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 #51 from Elemental Forums Top

the mapgenerator works for me, have generated two maps and played in xp32 1.07.25 for over 400 turns, just have to remember NOT to use the see map cheat.

harpo

 

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

Have you guys shared any of the generated maps through Impulse?

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gravedancer, reply 52
Have you guys shared any of the generated maps through Impulse?

 

No, because I am just testing it...but to be honest  never even thought about it.

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cephalo, reply 13


There's a few things I don't like about the cliffs. For one thing, they tend to flatten the coast contours and take up a lot of space. Another thing I don't like about them is that they assume that all the non-mountain/hill land is all the same altitude. In my maps the land is actually kinda bumpy and looks alot more natural. I was lucky this sort of thing works! I'm happy with the possibilities presented with the Elemental maps.

 

True, I agree that -too- many of them can look clunky at times. But having a few cliffs especially near water-side mountains and hills does look nice at times and can make for that nice fantasy-esque city on a cliff look.

 

If (and this is not directed to you, just a general thought) we could also have non-shore cliffs, that would be nice too. Again, nothing extreme but a few sharp cliffs here and there can be nice; likewise, it would allow for something of a 'grand canyon' look on flatter terrain.

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

What swamp slider? XD
Definetly some kind of version mismatch here, i'm using the latest 1.07 (from impulse) yet it loads all the generated maps totally wrong.
No desert anywhere, nice submerged swamps though, but roads on every tile, yes roads! Haha so wierd :P
No hill or mountain textures either, just pure flatt Barren land everywhere.

I bet its a bug with the game loading the maps, i dont see what else could cause it. It certainly isnt a graphical issue, i mean it reads the xml as if there are roads everywhere, so something is iffy. Prolly not your generators fault either (great job on it btw)

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Baleurion, reply 55
What swamp slider?
Definetly some kind of version mismatch here, i'm using the latest 1.07 (from impulse) yet it loads all the generated maps totally wrong.
No desert anywhere, nice submerged swamps though, but roads on every tile, yes roads! Haha so wierd
No hill or mountain textures either, just pure flatt Barren land everywhere.

I bet its a bug with the game loading the maps, i dont see what else could cause it. It certainly isnt a graphical issue, i mean it reads the xml as if there are roads everywhere, so something is iffy. Prolly not your generators fault either (great job on it btw)

Ah, if your other maps are working then it's probably something I did wrong. Oh yeah, there is no swamp slider. I meant the forest slider. If you turn that up all the way, it will squeeze out the swamp. I have no idea why you would be getting roads. That does sound like were running in different environments somehow.

Try generating with no swamp again and see if your results are different.

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Baleurion, reply 55
but roads on every tile, yes roads! Haha so wierd

It's the Roman Empire gone wild! :rofl:

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Baleurion, reply 32

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 :/

Now that I think about it, I'm thinking that this is the problem. I think I can fix this, but after some googling it looks like it's handled by .NET in a confusing way that can have undefined results. This is my first app with XML export so I'm going to have to do some testing.

Reply #60 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok, new version up. The encoding should match now. Let me know if it works...

Reply #61 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cephalo, reply 60
Ok, new version up. The encoding should match now. Let me know if it works...

Just Dl'd the new version, will test tonight. A question Cephalo, does that hosting site there keep track of how many time it's been downloaded? I'm looking for a new host for mine but I want to be able to keep track of my downloads as well.

Reply #62 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Raven, reply 61



Quoting cephalo,
reply 60
Ok, new version up. The encoding should match now. Let me know if it works...



Just Dl'd the new version, will test tonight. A question Cephalo, does that hosting site there keep track of how many time it's been downloaded? I'm looking for a new host for mine but I want to be able to keep track of my downloads as well.

Yes! 191 downloads so far among both versions. I don't know what the limitations are though, I've only used it for small files. I'm not sure it would be adequate for a graphics packed conversion mod.

Reply #63 from Elemental Forums Top

Hmm there needs to be either a Elemental community site like oblivion has, or they have to allow us to share everything over the game

 

Reply #65 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cephalo, reply 62

Yes! 191 downloads so far among both versions. I don't know what the limitations are though, I've only used it for small files. I'm not sure it would be adequate for a graphics packed conversion mod.

