Any mediterranean-esque scripts?

Aybraus

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
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One of my favorite maps in Civ4 (and Rome:TW technically hehe) is the ancient world map, because it presents a more realistic scenario all the way up to Renaissance era--most people back then simply wouldn't bother going further than East Asia, North Africa, and Iceland. In fact, for a thousand years most civilizations thought that the existence of the British Isles was a myth. It also makes sea trade and travel more important, because traveling by boat through island channels would be the easiest way to get around.

With all that said, I'm wondering if there are any map scripts that can make a randomized version of this kind of setting. Inland sea and ring make the two big continents connected by two points instead of three, creation.py has the screwy mountains, and Pangea follows the one continent rule but doesn't have any seas.

I'm just a script kiddie, but I think it wouldn't be difficult to make a script that does this:
- Creates block of land surrounded by mountains on three sides and ice caps along the top or bottom.
- Creates a "fat worm" of sea that wiggles about and changes in thickness, but still doesn't turn more than 90º or cross another map boundary (the Mediterranean sea analogue).
- Paints a thicker line of ocean along 60% of the map's border that connects to the "fat worm"
- Makes a small web of lines, which are in turn made of coast and islands.
- Polishes everything, grows peninsulas, and makes it a playable map.

In total I have four questions, really. Does this map script exist? Would it be easy to make? Does anyone want to make it? Could I do it?

EDIT: Actually, Tectonics.py should work fairly well, but my questions still stand.
 
I wrote tectonics, so I'll just answer your technical questions:

- Creates block of land surrounded by mountains on three sides and ice caps along the top or bottom.
In the generatePlotTypes() function you can do this easily for mountains, but ice is a feature (on sea) or terrain (snow) wo has to be dealt with afterwards. Better to put it afterwards.

- Creates a "fat worm" of sea that wiggles about and changes in thickness, but still doesn't turn more than 90º or cross another map boundary (the Mediterranean sea analogue).
In generatePlotTypes() again. You'll have to make sure you don't get off the map, or stuck too much to one side. Also I'm not sure this method can generate peninsulas.

- Paints a thicker line of ocean along 60% of the map's border that connects to the "fat worm"
I don't really get why you need this one if you start your worm 60% of the map border and give it an initial direction inside the map.

- Makes a small web of lines, which are in turn made of coast and islands.
You'd need to find the sea borders, and carve inside/out of it, but take care about the limits of the map again.

- Polishes everything, grows peninsulas, and makes it a playable map.
That's actually pretty hard. You probably want hills somewhere. Terrain type and features like rivers or forests can be left to the default scripts (rivers should be taken from the Inland Sea script), but hills and peninsulas should be seeded somehow. Reusing some of the fractals code for hills would be possible (though I dislike the results). For peninsulas, you need an algorithm of some sort, like picking X random points not too near, and growing land towards the nearest shore, possibly reusing the code of the fat worm.
You can then add some islands by randomly putting some plains/hills in the sea, in whatever patterns you like.
 
hecataeus_map.gif


kind of like this with a bit less land to the north and east?
 
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