The Map

from Elemental Forums

I’m pretty excited about this game, and I’ve been poking around the dev notes a bit to see how things are going. I noticed a few posts regarding map generation and I have some comments. Map generation is something I know a thing or two about from making map scripts for Civ4, including the Erebus map script for the FfH2 mod.

 

The notes and screenshots I’ve seen are a little flat in my opinion, and I want to make sure the devs understand that map generation, if done well, can really add a great deal of drama and immersiveness to a game like this. You really want to get this right, and you don’t want to view it as an afterthought. You want to pack the map with information such that it tells it’s own, older story in addition to the main story involving the player.

 

One type of information that solves many problems is altitude. If you know the altitude on a map location you know where the rivers will flow and what climate options you should have. One of the challenges I had on the Civ4 map generation is that there is no ‘altitude’ in Civ4. You had hills, peaks and flatlands. I chose to ignore this system and use climate to convey the altitude, in hopes that I could create an illusion of gradual altitude changes. Not everyone can see it, but I think it works well. For an example of this, see the screenshots of my PerfectWorld2 mapscript here. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310891

 

A fantasy map needs to be very dramatic in my opinion. There must be impossibly high peaks, dense jungle lowlands, vast deserts! Everything should be overstated; a caricature of real nature. When I made the Erebus map script, I wanted to capture that kind of melodrama. It wasn’t easy to do this. Many people were kinda shocked by the use of peaks to delineate the differing climate regions, as this was very different than a normal Civ4 map, but I was limited in what I could do with the Civ4 map, and I think I wanted to shock people a little bit. I think I pulled off the illusion pretty nicely, but it could have been easier.

 

For a game such as Elemental, I think it would be better to not follow in Civ4 footsteps with its flatlands, hills and peaks, and instead model altitude directly on the map, and display it as a real high relief map. This might seem like a lot of work, but I argue it’s actually easier. Modeling altitude is a great foundation to make natural looking landforms and river valleys, and if you are going to model altitude, you might as well let people see it directly!

 

I've learned alot of tricks and solved alot of problems while making my Civ4 maps. I'd be happy to give my insight regarding any map generation difficulties. Send a private message to cephalo at civfanatics with any questions. I usually check those every day.

elemental
15,431 views 19 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

The screenshots of your PerfectWorld2 mapscript look amazing. I would absolutely love to see Stardock implement something similar in Elemental.

Also, the terrain in Elemental is full 3D, so altitude must already be in, even if altitude-based climate/terrain/rivers are not.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Freaking Amazing Civ maps!

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I do hope the maps are well made.  The ones in the picture I'd count as very solid maps for sure.  They certainly are not as 'square' as generic Civ 4 maps.

I'm excited to see the maps too, and more over I'm excited to see the map generator grow from the whatever-boogiebac-throws-together in the alpha to the tested, improved, and retested map generator that we will see in the final.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The map generator certainly does look nice, but one thing I am hoping to see is a not-quite-random set of options where you cn control the general "type" of map if you so wish.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Hopefully the game will be moddable enough that we can create our own map generation scripts.  I'd like one that generates the 2 parallel worlds of Arcanus and Myrror for my MoM remake mod.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I am not entirely sure if you could do that with mapgen. Looks more like an engine mod, unless you want both worlds on the same map.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ChongLi, reply 5
   I'd like one that generates the 2 parallel worlds of Arcanus and Myrror for my MoM remake mod.

   We may not even have parallel realms available... at least nothing has indicated we'll have more than what we see within the Civilization game, which is a continents, islands and only traveling on top of water.  I know there will be exploring of dungeons/caves/tombs, but this does not appear to be part of the main map.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I think I read that they are approaching this as making an engine, and then making a game on the engine. I think that if Stardock wants Elemental to really take an important place in the genre, they need to surpass what has already been done. What fantasy game is complete without an underworld? I would love to see something like the multiple maps in AoW:SM. This is something that everyone wanted in the Civ4 modding community, but it was too much work to get around the single map design. Multiple maps were a huge success in Civ 2, and formed the basis of a couple of expansion packs.

Even if they dont want it in the game's design, they should keep the possibility in mind for the modders. It would be very much appreciated I'm sure!

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Well, I just hope any underworld isn't just as big as the above ground map.  I don't mind underground city or mines, but when they have just as much explorable terrain as topside = silly.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Paradoxnt, reply 9
Well, I just hope any underworld isn't just as big as the above ground map.  I don't mind underground city or mines, but when they have just as much explorable terrain as topside = silly.

Aw man, that's where all the demons and stuff live! I think that if you go deep enough, you can find dinosaurs too!

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Paradoxnt, reply 9
Well, I just hope any underworld isn't just as big as the above ground map.  I don't mind underground city or mines, but when they have just as much explorable terrain as topside = silly.

