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I love the sharp cliffs but I can't find in the code where they come from and why they don't show up in setBaseTerrainDiamondSquare generated heightmaps While over all your approach looks similar to Caledonian Meadows I'd love you to try and find your own way of creating a playable map from this beautiful and realistic terrain EDIT: Reading through the code a bit more the cliffs seam to come from "tProgress" specifying that finer details keep a high offset until the threshold? (I'd make this one an argument BTW). And you recalculate the mountains to be rougher in the tour, very nice! You also use e.g. some height limits from Caledonian Meadows so I guess you have roughly read through it already

It's absolutely OK to report an error and be confused about that something didn't go as expected ... but please don't curse

I'd go for this. In heightmap rectangularSmoothToHeight() would do the trick. I at least can't tell the shape of the smoothing (rectangle) with the default window function (Paraboloid). The transition is quite smooth and leaves the general terrain shape intact. With a strength of 0.5 to 0.8 it should still create a suitable base.

Hi @Pyrophorus I haven't looked into the code or generated some maps but I wanted to at least give you the feedback: This is awesome! Please continue I especially like the "some areas harsh, others more even" part! @realistic and fair: It is possible by choosing a symmetry matching the number of players and use realistic design for the part left. The symmetry will leave a notable global pattern but locally the map will be mostly realistic. In hope I'll find the time to take a closer look next week...

I don't have anything against spreading the word on other platforms But that doesn't include embedding those on our website.

Also there's a guide in the forum by @Palaxin (In case you haven't seen it's linked in the wiki guide): EDIT: For random maps there are also functions to manipulate heightmaps like erosion of by decay, sun and wind (e.g. rectangularSmoothHeightmap) and simple water driven erosion (splashErodeMap). It is absolutely possible to also make them brushes in Atlas but currently they are not shared. Backward erosion for reconstruction of historic topography is not possible just with the surface data though (entropy increased, information diffused).

I also don't like the idea of open source software project making themselves dependent on third party applications needlessly.

The differential equations only hold true for each side A and B only having one type of unit each, though not necessarily the same. Still something I'll take a closer look at, thx! I don't know if there's an equation for the "combat strength" of just one units depending on (simple) properties like health, attack speed/time and damage assuming all unit are able to engage in combat. I think it would be something like KombatStrength = (health * damage / attackTime)^0.5. Multiple units don't add up though but combined unit strength grows exponentially (I guess, though this is much more easy to test) so another equation is needed for army strength. This all doesn't include the dimension of the battlefield (2D usually ;p), ranges attacks and move speed that would also matter in a real-time strategy game. EDIT: Since the article was quite short I read it right away. They use the same assumption for the unit strength as I did. I would have hoped for an equation of total army strength for mixed troops but that is not included. So there's a third equation needed for combined troops but neither I nor the article can say something about that ;/

For random maps we use several wayt to generate terrain shape. Mainly noise, functions or iterative generation. None or our generation methods procedural but extending the iterative models te be procedural is possible. If you are more interested on how the terrain shape is stored and rendered I'm not the person who would know But in any case I think your curiosity is best satisfied by diving into the code ^^

Hi @Pyrophorus! Nice to have you here! Good idea to leave the mountains be mountains and place other textures and trees mainly in the flat areas (https://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2017_06/landscape-5.png.716bfd128983f800e8d4764c4950f8e7.png) In the other image I see you also paint cliffs differently. Very nice! (https://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2017_06/landscape-6.png.07adebcd8324f282e308726057ec7396.png) Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing your progress with us

@fcxSanya Is python 3.x correct in the first place? (I usually use python 2 with Python 3 compatible syntax. At least in the scientific communities that's still the default.)

I can't see any of the pictures

All that assumes that there is a 1 dimensional distribution of players "skills" and that a higher "skilled" player is more likely to win against a lower "skilled" player weather you use "chance to win" or not. (And again: I strongly doubt "skill" is a number or sortable in the first place, even worse in team games) Also you have a goal to give hosts a hint how to arrange the teams. Usually players are humans though and what they are going to use a ranking for is not necessarily the thing the author meant it to be used for. So while I wish you fun with playing around with ratings I ask you to think about the consequences of such ratings. And I don't see a simple solution for this dilemma that can (and in other gaming communities already had) consequences like: Scores without automated balancing: All players try to swap into the team with the highest average score (and games will fill up very slowly because most players want to have a decent chance of winning). If the host distributes the players into teams the host will barely ever wind up in a team with lower average score (Strange, isn't it ) Scores with automated balancing: Players just enter a game and then watch TV or something to get a lower score so the next game they actually participate in will be more likely won (for they get underrated (And friends clamor about not always being in the same team). If disconnecting counts as win or is handled differently will influence the behavior though not really in a "good" way (while with "good" I mean helping to have better means for or chances of a fair yet competitive game - meaning from the beginning of the game until the victory/defeat conditions are meat for all participating players).

