Map Generator- Please Critique!

[Zeustiak]

@MonsOlympus;22344

This is really impressive I must say thats why I thought I might try to help with some input on this base system, so firstly great work

Now the first issue that I saw was the fact that there are fixed east/west type biomes, now if I were to do something like this myself I would try to make it more procedural and randomized in that it could support different types of land masses and not just continents but ofcoarse its possible this base system could be expanded upon.

Thanks!

Actually, my first iteration of the biome placement was random, and it was fairly decent, but I chose a more tailored setup so I could test map control as I iterate.

Realize though, that in a Civilization type game, you will have many map types to choose from. The version you see is a map with 2 generally equal continents. To do a Pangea, I could switch out the Biome Generator and do a Pangea setup. I can have a hundred generator types, and the user chooses from them. I could even make a randomized earth map replica just by fine tuning the biome generator.

@MonsOlympus;22344

Which leads me into the next point, whilst this system might work well currently I do think it could be made more adaptable, a primary example is how the entire pole sections are pretty much solid with no actual depth to their shapes.

It is actually very adaptable. In order to grow the poles out, all I have to do is reduce the number of water seeds that generate between the pole and the continent. It is as simple as that. For instance, I could reduce water in the north tundra while leaving it the same in the south. This would create something more akin to the Earth, which has open ocean in the south, and vast tundra in the north.

@MonsOlympus;22344

The way I would have approached this is probably similar but I would have generated an entire set of blank tiles first, these tiles would have held an enumerator to their location in comparison to the equator, this would have been assigned mathematically when the initial two dimensional array (grid) was generated. As you can see on your generated table you can see the pattern it makes so you dont actually need to generate that because you know 5/15/25 etc are close to the equator at a height of 10.

Generating the blank tiles has been on my mind for a bit now. I would then go behind and instead of placing tiles, it would be instancing materials.

My array already keeps the vector information, and I was planning on having other arrays in the future to place actors into another array so I can reference what tile type is in each location.

Can you show an example of how you would use an enumerator in this case? When I looked into enumerators prior to arrays they didn’t really do what I needed them to but I may not have fully understood how to use them.

@MonsOlympus;22344

In terms of the tiles and what type of tile they are I would do that within the tile itself and do something of a growth algorithm by checking the nearest neighbors to a select depth, this allows creation of land masses, peaks and beaches where you would expect. Ofcoarse there is always rivers and inland lakes but these can be taken care of as well, I would give tiles a height so Id know that taller peaks would also be snow like the poles so it might even lead to a more three dimensional array.

Do you have a link to any code examples of this kind of generation?

My general idea for coast generation and other similar tasks was to do a neighbor check to determine which mesh/material and what rotation it should use for proper placement. In the current setup my tiles are not referencable and it is something I will have to address sooner or later. By placing tiles first, and then changing them later this also allows me to do such checks and mesh swaps after every other tile type has been decided. Once the generator knows water will be placed in a certain hex, and land around it, then it can say use WaterMesh17 or whatever with Rotation Z in order to align the coasts.

Rivers are another thing on my mind. It seems like splines are the normal method of river type placement in games like these, but from what I understand splines are somewhat under-developed in the current engine, for things other than landscapes. I am not in a rush to implement rivers, but I see a good method for generating and referencing them I will certainly see if I can use it.

@MonsOlympus;22344

Im really curious about these biome placers, do you really place each tile in random order rather than just switching their “theme”?

This was just how I got it to work in the first place and I have spent more time on fleshing out the random generation than I have into looking at upgrading the actual placement process.

If you have a good method I can use to reference the field of blank tiles, I am all ears.