I don't expect to see an analog to Myrror in the base game, but a good Myrror-like mod could be the first one I use regularly. Heck, I'd even be interested in an underworld mod that was larger than the surface map, like in The Descent.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I actually thought you would run into dinosaurs before demons. In fact, I imagined something like this:

  1. Dwarves, Gnomes, Etc.
  2. Undeads
  3. Spidery things & other insectoid monsters
  4. Dinosaurs
  5. Fire monsters, Balrogs, et al.
  6. Demons
  7. Really evil, really powerful stuff like dark demigods.
Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

not enough dinosaurs in high fantasy things.   I mean there is very often a T-rex or Dinonychus looking creatures, but not very often do you get things like triceratops, stegosaurus, or ankylosaurus running around.  (I can think of a few examples of course, like warhammer, but I mean in general.)

 

@Scountdog:  I agree with your list except for spidery things, I expect those to be more common than undead, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, etc.   I expect giant spiders and wolves or other 'mundane' monsters to be the most common.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Scoutdog, reply 12
I actually thought you would run into dinosaurs before demons. In fact, I imagined something like this:


Dwarves, Gnomes, Etc.
Undeads
Spidery things & other insectoid monsters
Dinosaurs
Fire monsters, Balrogs, et al.
Demons
Really evil, really powerful stuff like dark demigods.

That's a fine list! They can't deny us support for multiple maps in the face of this list.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

It's not really a list so much as it is a level chart. The order of things in the list is the order on which the levels of an underground world would be populated: as you descend from the surface, you would first encounter the dwarves, then the undeads, then the spiders, then dinos, and so on.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

I would really dislike an underworld that worked like a deck game stack of levels. If the base Elemental is to have an underworld, its layout and features need to be shaped by the Elemental back story, and any 'progress paths' should take full advantage of the 3D aspect of being underground, i.e. to get to Important Place A, you might need to take a path that goes to much lower depths, and then climbs and twists back up around Place A before finally descending back to its entry point.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

I would really dislike an underworld that worked like a deck game stack of levels. If the base Elemental is to have an underworld, its layout and features need to be shaped by the Elemental back story, and any 'progress paths' should take full advantage of the 3D aspect of being underground, i.e. to get to Important Place A, you might need to take a path that goes to much lower depths, and then climbs and twists back up around Place A before finally descending back to its entry point.

Me too. The "levels" I described in my list were more like rock layers than anything else: the path you mentioned would descned through the undead layer, though the bug layer, and into the dino layer, then climb back up to the dwarf layer before returning to undead.

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GW, reply 16
I would really dislike an underworld that worked like a deck game stack of levels. If the base Elemental is to have an underworld, its layout and features need to be shaped by the Elemental back story, and any 'progress paths' should take full advantage of the 3D aspect of being underground, i.e. to get to Important Place A, you might need to take a path that goes to much lower depths, and then climbs and twists back up around Place A before finally descending back to its entry point.

Any ole way you want it, you should be able to mod it. Even if the vanilla game has only one map, there are some technical issues that need to be addressed if the game is to be moddable for multiple maps. Any reference in the code to 'the' map needs to be able to specify which map, even if theres only one map. i.e. 'Give me plot x,y on map number one.' Maybe there's a map number two or three, or maybe not, whatever.

Another issue is pathfinding. The a-star system needs to accept arbitrary node connections, so the AI knows that it's shorter to go under the mountain range, rather than around the whole thing on the surface. Another benefit to this is that you can mod teleportation gates if you want, kinda like the moongates from Ultima.

One of the problems with Civ4 and multiple maps was that there wasn't enough access to the pathfinding engine, so that you couldn't make the AI go from one map to the other unless you wrote a whole nother astar system.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Scoutdog, reply 17
... The "levels" I described in my list were more like rock layers than anything else: the path you mentioned would descned through the undead layer, though the bug layer, and into the dino layer, then climb back up to the dwarf layer before returning to undead.

I'd be OK with rock (decor) layers, but the level-to-critter mapping just seems too 'gamey,' and I really don't want to see dinosaurs cluttering up a high fantasy game.

Quoting cephalo, reply 18
... Another issue is pathfinding. The a-star system needs to accept arbitrary node connections, so the AI knows that it's shorter to go under the mountain range, rather than around the whole thing on the surface. Another benefit to this is that you can mod teleportation gates if you want, kinda like the moongates from Ultima. ...

I'm no modder, but I do appreciate pathfinding problems. GC2 had some bumps along the way in that regard, and its movement options had no analog to permananent teleport routes or entrances to lairs, much less lairs with multiple entrance/exit points.

Sympathies for overworked devs aside, I want stuff like that in Elemental ASAP.