Question: What Options in the Random Map Generator?

Hi, as the title explains I am curious about the options one has at the beginning of a game expecially for the RMG. several games of this genre allow for example to choose the map size, how many cities will appear in the map, how many sites holding treasures, how many teleporters (assuming there is such a thing peppered around... cough... cough).

Hopefully all players will also be able to personalize their avatar signeur and something about their armies... Anyone who is playing the beta has any feedback on that?

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Reply #1 Top

Beta doesn't have a map editor yet I fear. 

The demo at Pax did though... but it certainly didn't seem very finished.  I didn't really spend much time with it for that reason.   You could generate a new map, which I assume will your normal options like "size" "mountain density"  "forest densitiy"  "goodie hut density", and likely some templates to generate different kinds of maps (islands vs. continent vs.     I don't remember what else was there, just like your generic object placement I think.  but then again, I'm not sure what fancy it would need at the PAX demo.

Number of cities might be, but I hadn't considered that would really be generated in the map generator.  most games to my knowledge will start barren (no cities) and neutral cities or minor factions should pop up on their own as the game goes on, if I understand Frogboy's post of factions = unlimited correctly.  

HoMM always had teleportors, but thinking about it... I don't think it would ever generate them randomly.   I think you had to add them yourself if you wanted them.   (or it did, but not very often)

 

I'm sure we'll get plenty of customization of the main character.   I understand that to be one of the things Elemental is taking from MoM (and D&D's been referenced before in terms of character customization.    Which doesn't much set a standard, but I think emphisizes just how much character customization should be present)

Right now you have "sets" that can make your guy look like a scout or a bandit (changes their base clothing appearance)  which isn't very effective in terms of unit customization.   not to mention limited.   But I'd say it shows they could let us customize our outfits greatly, they just haven't yet.

 

 

Getting back to the subject of map generation.    I'm torn.   Sometimes I love to have a ton of control, picking the exact number of islands, average level of monsters, and that sort of thing.     But sometimes I also like to have vague maps, where I'm told nothing other than the basic landforms to expect.    (generally speaking I perfer thinner wisper snaking continents over big blocks though)     I remember Civilization IV having some strange ones, like  a new world scenario that generates series of continents, then another landmass separated by a vast ocean on both sides.  This other island was super rich with resources, and powerful neutral creeps.   This is an example of the more  interesting map generations I've seen.

Reply #2 Top

Options for the random map generator are nice, but being able to mod the random map generator would be awesome.

Reply #3 Top

Bumping this because while it was stated that stardock does like that "fractal" look of pure script driven map generation, I've seen some very incredible civ4 random map scripts written in python!

Reply #4 Top

Anyone know if they are still working on the random map generator? Whatever happened to rivers/lakes.... They had some cool art for that previously, plus it could add some strategic elements.. like bridges/choke points, resources etc.