The Map

[Remie Richards]

Bottom post of the previous page:

the trees are floortiles, because kor sucks.
they should be objects damnit.

Edit: Actually no, they are objects, I *SWEAR* he was trying to do them as turfs...

[Steelpoint]

Explains a lot.

Here's a list of changes and things I think we need, or would be nice, before mapping for the planet can really take off.

• There needs to be a form of Dirt or Jungle Wall, these walls should be destroyable with hatchets or hands, these will help in creating a sort of wall or barrier that can't be walked through
• Trees need to block movement, so we can have thick forests of tree's to walk through
• On Dream Maker, the grass, rock, bush and tree objects need some kind of unique icon. If we don't then its going to be impossible to fine tune placement of these objects, since they currently default to a 'grey' tile which turns the entire screen into a impossible to read mess. (See image below).
• The map should have lowish lighting, separate issue though.
• There should be some kind of tall grass or reeds, something that blocks the lower half of your tile. This will make moving through certain areas, and rivers, interesting.
• Fog would be nice.

Here's a image show casing what I mean by Dream Maker being a issue with mapping.

[Remie Richards]

They pick their icon in Initialize(), which is gamecode, Mapping doesn't run gamecode.
The solution, as is usually done in other places, it to default to say. "bush1" and decide your icon (say "bush3") randomly in Initialize() as usual.

[Steelpoint]

Either way, I can see two kind of mapping formations to be very common.

Plains

Spoiler:

Forrest

Spoiler:

With things like swamps and similar to make their way once we get more features to use.

[onleavedontatme]

Trees need to block movement, so we can have thick forests of tree's to walk through
On Dream Maker, the grass, rock, bush and tree objects need some kind of unique icon. If we don't then its going to be impossible to fine tune placement of these objects, since they currently default to a 'grey' tile which turns the entire screen into a impossible to read mess. (See image below).

I made a PR fixing these issues

[Steelpoint]

Fantastic.

[Jordie0608]

Plains

Spoiler:

At that point you might as well have turfs of grass+dirt rather than putting an object on every tile.

[ChangelingRain]

There shouldn't be wide-open spaces like that at all, ever, that's not what a jungle looks like. A jungle is dense, you can't see very far, and if you step wrong you end up getting eaten by ants.

[imblyings]

jordie is right

I'm also going to put up some mapping guidelines because there is a right way to use these assets and a wrong way. The gist of it is unevenness to break up the tiling effect, and clumps- an appropriate balance of open and non-open clumps of space, to give the feeling of a wild overgrown jungle while not covering every tile with plants or grass.

[Steelpoint]

So something more like this?



I really think if we want a high quality map that we should go with the 'splunky' method of map generation. A map of the size Kor is asking for, 1000x1000 or 750x750 is a monumental task for even the most dedicated mappers, especially if we want a high quality map with a lot of variations.

Working on a smaller 150x150 or 200x200 map per mapper would be more feasible.

[Steelpoint]

Damn, seems rocks and certain bushes don't show up in game. This image should from DM show more stuff.

[MrEousTranger]

I know my imput is nearly pointless but I think it could stand being a little more dense when it comes to trees.
It should be hard to maneuver and very hard to see.
This is a jungle after all.

[imblyings]

that is a fault of mine, there aren't enough tree variations nor thicc-trunked trees right now plus the tree leaves are really poor and hard to read, so too many of them in one place won't look good. I might make them a different shade of green

and yes steelpoint something like that. If you look at the plant tiles and how the grass/plants are staggered, it's essentially that principle scaled up for mapping. Bits of green balanced by bits of brown. I understand its a bit hard to do without actual grass turfs though as over-using the grass flora is an issue.

Spoiler:

ruins

jungle

swamp

The rule of 3 seems to work, 3 trees placed so they are never horizontally or vertically aligned, 3 large bushes, 3 rocks, then smaller bushes and grasses, for one clump. Until the freeze ends and more turfs can be added, dark and light turfs can be used to create more depth.

[Steelpoint]

The rule of 3 seems like a good guideline to go with.

Your images also show case how we should be more conservative with grass placement.

[Steelpoint]

The only thing I'm concerned about is how much variety we have in a certain area. I don't think mapping the planet will be hard, but it'll be monotonous.

