Arrakis.py map script discussion

[Deliverator]

Graben and Salt should both be in the pans. Graben should be placed at the start as it is the better settle-able terrain.

Salt should not be too prevalent. It will be possible to desalinate pans to turn them into Graben with a certain tech. It is roughly the equivalent of Jungle in vanilla in terms of prevalence.

 

[Deliverator]

I have tried to stop Groundwater being placed on Mesa, but the <bPeaks>0</bPeaks> tag in BonusInfos doesn't seem to affect anything. It is set to zero for Groundwater, but it is still placed on Peaks aka Mesa...

A fix is required to V3. Find amended ImprovementInfos attached. Goes in assets/xml/terrain/. I've set bRequiresFlatlands to zero for all improvements so that they can be built on Graben.

Another bug that is quick to fix, it should not be possible to found cities on Salt. Don't have time to fix this myself right now.

Also, the AI always builds Wind Traps on Mesa first and rarely seems to build Wells on Groundwater. I guess this is because we have reduced the water from Wells.

 

[cephalo]

I have tried to stop Groundwater being placed on Mesa, but the <bPeaks>0</bPeaks> tag in BonusInfos doesn't seem to affect anything. It is set to zero for Groundwater, but it is still placed on Peaks aka Mesa...

Hmm, there's a function called CvPlot::canHaveBonus in the SDK that should handle that. I looked at it and it should check the XML to see if it's ok to place on peaks, and reject it if not.

EDIT: did this just start happening?

 

[Deliverator]

I don't think we've really relied on that flag too much until now.

 

[davidlallen]

It may be helpful to look at the transformations at the bottom of deliverator's archipelago mapscript (recent terrain art patch 2). Peak is replaced by mesa; it overrides any other terrain type. Hill is replaced by sink; only salt or graben should go inside; graben is now the best terrain. At the normal altitude you can have rock or rugged. That's it.

 

[cephalo]

Ok, I just posted 0.51 to work with Deliverators changes. I think it looks very cool. Maybe I over did it with the salt, but I just really like it. Again, this is only balanced with Standard size map. The other sizes might need different settings etc. Once we get a good standard map we can take a harder look at the rest.

I brought back the shield wall, but it is rather subtle.

EDIT: Also, I am not having the problem with groundwater on peaks. I am actually using the first version of deliverators changes along with my DLL with my AI stuff.

 

[Deliverator]

It maybe that my hacked mapscript needs to re-place bonuses after it amends various plots.

I'm looking forward to trying Arrakis.py 0.51 with the 1.5.1 patch...

 

[cephalo]

It maybe that my hacked mapscript needs to re-place bonuses after it amends various plots.

I'm looking forward to trying Arrakis.py 0.51 with the 1.5.1 patch...

Yes bonuses go last right before starting plots are decided. Any terrain molding you do after that will break the bonus xml rules. Check the python file CvMapScriptInterface.py for the order of function calls, so you can make your changes in the right place.

 

[Deliverator]

Arrakis.py 0.51 with Dune Wars 1.5.1 looking pretty cool...

First impressions...

1) I seem to get only one or two breaks in the donut. This is quite faithful to the book map which is good, but I wonder if, as I've said before, we can have a parameter for making the donut more or less broken up.

2) We've agreed to remove the Badlands terrain so this should not be placed.

3) Goody huts are appearing on Dunes still, but this can be fixed in the XML together with the other Improvements issues.

I'll be able to give more feedback when I've played a bit and run some autoplays.

Great job though!

Edit: There is now no reason not to make a real Polar Sink like in the book. We can have a blob of Sink/Polar in the centre. Not sure what this would look like, but it's worth a go.

 

[Ahriman]

2) We've agreed to remove the Badlands terrain so this should not be placed.

The badlands has a different graphic to rock. So, if you remove badlands, keep the graphic as a different type of rock terrain. More graphic variation is good.

My main worry from this screenshot is that there will be relatively few spice resources within cultural borders.
The solid nature of the doughnut means that a high proportion of the terrain within cultural borders will be land, relative to the archipelago script.

This has implication for how important spice is in the game, and the balance between spice vs terraforming.

