Arrakis.py map script discussion

[davidlallen]

EDIT: Gah, I forgot to add the salt flats. Actually, I haven't given any thoughts to how they should be placed. Any suggestions?

Easy answer, clone jungles. Better answer, make lakes, then fill them with salt flats.

 

[cephalo]

Easy answer, clone jungles. Better answer, make lakes, then fill them with salt flats.

Well, this being a polar map, There's really nothing I can use with the default XML. Otherwise we would get a straight line of salt across the middle. I gues I can just make little patches of salt scattered randomly.

 

[Deliverator]

I noticed that too. I also think that the new polar terrain is looking like salt and the salt feature is looking like ice. Maybe we can exchange that?

The existing salt flats graphic needs changing I think - to look more salty. I could make the polar terrain look more icy I suppose, but people seem unsure whether there is even any ice on the surface of the poles of Arrakis. I decided to go with the tundra-just-a-bit-of-ice look.

Edit: Checked the latest version, and it definitely feels like it's moving in the right direction.

Spoiler :

1) It seems like there is too much Rugged Hills terrain.
2) I'm not exactly sure what the polar cap should look like. The dune strips feel a bit weird there. Perhaps we should have an icy sea terrain - although I'm not sure what happens if you mix two ocean terrain graphics. Maybe we should go for a Mars style polar cap so it's more obvious to people. Not sure...
3) It's definitely more Archipelago like which is cool, but there seem to be a few too many small islands and 1 square thin strips of land around (or is that the shield wall?)
4) We should sort out the outer dune hills to make sure no bonuses are placed there. It should only really be spice out in the deep desert.

Anyway, good work so far cephalo.

 

[cephalo]

The existing salt flats graphic needs changing I think - to look more salty. I could make the polar terrain look more icy I suppose, but people seem unsure whether there is even any ice on the surface of the poles of Arrakis. I decided to go with the tundra-just-a-bit-of-ice look.

Edit: Checked the latest version, and it definitely feels like it's moving in the right direction.

1) It seems like there is too much Rugged Hills terrain.
2) I'm not exactly sure what the polar cap should look like. The dune strips feel a bit weird there. Perhaps we should have an icy sea terrain - although I'm not sure what happens if you mix two ocean terrain graphics. Maybe we should go for a Mars style polar cap so it's more obvious to people. Not sure...
3) It's definitely more Archipelago like which is cool, but there seem to be a few too many small islands and 1 square thin strips of land around (or is that the shield wall?)
4) We should sort out the outer dune hills to make sure no bonuses are placed there. It should only really be spice out in the deep desert.

Anyway, good work so far cephalo.

1. There are a couple of things that still need adjusting. The reason there are so many hills is because I lowered the land percentage without lowering the hill percentage. I just forgot.

2. Multiple ocean terrains shouldn't cause problems, except if one is supposedly free of worms it would be weird if you cant walk on it.

3. The shield wall has beed reduced to a strip of land I may need a new technique. Other than that though, I think it's ok to have a few one square islands just for show. But, I can make further ajustments to smooth the terrain to see how it looks.

4.Yes please!

 

[davidlallen]

Since it is supposed to be a polar cap, can you make it not wrap? Right now it wraps both directions.

I didn't count the total number of usable (non-ocean) plots, but it seems much lower than a vanilla archipelago at the same map setting. A 5-player map, which is the size I usually play, is 64x40, and the average distance between civ starting locations is about 15. A 5-player Arrakis map is 80x80 and the average distance is over 20. So it feels much more sparse. Maybe 64x64 would still give enough feeling of space outside the central area.

Have you done anything particular to force starting locations? In the handful of maps I tried, four of the civs were evenly spaced in a circle around the pole, but one was way off center. That guy certain has less access to the polar terrain.

Since this is polar, the dunes should really be circular, shouldn't they? When you zoom way out and clouds appear, they always go east to west; I suppose there is no way to make them go in a circle.

 

[Deliverator]

From my understanding of what Cephalo has done. He took this image of ripples

and extracted the coordinates from it to form the pattern of the dunes. That is why there are those big arrays of numbers in the mapscript.

If he repeated the process with an image of broken up concentric circles or a spiral pattern, then I believe we could have the dune pattern you're talking about. It might look better for a polar map than the diagonal lines. If you want Cephalo I can have a go at creating a suitable black and white source image, if you let me know the dimensions...

Agree that the map shouldn't wrap, but that is an easy change.

 

[cephalo]

Since it is supposed to be a polar cap, can you make it not wrap? Right now it wraps both directions.