Spoiler:

[imblyings]

some of the clumps are looking pretty good

and yeah, it'll be monotonous. We can break things up further by adding in asteroid rock walls and caves in them maybe?

[Steelpoint]

some of the clumps are looking pretty good

and yeah, it'll be monotonous. We can break things up further by adding in asteroid rock walls and caves in them maybe?

I was imagining we would have dirt or rock walls to act as natural wall formations, to help break up the map. Right now the best you can do is stack trees next to each other but that's very extreme.

[Qbopper]

I like to think making natural areas appealing aesthetically is one of my strong points considering the fact that if I make a map in a game I seem to spend half my time doing that anyways, so if we do go for the static map approach (or if you need people to make the "chunks" for the map gen) I'm for sure willing to contribute

[onleavedontatme]

We're gonna do chunks yes

[Steelpoint]

What size will the chunks be?

[calzilla1]

Make the world loop on it's self

[Qbopper]

We're gonna do chunks yes

then yeah when it's time for mappers to start making them just let me know

I don't know how indepth this system will be, obviously it's all concept right now but will there be things like multiple chunk structures?

[iamgoofball]

why aren't we just RNGing the world

[Qbopper]

why aren't we just RNGing the world

that's what's being discussed

unless you're trying to say world generation ala minecraft, which seems much more difficult

[iamgoofball]

not really

we have procgen code

[ShadowDimentio]

Truly randomized would be preferable but chunk gen with enough chunks is fine.

[onleavedontatme]

Having trouble testing this because lots of map loading assumes there are going to be certain z levels, but even 750 x 300 x 3 might end up being too large. Keep running into resource errors. This might not be a feasible project after all.

If someone with a better understanding of the map loader could test if the game can support 750 x 300 x3 that'd be appreciated. I am definitely doing something wrong since the game freezes/crashes when I lower it to 750 x 300 x 2. I still think it is probably impossible but a proper test first would be nice.

[onleavedontatme]

On the other hand

255 x 255 Box station

255 x 255 Centcomm

255 x 255 space

255 x 255 space

255 x 255 lavaland

255 x 255 lavaland

255 x 255 lavaland

255 x 255 lavaland

255 x 255 lavaland

255 x 255 lavaland

255 x 255 space


Loads very slowly but runs fine. Probably going to need help from a coder smarter than I am to figure out exactly what is and isn't viable map wise.

[Screemonster]

If it's the areas of the maps that's posing a problem, would reducing the map size and increasing the overall vertical space work?

It might mean reworking the notion of massive planet surface with the necropolis in one corner slightly, but...

----C-------space, half of crashed ship is here
--C----S----planet surface, main level. Rest of crashed ship and main station. Tendrils don't spawn here at the start, just wildlife.
N-----------caves - underground, some maintenance tunnels. Couple of tendrils start at this level, mostly in the edges. Maybe some shitty ores. Peak of necropolis.
NN---------Lavaland. Most tendrils, mobs, megafauna, necropolis, etc.

Tendrils, rather than just spawning on the surface and spreading out darkness, would start in lavaland and grow, making long, snaking paths before eventually growing upwards. Left unchecked, you might end up with a tendril bursting out of the ground in the middle of medbay or something, necessitating occasional sweeps through maintenance to make sure one hasn't crept in from the edges or grown up from lavaland.

[Incomptinence]

thought remie had voodoo shit to cover the map being big

[DarkFNC]

Your referring to the bastion of autism we'll all be living in as "station". Will it actually be a crashed station? Because engineering would actually have a job to do in the first ten minutes other than release the singularity, and some of the early gameplay we see in rounds on our current maps should be changed to accommodate this.

[Incomptinence]

So I heard this was solved.

How exactly? Quilt of smaller maps? Maybe going for something a little smaller than what you tried at first?

[PathOfChaos1]

In a lore post(probably a suggested post) a long time ago I remember reading the space wizards destroying a Fleet of Nanotrasen Battleships as a show of power to stop them from attempting to deploy against the wizards en masse. I don't know if you would be willing to include that, or references of such to damage the ship. Unless you plan to just use the syndicate like on the derelict, or just Asteroids. Would be cool if you so choose.