Spring RTS Engine

Well not quite autogenerated but I modified the map generator for the old spring a bit to be able to generate maps for taspring. Currently the work path looks like

1: Create two (small) images describing how you want the map to look, the first one contains
Red: Average height
Green: Unused but will probably describe how hills look later
Blue: Bumpiness, how much randomness will be added to the average height

Second one

Red: Metal density
Green: Forest density
Blue: Geothermal density

2: Run mapgen with these files and a random seed as arguments, it will output a heightmap, featuremap, metalmap

3: Input heightmap into terragen and generate texture

4: Run mapgen again but this time also add the texture map as argument, this will do the same as step 2 except it will also modify the texture map with metal spots

5: Take these files and input them into mapconv

6: Create a smd by hand

In all it should be possible to create a new map with 15-30 minutes of work and 6h of waiting on terragen.

For Island Divide i used

and

as seed images. They might look a bit complicated but looking at one channel at a time they becomes quite easy to understand.
The resulting map looks like

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/temp/id001.jpg
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/temp/id004.jpg

It can be downloaded from

http://fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=3155

Im not quite happy with the mapgen yet (only support 16x16, hills doesnt look that good etc) so i wont release it yet. When I have fixed it a bit better I will probably release a 14x14 version of this map as I think it could lead to more intense games.

yay! cookie for SJ

wow cooly lets hope you get it working soon SJ i'd love to play around with this

Definetly not something we will have in the lobby, playing random maps.

Still pretty cool.

sj, you are my frickin' hero!

DUDE THANK YOU!

Can I get a hip hip for sj?

Have you considered eventually addapting it to work with the new map format style thingy with the overlays and such?

Just a wild idea. How easy would it be to make autogenerating maps very quickly? Using some predetermined textures? Just give a random seed... That way, one could have some wild maps where everybody, even experienced players, play for the first time. They'd have to be symmetrical of course.

It'd be much easier and quicker under zaphods map format....

AF wrote:It'd be much easier and quicker under zaphods map format....

What I was thinking

that does not mean this is not a good program. This is still pretty tight.

a ramdom map genorator like the one on age of empires and other rts games
would be nice...

CompWiz wrote:a ramdom map genorator like the one on age of empires and other rts games
would be nice...

Look at the relative quality levels.

arg, why spam the community with more maps? Really, I don't think we need a tool to create like 5 maps a day..

BvDorp wrote:arg, why spam the community with more maps? Really, I don't think we need a tool to create like 5 maps a day..

WTF, shut up moron, this makes it easier to produce quality content for the community.

I believe this idea is very nice, esspecially when you're working on it, and making it, and after all this you're getting it done. It look very good, and mapmaking in alot less time is always nice! Unfortunately this is how i think about the final purpose of it.

I do agree partly with BvDorp.

partly not ,because this would increase the overal graphical quality of the maps of people that like that like to make a map of their own, without having to need all the knowledge of 'proper' mapping. Next to this it is nice that people can make maps faster and with higher quality. This is good for the community, and as there will be more maps made, the overal graphical quality of them will be better...

Unfortunately i don't think that making a lot of maps like this, will give more quality maps. This is so, because i think, a good quality map does need torough thinking, and needs a creation process in the form of; concept design/idea, heigtmap design, heightmap testing, heightmap alteration to get it right, final heightmap testing, metal / geo placing, again testing, then texturizing, and again final testing. This way you probably will get a map that will play a lot better, and may look as good or even better.

I don't think a random generator for metal/geo placing and terrain gens give quality maps. I'm sorry i feel this way, cause i can imagine that SJ had some vision with it, but now gets critisized alot...

Das Bruce wrote:

BvDorp wrote:arg, why spam the community with more maps? Really, I don't think we need a tool to create like 5 maps a day..

WTF, shut up moron, this makes it easier to produce quality content for the community.

You could've said it urself, could you not? It's not like ur behaving any nicer. However, let's keep this thread clean. Just wanted to point it out for once :)

Sorry SJ, could've said it nice. Somewhat like Ice did :D thnx

^ ?



Randomness, is the concept.

an unknown challenge.


Quality hand made maps are still the best. (ymmv).

If the same seed was used on all playing sides, and generating was quick, you wouldn't need to even download anything. You could have an unknown-to-all map in a game. :)

bamb wrote:If the same seed was used on all playing sides, and generating was quick, you wouldn't need to even download anything. You could have an unknown-to-all map in a game. :)

For something like that i guess a new map format must be made that is super light weight.
I wonder how doable that is!?

Why? As bamb said, if the generator is integrated into spring and takes random seed argument (only 4 bytes to send over the net), you can generate the exact same map on all players PC. It would increase load time a bit, because the map must be generated and pathing must be done, but especially if it's tightly integrated I don't think a lighter map format is necessary - the generator wouldn't even have to save to an actual map, it could just fill in the necessary data structures in spring.

IMHO random maps could be ideal for tournaments / (semi-)official games because no one then has the advantage of knowing the map before.