Added Menu options
Reduce desert
Add plains
Terrain Clumping
Changed
Names of Islands in the Island Menu to the continent names
*Just felt this was more clear
*Tundra is at .7 Latitude, Ice is at .8, each raised .1 (so they appear closer to the poles than in vanilla)

Use:

Island Size:

You can now select Snaky Continents, Normal Continents, and Massive Continents as your Island Size. This will Radically Change the landmasses produced from the original Big and Small Vanilla Map Script.

Islands Overlay:

Seperate - This tells the generator to place the islands on one half(Hemisphere) of the map and the continents on the other half (Hemisphere), this is a good option if you want better odds at producing multiple "islands" (in this usage a landmass completly surrounded by water regardless of size), it is still possible that the landmasses will join across the center of the map, especially if you choose massive continents, massive islands, low sealeve, add no water.

Mixed-In - This tells the generator to place the islands and continents anywhere on the map and can produce interesting results when they overlap one another.

Add Water

Note: The vanilla script uses two water values the % values are determined from the higher value of 82

Adding Water is a good way to produce more "Island"(see above) type landmasses. It is important to note that this value is directly related to sealevel. So Normal Sealevel add 10% is very close to High Sealevel add 0%. You can generate some interesting 2(it might produce 3 or 4) continent landmasses and still have small/tiny islands floating in the oceans using Massive continents, Massive Islands, Add 15% Water, Island Overlay - Seperate (This is basically a much more organic version of Vanilla Hemispheres).

Reduce Desert

Reduces a percent derived from the default value of 32% (meaning 32% of the land is desert by default), so a 50% reduction makes the value 16%, As stated in the vanilla scripts these are approximations.


Add Plains

Adds a percent derived from the default value of 18% (meaning 18% of the land is plains by default), so a 50% addition makes the value 27%, As stated in the vanilla scripts these are approximations.

Terrain Clumping

Also Called Terrain Homogeny, increasing the clumpiness increses the chance that like terrain will be surrounded by the exact same terrain.


NOTE: Pictures above were taken with the original version and do illustrate the landmasses produced but not the terrain changes of v1.1 .

[Kinjiru]

I really do love this script Jam3. I use it every random game I play now. Kudos!

[jam3]

Thanks I find myself pretty much using nothing but it either