Author Topic: World Map Creation  (Read 9139 times)

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Offline Mickey Kudlo

World Map Creation
« on: April 10, 2015, 12:50:21 pm »
I would like the server code to build the initial world map as much as possible including NPC buildings and quests. V1/V2 did a decent job making a natural world then admins would mess it up with pre-built stuff. I want the server code to be able to make/add the pre-built stuff as well.
I was able to do this in V5 for the modern worlds. If you played the zombie/modern then you saw the roads, sewers and buildings there. The system set them all up randomly. The buildings (10x10, 20x20), road and sewer parts, were made by me in a map editor. Then the server had a building.ini file it used to know what map was designated for what use. The maps were even rotatable so the front doors faced the roads. Each item had 3-4 images so it could rotate around: walls, doors, toilets, beds, sinks, furniture, etc.
I never brought it to the fantasy worlds cuz I hoped that NPCs and players would build the cities themselves. Maybe the NPCs would use a building map to follow. But that was V5, this is V6 and I need to get player approval for just about everything :) , soooo...

How should natural world maps get created?

1 - V1 - original maps, all one biome/terrain, blocky elevations

2 - V2 - photoshop cloud made elevation maps, all one biome/terrain, smoother, more organic elevations

3 - V5 - a biome per sector, each having own elevation variations and plants and animals, blocky at sector edge but nice variations

4 - biome variation map but smooth/organic transitions, no sector edge boundaries, maybe using modified original map generator

5 - something else, please specify, that I can implement

I would post sample map images for ppl to see.

Then what about pre-built NPC stuff like cities?

Also, it is the trend in other games that quest maps are randomly created. Caves, mazes, dungeons, etc. I can set them all up at initial creation and they remain static. For some, they could be dynamic, changing once per week or day. If once per day then the treasure could just be non-respawn items too.
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Offline Greatest

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Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2015, 01:22:59 pm »
I like V2 setup, but I also like the biomes...any chance you can do a V2 type map with biomes?  that may be option 4, but I'm reading 4 as V1 style map with biomes, and I don't want that.

as far as prebuilt: V5 modern had too much, but atleast a start city would be nice.  nothing too huge, just a few buildings and npcs(or based on how you're setting it up a wrecked ship with a few npcs would work) to get things started is fine.

I like the idea of daily resetting events, but I don't think I'd ever do any...I'm always full crafter.
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Offline Mickey Kudlo

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #2 on: April 10, 2015, 01:26:02 pm »
V1 World
rpgwo.com/img/v1world.png

V5 World
rpgwo.com/img/v5world.png

The V5 world you can see biomes plains (mostly light green), forest (green with a lot of specks), mountain (light brown with gray), desert (yellow), swamp (brown/blue), ocean (blue, some green)
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 01:28:24 pm by Mickey Kudlo »
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Offline Kaios

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Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2015, 02:53:42 pm »
More realistic water ways leading out to larger bodies of water (lakes, ocean).

Here is an example (which I stole from someone):



Also this should give incentive to make water travel more meaningful and rather have your character actually swim if they don't have boat or raft transport instead of becoming Jesus and walking across the water.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 02:56:45 pm by Kaios »
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Offline Sacrifice

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2015, 07:04:40 pm »
Kaios's map seems the coolest to me, I am not sure if you could make a procedural map generator to include somehting like that.

Offline Greatest

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Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2015, 07:07:00 pm »
I like Kaios' map...and he makes a good point.

I've always thought there was too much water around.  rivers and lakes make sense, but huge areas of nothing but water in the middle of nowhere looks weird.  like in the V5 map, you have 3 sectors of pretty much all water, and looks like only 2 rivers and those are tiny.  V1 has a better water map, but the mountains are everywhere(even right beside a river).
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Offline hazze

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2015, 07:11:03 pm »
Something I'd be interested in would be currents if they were possible too. Like maybe there's one section which would be significantly faster (think 300+ Run) if you were heading in a certain direction... and different kinds of boats..

