cephalo

Elementerra - Random Map Generator

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Elementerra - Random Map Generator

from Elemental Forums

Announcement: This map generator has been updated. Go here for the new version.

Hi all,

I have here probably the first random map generator for Elemental! Follow the link below to download.

Elementerra random map generator - mirror

Elemental Window

This application requires the .NET framework runtime version 3.5 to run. Most people have this already, but if you don't you can get it through Windows Update.

To use the map generator, just play with all the funny sliders until you have something you like, then press one of the 'Publish' buttons. The 'Publish Random Map' button will publish a map with the current settings, but scrambles the map and does not show it to you. When asked for a location to save the file, usually you want to save it in the 'Documents/My Games/Elemental/Maps' directory. If you have mods turned on in the game options, you should then be able to load the map in game.

Most of the controls are self explanatory, but there are three noise fields that might need some explanation. For the landforms, there is a noise field and a turbulence field that are weighted against each other with their weight sliders. The climate uses a separate noise field. The 'Frequency' control adjusts the size of the noise features. High frequency makes small features and low frequency makes large features. The roughness slider controls the 'bumpyness' of the noise field. Low roughness makes very smooth transitions, high roughness increases the randomness and gives a grainy appearance.

The 'Calculate Start Positions' button shows you the start locations, but it is not necessary to press it. Start locations are always calculated on publish, but since it takes some time to calculate them, I didn't do real time updates. The button is there just for early feedback.

Let me know if you have any problems or bugs. Enjoy!

The maps generated by this application are somewhat different than the normal Elemental maps, as the following screenshots will show. For one thing, I eliminated the coastal cliffs altogether. The map looks better without them and they aren't required for gameplay. For swamps I added some props from the campaign map and also lowered their altitude so that they are slightly under the water level so you can see the ripple effect. Characters can still walk on it and use it as normal, and it looks very swampy! I also punched up the mountains a bit to make them big and dramatic. Fantasy worlds need big, big mountains!

One thing that still needs to be done is the placement of resources. I expect that the rules will be changing a great deal in the near future, so I'm holding off on that. Currently they will be placed randomly at game start, sometimes in huge clusters, and considering their enormous importance that is obviously not ideal. I'll tackle that issue once I learn more about it. If anyone has any opinions on how resources ought to be placed, please post them. I've noticed that I've never seen an Elementium resource in any game I've played, not sure why.

One difficulty here is that I do not know that it's possible to turn off the random resource spawns. If I place resources on the map in the cartography room, they end up randomized anyway. If anyone knows how to turn that off I'd like to hear it.

Take a look...

Floating in the bay

Fallen Lands

Surrounded!

Version History

1.2 - Wrote floating point numbers correctly for non-US operating systems.

1.1 - Matched the XML encoding from Elementerra to the one that Elemental uses.

faq support
754,129 views 241 replies | Pinned
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Really Awesome Stuff Cephalo, well done man :) k1

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Must... have... random... maps...  *shiver*

And yes, those cliff coastlines look poopy. More like a Warcraft 2 map...

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

It almost looks like a different game. Much more fantasy-ish. And look at that city crawling up the mountain!

Edit: You should TOTALLY submit some of your best maps for "review" in the in-game shift-tab menus.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Too bad, it don't work for me:

With the 1.07 version, no mod, the game just freeze when loading the map.

I tried the Westeros map and it load correctly...

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Um. Awesome. You. Rock.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Very nice, Thanks!

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

This is AMAZING!!!! But i must request a feature!!!!!
A way to have coastal cliffs, at least with a rough percentage slider, such as 60% cliffs or, or just cliffs near mountains and hills.
I'm using and LOVING the Fishery mod (which adds a fishing hut for you to build near coasts), i'll have to remove it if i want to play on these amazing random maps though, otherwise you could build a fishery on every coast in every city :/

Thanks for taking the time!!! :rofl: :* :inlove:

edit: hmmm..... tried launching a new game on a default-sized map, the game just sat there for an hour trying to load, using only 250mb ram.
edit2: what a bummer, no maps i try work ingame, the game just sticks on the loading screen. They do load up in the map editor though, well, the first map, any following maps that i try to load have no terrain or forests. Sigh this game is still so buggy :P

Your rmg is amazing though, just a bummer the actual game cant "handle it".

