Spahbod

Since everyone seems to agree with the concept, I created a ticket for it: Ticket 1198

It is better for players to be able to choose their start location. If we are going to do it randomly, we should place allied players near each other that is very hard as there isn't any rule about start location placement. So we should add a checkbox in atlas player dialog to see if this player is able to choose his civ/team. Start locations must be placed depending on the number of "checked" players.

Another map using the random biome system. I am not satisfied with it though and I am looking for your ideas and suggestions to make this better. Players start in "wholes" in the mountains connected to each other by some roads. There is also a larger valley in the middle of the map. It is overall a very hard map lacking both building space and resources. I took screenshots from the different stages of design. Some might find them interesting (including myself). But it isn't easy to upload them all so I created this short clip from the images. Link to download the clip I'm looking forward into your suggestions to make this better. canyon.zip

Updated the mp. Added more wildlife. rhine_marshlands.zip

How about these names? Skirmish Normal Maps Premade Maps Typical Maps Anyone has an idea?

That's exactly what I meant. I think that 0 A.D. would be the first RTS game to contain all of these map types.

I know that Death Canyon was never meant to be a mockup for a random map. I said it also fits into the concept. Gambia River needs a huge amount of details that are hard to implement in a random map script and the result won't be as good as it should be.

If you've read the design document before or have seen this topic, you know that there are proposed random maps that are very hard (if not impossible) to make. They are Cradle of Civilisation, Fertile Crescent, Peloponnesos, Central Mediterranean, The Crimea, Eire & Albion, Paradise Lost and Gambia River. Also some other existing maps fit well into this concept (Like Death Canyon) These maps have many features that makes it very hard for scripters to make and the whole concept would be very unbalanced. One of the main problems would be player placement. We have to define player locations depending on player numbers. Even if we manage to make them, they won't look like "Random Maps". But we also can't omit these maps and creating them as scenarios makes them very inflexible (As some of them are). There is a solution for this. Melee maps. If you have ever played games like Warcraft III (which I borrowed the term "melee map" from), C&C series, Battle for middle earth series or Rise of Legends, you are familiar with this concept. These maps are created using editor like scenarios. But instead of defining player options and their related entities, we put a "start location" entity where player base and units are to be located. In game setup gadget, you can add players up to a specific number and change their options which are faction name and team. Each player can choose his/her start location from a small preview in the setup screen. After clicking the start button, the game engine creates the related entities for the players in their chosen start location (A random one if they didn't choose any). This is my idea for such maps. Advantages: 1:Ability to add high degree of details to the maps just as scenarios 2:There is no problem with the player number anymore as we can set the max just by adding certain number of start locations. 3:Flexibility in player options 4:Ability to balance the resource placement. Disadvantages: 1:Needs an overhaul of game engine (Although not a very large one) 2:These maps should be created in atlas thus cost a lot of time. 3:Players are going to play the same map again and again without any change. Waiting for your comments.

That is going to be fixed for all of the maps in a huge update.

Slightly different from what Michael proposed, this map is filled with shallow, passable marshes. But the western sea has a problem as it will have the same characteristics (eg. color, reflection, etc.) as marshes and wont be a good thing and I didn't implement it. So this is not going to reach alpha 9 which is going to be released in 16 hours. I still find it fun to play. Screenshots http://spahbod.persiangig.com/0%20A.D./Rhine%20Marshes1.jpg http://spahbod.persiangig.com/0%20A.D./Rhine%20Marshes2.jpg http://spahbod.persiangig.com/0%20A.D./Rhine%20Marshes3.jpg rhine_marshlands.zip

Oh I forgot to change that. Thanks. Fixed it.

This reminds me that we really need to redesign GUI for more rms options.

There are two things I really love in this map, shores and terrain texture. Awesome map. Reminds me of some AOE 3 maps. Still needs some work with shore texture blending and ramp positions. Also you can decrease the density of forests. Remember that people are not suggested to play with 8 players in a tiny map. Waiting to see updates.

Your functions overlap with new rmgen functions. But the odd part is that there aren't any warnings/errors. Rename them to something like dfGetDistance and it will work. Only these three are the problem: getDistance getDirection getAngle I found notepad's replace function useful here.

I've only read the first three books. Marvelous work but hard to read for someone without an advanced knowledge of English (like me). I use a special dictionary that can find and translate words on the screen to read it.

Some problems in the original four random maps are fixed in svn about a month ago. Also I fixed a small issue that could happen is Cantabrian Highlands today. But this can't be fixed ultimately until work on pathfinding passibility is finished.

The only rms with this problem I found was guadalguivir that was fixed in the last svn update. Are you sure you've seen such a thing in other maps?

Lol... So that was the reason you wanted so many functions. But I should say tile classes are created for exactly this purpose. You could use them from the beginning.

I added some useful functions to the game. These include: areAllies getPlayerTeam sortPlayers checkIfInClass getDistance getAngle getDirection getTerrainTexture Also allied players start near each other now.

Much better now. I like the new terrain texture integration and the hills. Also you can place wet sands in and around waters.

I personally use placeObject for hard coded placings. But simplegroup has the ability to be integrated with placers that makes it useful for many other occasions. Imagine making the animals one by one using placeObject. It's gonna be great mess.

Oh, well, figured out the function myself because I didn't find one in the helper functions in the rmgen .js scripts and needed it.The main thing is a function with the same functionality despite the name and the exact code.So please add something like that in the scripts.If I find the time I will adjust the code to you'r recommendations. As I said before I am creating more functions for rmgen. But currently my rmgen library and random map scripts are full of buggy things related to the new features I'm planning for alpha 10.

It is not bad. In fact, it's good as it improves performance. But we want random map scripts be simple and understandable for newcomers. So all of the dirty work should go into rmgen library.

These are functions I am working on these days. But unfortunately, they are not reaching alpha 9's deadline. Probably in SVN after alpha 9

Nice functions. But the thing we usually use for direction is tangent itself not the angle. So it is better not to use arcs in a separate function to save performance.