The Atlas Project

I have to admit that this project has been pretty dead the last few.. well, years really. But the plans still remain. Maybe I'll work on it this summer.
 
I was a bit surprised when i got an email from this thread. I haven't been here in a long long time. I think you should finish Junuxx, if you do have time in the summer. This was a great project.
 
I have to admit that this project has been pretty dead the last few.. well, years really. But the plans still remain. Maybe I'll work on it this summer.

So there's hope? :please:

EDIT: I was just playing BtS, and I saw the map I made on the list of scenarios. I tried it, and it worked fine, so that takes care of that...
 
Very cool. This kind of reminds me of the old days of playing Sim Earth!
 
It should be, yes, if you have Java installed. There are very few system-specific components. I can only think of a call to the Windows registry when saving a map (so you're automatically directed to your Civ folder). If I handled that situation correctly it should still *work* on a Mac though.

My plans for a new version are getting bolder and bolder, but actual progress isn't much.
 
It should be, yes, if you have Java installed. There are very few system-specific components. I can only think of a call to the Windows registry when saving a map (so you're automatically directed to your Civ folder). If I handled that situation correctly it should still *work* on a Mac though.

My plans for a new version are getting bolder and bolder, but actual progress isn't much.

Have you read my pm? Any thoughts?
 
I've used the Atlas map generator mostly to create custom map sizes for scenarios--that to me is my favorite feature. I have also experimented with the map generation itself, & the only problem I'm finding is with regards of the river generation--they aren't made correctly, & unless I set the river density to really high levels, the amount of rivers is still not optimal.

Something I would do with this is create the map w/o rivers, & then add them via WorldBuilder, & to my liking. If you can take care of that detail, I'd be really satisfied with this.

@ Kanzera--this works for BtS, but if you want to select BtS-exclusive options, you can load the map as a 'Custom Scenario' & add them.
 
Me and my friend have been using the Atlas Map Generator to generate maps for our Civilization IV Beyond the Sword games.

However, when creating bigger maps, we experienced some problems:

- The generator doesn't scale properly with bigger maps in terms of placing resources. It seems it would often fail placing resources, and since it has a limited number of tries, bigger maps got fewer resources. This particularly affected the placement of food resources, and possibly also oil and aluminum. So, we tripled the number for placement of the food resources, and double the numbers for oil and aluminum. This seemed to lead to a good amount of resources placed, which was more similar to the amount we would usually see in smaller maps.

- The generator had a method that put plains next to desert biomes. That means that as long as desert size was above 0, the map suddenly contain huge plains biomes with mainly plains, which wasn't very good for gameplay. We limited this number to around a fourth, which greatly limited any creation of plains biomes next to the desert biomes, while the map in generator still created a good mix of grassland and plains around the map in general.

- We have made it possible to add up to 48 starting locations, which is now the default for the generator.

- We have changed the number of continents you can add to 90, which is now the default for the generator. Using many continents with a continent size of 3 adds a nice number of medium sized landmasses, which often aren't fully connected to each other (of course, depending on what's randomly generated, but we got good results with this setting). This means that you will have a fair few neighbours, but not everyone will be on the same continent, and ocean warfare will be important as well. So, not fully archipelago, but less likely to get one big landmass that spans the entire X-axis.

To begin with, we used "titan" map size, but in our final testing, we used "impossible" map size (256x160). So, the changes we made will fit best with the "impossible" map size, while if you use smaller map sizes, it will generate more resources that it usually would. I reckon it would be decent with "titan" map size as well, although it might be necessary to set resources abundance to 8-9 to balance it.

The attached zip-file contains the decompiled code files as well as the Atlas043.jar that all the changed code has been compiled into. So, to use our changed version, simply copy the Atlas043.jar file from the ZIP into your location for Atlas Map Generator (likely C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlas v0.43), renaming the current file first.

I experienced, though, that due to the decompiled that my friend used to compile this, you need to have Java SE Development Kit. He used the CFR Java Decompiler (https://www.benf.org/other/cfr/) and places it in the same directly as the .jar-file. We change Atlas.java and Map.Java. Either you need to manually add the jar-variable, or you need to installed the Microsoft Build of the OpenJDK (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/java/openjdk/download) as well, as it automatically adds the .jar variable that is used for recompiling. When we made changes to a file, and re-added them to the .jar with the following commands (in this example, modifying the Atlas.java file):

javac Atlas.java
jar uf Atlas043.jar Atlas.class

The code parts we changes i Atlas.java were:

Code:
SpinnerNumberModel continentsNumberModel = new SpinnerNumberModel(90, 0, 90, 1);
SpinnerNumberModel slNumberModel = new SpinnerNumberModel(48, 0, 48, 1);

This changes continents and startinglocations.