 

I just noticed the top header in the rmg maps are different than any other maps the game creates.
Could that have something to do with it? Perhaps its worth noting im running on non-english OS.

Your rmg maps: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Vanilla maps: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?>

Changing the header to the vanilla, and opening the file in notepad++ and re-saving it as ANSI (like the vanilla maps) didnt help, still wont load ingame :/

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't know the maps all work for me. What size map are you genning? You're the second person reporting a freeze, I wonder what's going on there.

If you would try genning a small map, like 64x32 or so, and see if your results are better. The way I'm writing the XML is not terribly efficient, I wonder if the file is too big for some people.

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

Any size, small, big. And i can load other ingame-created maps just fine no matter how huge they are (The Real Faege, Darien and such) X(

Tried opening it in the ingame map editor and re-saving, still no luck. By the way, are the maps supposed to have just barren lands, no grass snow or fallen terrain randomly placed?

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Wow. This is AWESOME!!! Incredible work.

A part of me does wish (with a few others here) that we could combine the beaches of this superb map generator with a few of the " Cliffs of Dover" type shorelines, though!

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Baleurion, reply 34
Any size, small, big. And i can load other ingame-created maps just fine no matter how huge they are (The Real Faege, Darien and such)

Tried opening it in the ingame map editor and re-saving, still no luck. By the way, are the maps supposed to have just barren lands, no grass snow or fallen terrain randomly placed?

Dang. I'm surprised that re-saving it from the editor didn't work. I don't know what to do! Maybe there's too many beaches for some machines? I'm trying to think what might be different in my maps. The mountains are higher. This is working for some people besides me correct? Try genning a smallish map with no ocean, or no mountains.

Yeah, I didn't place the grass and fallen areas because I figured that there needs to be a fictional reason to be there. I should have done something with the snow however. I guess I forgot.

EDIT: Also, try genning without swamp. My swamps are slightly submerged, and this might cause a glitch if graphics are handled differently.

Reply #38 from Elemental Forums Top

Awesome work. Karma deserved :  k1

Reply #39 from Elemental Forums Top

rly an impressive work, more karma for you k1

Reply #42 from Elemental Forums Top

I haven't tried it but looking at those screenshots it looks awesome!  I think I agree with you that the beaches do look better than the cliffs.

Reply #43 from Elemental Forums Top

Tried generating a map without water, hills or mountains, no luck :/
I edited my first reply with some info on the xml headers and such, in case you missed it. I dont know why, but that's my best guess as to why some of us (well, the two of us so far lol) seem to have this issue.
Perhaps it only affects those of us with non-english OS, due to varying unicode-junk and such?

Vanilla maps are saved as ANSI with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?> (unicode)
Your maps are saved as UTF-8 with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

+1 Loading…
Reply #44 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Baleurion, reply 43
Tried generating a map without water, hills or mountains, no luck :/
I edited my first reply with some info on the xml headers and such, in case you missed it. I dont know why, but that's my best guess as to why some of us (well, the two of us so far lol) seem to have this issue.
Perhaps it only affects those of us with non-english OS, due to varying unicode-junk and such?

Vanilla maps are saved as ANSI with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes"?> (unicode)
Your maps are saved as UTF-8 with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Hmmm, well you actually tried converting to ANSI correct? Also, you are able to load it into the cartography room, so it shouldn't be an OS issue.

One more thing to try is to get rid of swamps with the swamp slider. For one thing, swamps are often placed slightly under the water level, and also they use some props that are used in the campaign that may have been only included in one of the versions that you don't have. Sorry to bug you, but I only have my home POS computer for testing.

Reply #45 from Elemental Forums Top

Works very well for me on Win 7 x64 and version 1.07.25. The maps are really nice, and tend to (I think) actually run more quickly than the normal randomly created ones. Love that the mountains are bigger, too.

Reply #46 from Elemental Forums Top

I just tried loading a 128 x 128 map and it worked fine.  I could play it normally and I could edit it in the built in map editor.  Looks great as well.

Reply #48 from Elemental Forums Top

Wow, impressive!

I gave it a go and it worked fine. SD should just implement this app into the game. :)

Reply #50 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, made my first map and it works great...now hee is a question...could this generate tactical maps so there are way more to chose from in the game?