I didn't count the total number of usable (non-ocean) plots, but it seems much lower than a vanilla archipelago at the same map setting. A 5-player map, which is the size I usually play, is 64x40, and the average distance between civ starting locations is about 15. A 5-player Arrakis map is 80x80 and the average distance is over 20. So it feels much more sparse. Maybe 64x64 would still give enough feeling of space outside the central area.

Have you done anything particular to force starting locations? In the handful of maps I tried, four of the civs were evenly spaced in a circle around the pole, but one was way off center. That guy certain has less access to the polar terrain.

Since this is polar, the dunes should really be circular, shouldn't they? When you zoom way out and clouds appear, they always go east to west; I suppose there is no way to make them go in a circle.

Map size is something we will have to tune. The reason I have it bigger is that there should be less usable land than a normal archipelago map. How much less exactly depends on a few factors that aren't final as yet. It doesn't have to wrap either.

I am not using any starting plot code yet, things are currently placed the default way which will probably have to be changed.

The dunes are cosmetic only, and I just wanted the pattern to evoke sand ripples that you see when water or air passes over sand. I argue that if there were corialis winds travelling around the pole in a circular direction, the dunes would be formed radially like spokes on a wheel. In any case though, the pattern needs to tile so that different size maps can get a somewhat seamless pattern. I thought it was fine for the pattern to look sandy.

Another thing that needs to be changed is that currently I'm setting the different terrains by altitude, best terrain at lowest altitude and more harsh at higher altitude. The problem with that is that hills and peaks tend to be more numerous at higher altitudes, so that most of the hills are on crap land. I thinking of solving this by making a separate midpoint displacement map to guide terrains, that is unrelated to altitude.

 

[davidlallen]

Since the desert plots seem to be filling with resources, I am assuming that the entire map is land. Is that correct? This may be a problem. The AI does not use land transport. If there is a land path from point A to point B, the AI will never build and load fast transports; it will have units walk, even though it is much slower. That is why we used an archipelago map with ocean. The original unit set, and also Koma's new unit set, assume that by the mid game, armies travel by transport.

I think either a radial pattern or a circular pattern of dunes is worthwhile to make sure people see the idea of a polar map. I know your concept is based on a specific texture map, but in order to get maps at different sizes a procedural method may be needed. Do other people think the diagonal pattern seems odd for a pole?

Another thing we should probably measure is what is the average number of land plots available to a typical city site. In pangaea, chances are 90% of your BFC plots are on land. I did not count in vanilla archipelago; I am sure it is lower, but on the other hand the ocean plots are useful for city growth. In this map, the number may be very low. Since in DW, ocean plots are good for commerce and not direct growth, this may hamper city development.

 

[Deliverator]

Since the desert plots seem to be filling with resources, I am assuming that the entire map is land. Is that correct?

The 'dunes' in the outer regions are land, but most of the sand you see is ocean just like on archipelago.

Do other people think the diagonal pattern seems odd for a pole?

Yes, I do. I think it should probably be a vague circular blob of icy ocean and icy land. I am going to make a more icy looking texture for it and there will be both a land and ocean version we can use. You could even make it an inner donut of icy land surrounding icy ocean - a proper polar sink. I'm thinking the pole needs to look like an ice cap otherwise people won't get the concept. I think something like the Martian ice cap is what we want:

Spoiler :

This site says:

At the planets uppermost point, lay the Polar Caps, a vast expanse of ice, some of which was presumably melted down to make water forthe rich, that had never truly been explored.

Other sources I've looked at refer to polar ice caps.

 

[cephalo]

Since the desert plots seem to be filling with resources, I am assuming that the entire map is land. Is that correct? This may be a problem. The AI does not use land transport. If there is a land path from point A to point B, the AI will never build and load fast transports; it will have units walk, even though it is much slower. That is why we used an archipelago map with ocean. The original unit set, and also Koma's new unit set, assume that by the mid game, armies travel by transport.

The dunes are like islands in the 'water' in that sense. So there are gaps between the continents. I have been asking if we can reserve desert terrain for this purpose and remove all bonuses from it. I'm hoping that the AI won't feel the need to expand onto worthless dune terrain, but it might.

As for the transport issue.. man, that seems like it needs to work properly. Even on archipelago, I would be surprised if there weren't some extremely negative consequences to this mechanic. If you need this, then koma needs to really tear up the AI and make it work. Can you fake it, and make the transports add movement points to the slow units?

 

[davidlallen]

The 'dunes' in the outer regions are land, but most of the sand you see is ocean just like on archipelago.