The code parts we changes i Map.java were:

Code:
        this.addResource('a', cArray9, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('b', cArray9, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('c', cArray10, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('d', cArray3, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('e', cArray3, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('f', cArray3, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('g', cArray8, n4*3, map);
        this.addResource('h', cArray2, n3*3, map);
        this.addResource('i', cArray, n3*3, map);
        this.addResource('j', cArray, n3*3, map);
        this.addResource('0', cArray4, n5, map);
        this.addResource('1', cArray4, n5, map);
        this.addResource('2', cArray3, n6, map);
        this.addResource('3', cArray5, n5, map);
        this.addResource('4', cArray6, n5*2, map);
        this.addResource('5', cArray4, n5, map);
        this.addResource('6', cArray4, n6, map);
        this.addResource('7', cArray3, n4, map);
        this.addResource('8', cArray5, n4, map);
        this.addResource('A', cArray7, n4*2, map);
        this.addResource('B', cArray2, n3, map);
        this.addResource('C', cArray12, n4, map);
        this.addResource('D', cArray13, n4, map);
        this.addResource('E', cArray13, n4, map);
        this.addResource('F', cArray13, n4, map);
        this.addResource('G', cArray14, n4, map);
        this.addResource('H', cArray9, n4, map);
        this.addResource('I', cArray9, n4, map);
        this.addResource('J', cArray11, n4, map);
        this.addResource('K', cArray9, n4, map);
        this.addResource('L', cArray7, n4, map);
    }


 if (!((map.mapGrid[n4][n11].type() == 'G' && map.surroundingType(n4, n11, 'D', 1) + map.surroundingType(n4, n11, 'P', 1) > 0 && Math.random() - 0.035 * (double)map.surroundingType(n4, n11, 'P', 1) < 0.15) | (this.equatorDistance(n11) > 0.14 && map.mapGrid[n4][n11].type() == 'G' && 0.1 + 0.3 * Math.random() * d3 + 0.4 * this.equatorDistance(n11) * d3 < 0.75 - 0.1 * d3)) || !(Math.random() < 0.2 * d3 * (d4 / d5))) continue;
                        map.changeType(n4, n11, 'P');

Here you can see us multiplying certain resources in the first bit, white in the second bit, the 0.15 number was the number we lowered to make planet biomes occur a lot let.

Just in cade attaching the ZIP isn't working, here is a link as well: Download modded Atlas Map Generator.

So, if someone else is in our specific situation, I hope this helps :)
 

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This is so mad!

I was thinking about this mod as it was able to create really interesting 'ice age' worlds with a water ring around the equator.

Thanks so much for posting and modding this!
 
dragonfallz: I'm glad to hear that this was useful :)

I was visiting my best friend for a week, and after we have played the impossible size map for a few days, we ran into some graphic memory problems (I think due to Civilization being buggy about memory allocation or overflow). So, we had to settle for a titan size map. We rebalanced the Atlas Map Editor for the titan map size instead. During our game on the impossible size, we also realized that we went a bit overboard with the water food resources since they didn't fail to spawn as often. We also overlooked the fact that stone, copper, iron and marble wasn't spawning enough. We did some more careful tuning this time, generating around 10 different maps as we tested and studied them.

The changes:

Corn amount is multiplied by 3.3
Wheat amount is multiplied by 2.8
Rice amount is multiplied by 2
Cow is amount is multiplied by 3
Pig is amount is multiplied by 3
Sheep is amount is multiplied by 3
Deer is amount is multiplied by 3
Fish is amount is multiplied by 2
Clam is amount is multiplied by 2
Crab is amount is multiplied by 2
Stone is amount is multiplied by 1,2
Marble is amount is multiplied by 1,2
Horse is amount is multiplied by 1,4
Coal is amount is multiplied by 1,2
Oil is amount is multiplied by 1,6
Copper is amount is multiplied by 1,6
Iron is amount is multiplied by 1,3
Aluminum is amount is multiplied by 1,8
Uranium is amount is multiplied by 1,2
Ivory is amount is multiplied by 1,2
Silk is amount is multiplied by 1,3
Sugar is amount is multiplied by 1,3

So, if anyone wants an Atlas Map Editor rebalanced to work better with titan maps, I have attached it here. Here is also a link, in case the attached file stops working: Atlas Map Generator - modded by Aleci - titan version.
 

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