Hi @Outlaw893 and welcome to the 0 A.D. forum I'm also not that familiar with the graphics but the first thing you should try is likely to make sure you have the newest drivers installed. If you can change the settings in the main menu try changing the graphics settings and try if any combination of settings work. Maybe someone more into graphics will drop by. I haven't heard of that issue yet. Have a pleasant stay

Reminder (Random order): Alpine Lakes: Unfair expansion mine distribution Alpine Valley: Unfair player and expansion mine distribution Amazon: There are some puddles (thanks fatherbushido ^^). Maybe lower water level slightly. Anatolian Plateau: IMO needs slightly more trees or at least decoration and strengthened elevation Belgian Uplands: Make it round. Adjust environment settings to be more bog like. Maybe increase elevation. Add spots (Groves, treasures, ruins, mist, ...) Caledonian Meadown: Forests grow into bases (Player bases height adjustment need to be done earlier) Cantabrian Highlands: Aren't the plateaus to small? Corinthian Isthmus: Water settings seam strange (at least in my system, feedback very welcome!) Deep Forest: Center cliff texture could need smoother transition to surroundings Empire: Better name suggestions? Guadalquivir River: Smooth delta, maybe make river more curvy Gulf of Bothnia: Uhm, there are seeds where the gulf is frozen. Really? Well, I guess it's fun x) Harbor: Remove Iberian walls or grand players more space Hell's Pass: Sharp transition from player base texture to surroundings (solve e.g. by using layered painter) ... Also Atlas reports warnings and errors when generating a random map without triggers if a random map (or any map?) with triggers where generated beforehand.

You are absolutely correct that a list of players sorted by strength doesn't give you a probability for the victory of one side. But that's exactly what you want to have so you additionally have to assume something like adding to the uncertainty (you don't even attempt to calculate). So basically it ends up in the same way as the probabilistic attempt: Not enough information

Oh, the opening is to small for units to be passed by all units then, @stanislas69 ?

I guess it's about estimating the outcome (win/lose) of the game hosted? If so how do you want to estimate if not with a probability? I read: and assumed what is meant by "fair" in my previous post. Correct me if I misunderstood anything, please..

IMO the sane solution would be a scaling parameter in the actors .xml.

I have many things to say to this but for now I'll just mention a few points: Whatever you mean by "Good" - as in good player - is unlikely a one dimensional property of a player (if at all) and thus can't be expressed with a number. What can be expressed with a number is the frequency of a player winning games in the past. But that's not telling much about a players likelihood of winning a game in the future! That's because games - their settings and the participating players - are differing for most games and thus don't produce independent and identically distributed random variables. You also need massive amount of data points (1000 is sometimes considered the lower limit) to come to useful conclusions. Persons react to ratings. This means even if assuming the outcomes of games where randomly distributed over all games (which might by OK) and we have enough data you will break a precondition of statistics by generating them and using them for the purpose stated here - helping PPL to host fair (Guessing here it's meant all teams have an equal chance of winning the game hosted according to the analyzed data) games. Since one doesn't want to get the likelihood of any player to win the game (which should be 0.5 if nothing is broken ;p) but of a specific player that means one can only use the data of past games he participated in. Since this holds true for all players participating in the particular game you can only use data of games with the exact same players. That makes the "masses of data" requirement quite hard to be fulfilled. As far as I'm concerned "troll" and "smurf" is an insult (Definitely out of the scopes of statistics BTW ;p). So please be careful with those! EDIT: Some rating systems (like ELO) are designed to give a relative score to each player of a (stable - over many games) group of players assuming that games are played one player vs. one player (simplifying things - but that's not true for 0 A.D.) and players always want to win (likely true for competitive communities like a chess league - not so much for mixed communities like that of 0 A.D.). And so on and so forth...

This would be the sanest way to go in the long run IMO, yes. (Would be nice if design decisions with such huge impact would consider other fields like interesting map features (EDIT: And player's expectation and how to communicate that's not the case - because we have yet another rule that differs from the usual behavior - even if it then needs more exceptions to be added to work out.....) - maybe it was and considered to much freedom for players and map designers, not sure. But I haven't heard very convincing arguments yet) However, I'm trying to create a map, not redesign 0 A.D. so I'll try military army camps, roman entrenched army camp and docks.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Yes, that's what I meant. IMO players should start with access to one civilization (starting entities) but (besides some style elements like GUI and music) can later get access to other civilizations (by capturing/converting). Then "mini-factions" and mercenary camps could be added to maps easily. There are other ways though and I'll experiment what is possible with 0 A.D. as is (if everything fails to show that the civilization <-> player entanglement - and maybe some other aspects - limit the game to much).

Here's a playable version: wild_lake2017_5_1.zip Things to be done: Replace raider entities by biome Don't place "spots" on cliffs More variation for textures and decorative props in the plains Some biomes have unfitting "dirt" textures (used around forests on hills) Adjust center entities in grove spots (e.g. lumbermills?) Think about other interesting spots (e.g. mercenary camps (thanks @Lion.Kanzen), markets, tent camps, etc.) The mercenary camps would be so easy to add if "civilization" would not be a property of a player but the starting entities. This causes so many troubles/restrictions IMO we should remove that. I don't really want to add triggers. Interesting maps should be possible within the system IMO. "Untamed" may be a better name instead of "wild". Also thanks for the "crater lake" suggestion, @Loki1950. Let's see how this map ends up EDIT: Sadly the randombiome system in general seems half-baked ;/

Reminder Bugs in Caledonian Meadows: Start locations are smoothed AFTER global terrain painting causing woods to grow into bases. Start location resource distance to CC to large for Iberian walls.

AFAIK many routers block requests to their own global IP. At least for mine (Speedport W 723V Type A) that holds true. EDIT: (I'd guess that's to keep "market gaps" for hosting anything isn't filled by private persons. I wonder why we don't get money for using such routers for generating the market...)