I haven't played a game on this map yet. I guess it is unlikely, but possible, for a civ to put a colony there unless we do something. Is it possible to add an invisible feature whose only job is to set bNoCity=1? This should prevent it completely.

Other sources I've looked at refer to polar ice caps.

Hm, I'd like to check that against "canon". If the polar region is hot, I find it highly unlikely that there would be ice just sitting there. It would melt and the sandtrout would isolate it. I think your graphic captures the right feel, there is some ice there but not so much that you would have water caravans traveling there.

 

[davidlallen]

As for the transport issue.. man, that seems like it needs to work properly. Even on archipelago, I would be surprised if there weren't some extremely negative consequences to this mechanic.

We believe that on vanilla archipelago, the AI handles amphibious assaults poorly, but it is no worse than other lame AI decisions. We also believe that Maniac/koma have made enough minor changes to the AI that it can do amphibious assaults on DW archipelago maps. Basically, every city is treated as a coastal city so it can build ocean transports; a few other changes were needed also.

So we believe the current DW archipelago map works about as well as vanilla. It may be that having hills on the outside is OK, as long as (a) no resources there, (b) no civs there, (c) the map does not wrap. These are all solvable.

 

[Deliverator]

Hm, I'd like to check that against "canon". If the polar region is hot, I find it highly unlikely that there would be ice just sitting there. It would melt and the sandtrout would isolate it. I think your graphic captures the right feel, there is some ice there but not so much that you would have water caravans traveling there.

I asked on Jacarutu, where they are pretty well informed and 'Orthodox Herbertarians', and they said:

There is a small north polar ice cap that is mined for water, see the polar map in Dune.

 

[koma13]

There is a small north polar ice cap that is mined for water, see the polar map in Dune.

Isn't making Baron Harkonnen making fun of the 'sweet/small' ice polar caps in the book? I think I remember something like that.

Do other people think the diagonal pattern seems odd for a pole?

Hmm, I'm not sure but I would prefer the current pattern, circles will look strange. Maybe reducing the thickness of dunes by removing flat land (only ocean->hills<-ocean) could make them more convincing.

The original unit set, and also Koma's new unit set, assume that by the mid game, armies travel by transport.

My new unit set has transports from turn 0. We only have to make sure there are ocean gaps here and there. Else we would need land transports . Make a special desert terrain for dunes with no bonuses and no water/hammers/trade and ai won't settle there. Also remember we have better ai included which improves 'naval' assaults.

 

[Deliverator]

Maybe reducing the thickness of dunes by removing flat land (only ocean->hills<-ocean) could make them more convincing.

Make a special desert terrain for dunes with no bonuses and no water/hammers/trade and ai won't settle there.

I'm going to create a better texture for the dune hills, make it have no yields/bonuses and include in patch 1.3.4, although it seems I'll have to comment them out of terrain infos xml until we have a better solution. I'll also include a polar ocean terrain and texture, and I'm thinking of brightening up/recolouring the Rugged terrain a little as Lord Tirian suggested.

 

[davidlallen]

I'm going to create a better texture for the dune hills, make it have no yields/bonuses and include in patch 1.3.4, although it seems I'll have to comment them out of terrain infos xml until we have a better solution.

The reason that your polar ice and my terra terrains get added near the start positions, is because they have a food benefit. Your terrain will appear outside any reasonable start positions, and it will have no food benefit, so I don't think it will be a problem. In this case, we would want it removed from maps generated by the archipelago mapscripts but not removed from arrakis mapscripts. If this turns out to be a problem, then in 1.3.4 you could also add stub normalizeRemoveBadTerrain and normalizeAddGoodTerrain functions to the mapscripts in the mod.

 

[cephalo]

New version up. I decoupled the terrain from the altitude, made the map flat, and also added salt.

Unfortunately, I had to remove the shield wall for now. The way it was done basically connected all the islands together which won't work for us. I'll have to do it differently.

 

[cephalo]

The new salt placement is adjustable by the way. I was thinking that I could improve the salt flats by surrounding them with hills. Also, maybe they would look better as a terrain instead of a feature?

 

[cephalo]

I was thinking today that instead of having extra food on the polar terrain, it might be better to allow a city on polar terrain to build a national wonder that provides an amount of water to all cities. Otherwise, we'll most likely be seeing giant metropolises in the polar area, which doesn't really fit the fiction. Maybe the terrain itself could be inhospitable, but the national wonder(ice mine, whatever) would provide a nice benefit to having a city there.

This would require at most some very minor SDK changes.

 

[koma13]

Would it not be easier just to forbid founding cities on polar terrain?