Thanks for the info my friend. I'll definitely look into the site. The update for Undead Rising should be done by tonight or in the morning and I'll be looking for another site to start hosting my next batch of skin mods. Size isn't much of an issue right now but it very well may be later on down the road. The other site I'm using allows a 2Gig upload/download but you have to wait 60 seconds before download begins if you go to it more than once a day.

 

Reply #66 from Elemental Forums Top

Nope still the same. The only other difference between it and the vanilla map files is that the vanilla files have 1 "tab" before each line, while your files have 2 spaces.
Surely that has nothing to do with it since it works for 95% of you all, but frankly im running out of ideas lol. Ill wait and hope an Elemental patch indirectly fixes it.

Reply #67 from Elemental Forums Top

Have you looked at Dropbox?  They have a free plan up to 2GB, private and public sharing options, and an activity summary.  I've never used the service but have heard good things about it.

http://www.dropbox.com/

 

Reply #68 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gravedancer, reply 67
Have you looked at Dropbox?  They have a free plan up to 2GB, private and public sharing options, and an activity summary.  I've never used the service but have heard good things about it.

http://www.dropbox.com/

 

 

Dropbox got me through a lot of college group projects; I highly recommend it!

Reply #69 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Baleurion, reply 66
Nope still the same. The only other difference between it and the vanilla map files is that the vanilla files have 1 "tab" before each line, while your files have 2 spaces.
Surely that has nothing to do with it since it works for 95% of you all, but frankly im running out of ideas lol. Ill wait and hope an Elemental patch indirectly fixes it.

Did you get a chance to eliminate swamps?

Reply #70 from Elemental Forums Top

forgive my ignorance.  I have played with the sliders and I keep getting forests everywhere.  I just want a large 256x256 map that has a few mountains, lots of open space to build and few forests...what settings would you recommend?

 

Thanks in advance

Reply #71 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting assets73, reply 70
forgive my ignorance.  I have played with the sliders and I keep getting forests everywhere.  I just want a large 256x256 map that has a few mountains, lots of open space to build and few forests...what settings would you recommend?

 

Thanks in advance

Turn the "Percent Below Open Land" slider to a high number close to the "Percent Below Forest" setting, and that will increase the open land at the expense of the forest tiles. Open land is the light green, while forest is the darker green. Swamp is the pukey green.

+1 Loading…
Reply #72 from Elemental Forums Top

my only issue with dropbox is that they do not give the info about downloads from the files uploaded, otherwise it is excellent.

harpo

 

Reply #73 from Elemental Forums Top

OH swamp isthe puke green / brown? I thought that was forest lol. So i imagined the slider effect being reversed :P
They should prolly be renamed to something like "Forest Percent"

Tried with no swamp, no luck. Also, i noticed that besides the roads-everywhere and no-texture-but-barren thing when loading the maps in the ingame map editor, the trees also do NOT change if i paint grasslands, fallen, desert or arctic environment on them, as they do on other maps.
They remain barren trees, unchanging.

Something is definetly odd ;/
I just cant understand why only myself and that other guy who replied have this wierdness. Its not like i installed or patched the game wierd, its all fine on my end.
Stardock should take a look at this thread, incorporate this map generator, and figure out if something is iffy with the way the game reads maps :P

Reply #74 from Elemental Forums Top

Don't know why, but the old version worked like a charm for me.  I made a few maps and then had created a largish 'hidden' map to play on.  Put it in the right file and loaded it up fine.  Game worked like a charm!

I noticed the debris in the hills.  It looks strange, but no biggie.  I like the way you turned up the hills to make them more impressive.  As a side effect, it makes it VERY easy to see what sort of terrain is passible and what is effectively blocked.

One last comment.  An earlier thread had someone complain that they always start in the middle of factions, so he was surrounded on all sides before getting a chance to establish a stronghold.  I didn't really have that sort of problem, but other people said they did.  From what I can tell from your mod, the placement is very well done.  I didn't see any slots that were immediately boxed in.

Lots of thanks and a k1   comin' your way!

Reply #75 from Elemental Forums Top

One minor issue I have noticed is that the land transformation that takes place in the area of influence (turns into grassland or dead land) does not work well at all. The beaches and high mountains makes the transformation look really weird... Beaches turn white for example.