 

[Deliverator]

The current reddish badlands graphic is not different enough from graben in the david distinctiveness test. There is no way I know of to have two different graphics for one terrain - so we either keep badlands or we don't. The reason I'm for scrapping it is that I can't fit another distinctive enough colour into the palette to both david's and my satisfaction. After I've had more of a break from texture tweaking I may be able to come up with another distinctive texture I suppose.

 

[Ahriman]

The current reddish badlands graphic is not different enough from graben in the david distinctiveness test.

I'm relatively indifferent, you guys should do what you think best. lacking any artistic skills myself, I am invariably impressed by whatever other people come up with.

 

[Deliverator]

My main worry from this screenshot is that there will be relatively few spice resources within cultural borders.
The solid nature of the doughnut means that a high proportion of the terrain within cultural borders will be land, relative to the archipelago script.

Looking more closely at the book map. You have quite large basins in the interior of the donut ring. Now some of these as represented by our Sink/Graben, but Erg means "sand sea", so the Minor Erg is a small sand sea. If this situation could be replicated then a larger % of tiles would have access to the desert and the spice. You either have a large sand lake connected to the main desert by only a couple of tiles, or you just break up the ring in a few more places.

Actually, I just generated one that looks more like what I am describing:

Spoiler :

It may just a question of tuning you're parameters so that the land is a little more thin and that no tile is *too* far away from desert.

 

[cephalo]

The current reddish badlands graphic is not different enough from graben in the david distinctiveness test. There is no way I know of to have two different graphics for one terrain - so we either keep badlands or we don't. The reason I'm for scrapping it is that I can't fit another distinctive enough colour into the palette to both david's and my satisfaction. After I've had more of a break from texture tweaking I may be able to come up with another distinctive texture I suppose.

tonight I can take out the badlands and then we can see what looks best. In Arrakis.py, graben is always in a sink and badlands are never in a sink, which I think helps with the distinction.

 

[cephalo]

Looking more closely at the book map. You have quite large basins in the interior of the donut ring. Now some of these as represented by our Sink/Graben, but Erg means "sand sea", so the Minor Erg is a small sand sea. If this situation could be replicated then a larger % of tiles would have access to the desert and the spice. You either have a large sand lake connected to the main desert by only a couple of tiles, or you just break up the ring in a few more places.

Do these minor Ergs have spice in them? I kinda wonder if we could at some point go to automated vehicle based spice collection, instead of culture borders spice collection. Kinda like Dune 2000. Or, maybe we could build culture spreading forts out on the dunes for spice collection purposes. Then I could make more Dunes!

 

[Deliverator]

I edited that last post with some more observations.

I wondered if you can use both the raised (PLOT_PEAK) and lowered (PLOT_HILL) heightmaps in alternation to create more variation in the dunes?

 

[cephalo]

I wondered if you can use both the raised (PLOT_PEAK) and lowered (PLOT_HILL) heightmaps in alternation to create more variation in the dunes?

The only thing preventing peaks on the dunes is that they come with that rock texture. If you could get rid of that in a way that won't ruin the land textures then I could make dune peaks.

 

[Ahriman]

It may just a question of tuning you're parameters so that the land is a little more thin and that no tile is *too* far away from desert.

This seems plausible.

kinda wonder if we could at some point go to automated vehicle based spice collection, instead of culture borders spice collection. Kinda like Dune 2000. Or, maybe we could build culture spreading forts out on the dunes for spice collection purposes.

These seem unlikely to me; it is very hard for me to see the AI intelligently contesting areas that are not within its cultural borders, or intelligently building culture-spreaders outside its cultural borders.

 

[Deliverator]

Ah, I forgot you're using flatland for the dunes. The sunken terrain Sink has an invisible texture so you alternate between Sink (PLOT_HILLS) on Ocean, normal Ocean and Flatland for the three levels of graphical variation. It might not look any better, just an idea.

 

[cephalo]

These seem unlikely to me; it is very hard for me to see the AI intelligently contesting areas that are not within its cultural borders, or intelligently building culture-spreaders outside its cultural borders.

If we could make an AI to intelligently run some automated spice spice collection, similar to automated workers, would we want that? Wow, I think I've lost my fear of the AI code. Maybe we had better test my latest changes first.