Offline Greatest

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Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2015, 09:00:17 pm »
Something I'd be interested in would be currents if they were possible too. Like maybe there's one section which would be significantly faster (think 300+ Run) if you were heading in a certain direction... and different kinds of boats..
you're crazy!  I can just see someone getting washed into a group of strong monsters ;D

something a lot less would be a good idea though.  something along the lines of: going down river wouldn't take as much stam as going up river...or no stam at all going down river

I think I remember Mickey saying something about wanting water to flow, so that could be a nice tie in.
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Offline hazze

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2015, 10:25:09 pm »
Something I'd be interested in would be currents if they were possible too. Like maybe there's one section which would be significantly faster (think 300+ Run) if you were heading in a certain direction... and different kinds of boats..
you're crazy!  I can just see someone getting washed into a group of strong monsters ;D

something a lot less would be a good idea though.  something along the lines of: going down river wouldn't take as much stam as going up river...or no stam at all going down river

I think I remember Mickey saying something about wanting water to flow, so that could be a nice tie in.

sorry is this hello kitty online or a survival sandbox

edit: i'd like to see swim skill determine some movespeed too, as opposed to run. maybe fighitng your way upstream without a boat.. rafts reducing stam not cancelling it all,

Offline Mickey Kudlo

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2015, 10:38:45 pm »
Kaios's map is good and sexy but... how does one create it?
It looks hand drawn to me somewhat.

Maybe some kinda erosion process on high speed, doing a million iterations, to get it.
And maybe some human intervention/drawing to aid the process.
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Offline Greatest

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Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2015, 02:03:00 am »
sorry is this hello kitty online or a survival sandbox

edit: i'd like to see swim skill determine some movespeed too, as opposed to run. maybe fighitng your way upstream without a boat.. rafts reducing stam not cancelling it all,
is there a hello kitty online?  I want to play it!  also who said anything about survival?  rpgwo has always been somewhat civilized, we craft, we barter, we sell, we bitch about stuff that bothers us!  it has never been people running around in the woods killing and eating rats so they don't starve to death.
Kaios's map is good and sexy but... how does one create it?
It looks hand drawn to me somewhat.

Maybe some kinda erosion process on high speed, doing a million iterations, to get it.
And maybe some human intervention/drawing to aid the process.
not sure how you'd do it...but the water flowing bit got me thinking: you would probably need some weird coding for this, but springs would be a nice addition(2-5 at world creation with no water at all).  if you have springs and they're at a high elevations water would flow from them forming rivers along their path and pool in lower elevations(but nothing higher than a certain elevation would be pooled).  this would make a somewhat natural map for water...then again its really late and this may sound weird in the morning!
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Offline Naed

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #11 on: April 13, 2015, 09:03:36 am »
For fun I went ahead and made a map generator after seeing the posted images. The generator is using a canvas and javascript. I'm building a 400 by 400 image and setting random points to max elevation, then smoothing out a couple times (how you do this alters map setup). In total its 128 lines of javascript and html, results are decent for very little work.

I think I'll add other things to this, I like how it works.

Here are a couple results, with different configs. Maps are 400 * 400. Larger takes longer.

Map1:

Map2:

Map3:


Offline Naed

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #12 on: April 13, 2015, 12:11:10 pm »
Well I'm attempting to implement continents but they come out a little block-y. Also the troll face islands are interesting outcome...


What I am getting at is if you get the maps to something like this, we'd be in a good place. Adding in rivers would be a plus, but if you get to this point I don't think they will be missed.

Offline Roarion

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #13 on: April 13, 2015, 02:13:31 pm »
V1 World
rpgwo.com/img/v1world.png

V5 World
rpgwo.com/img/v5world.png

The V5 world you can see biomes plains (mostly light green), forest (green with a lot of specks), mountain (light brown with gray), desert (yellow), swamp (brown/blue), ocean (blue, some green)

I think biomes work well. You probably would want some code that would spawn more plants in the biome in case someone tries harvesting them all. (it looks like there's only 1 water biome in the top right)

I dont like how the biomes are so square. Blending them across sectors would be much nicer.
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Offline Naed

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #14 on: April 13, 2015, 02:16:10 pm »
Biomes should not have such drastic changes.

Averaging the elevation in a sector and choosing a biome based on this, without changing the sector, and seeding it's plants based on biome would make more sense. They would be distinctly different, but not instant and offensive in their change.

Also plants would sneak into adjacent sectors over time, further improving the transition.

Offline Greatest

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Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #15 on: April 13, 2015, 07:51:06 pm »
I like the map with continents...rivers might not be as needed in such a map, but less ocean would be nice!

about biomes, maybe instead of full sectors they could take up partial sectors(50X50).  there could also be something that only allows some biomes to border others giving less need for blending. 

for example:
meadow(?) would be basic biome, it can border pretty much anything, and can contain rivers
mountains wouldn't be as abundant, and can't border water based biomes(swamp, lakes), small chance to have rivers
desert would be rare, and can only border mountains and meadow with a min distance from water, absolutely no rivers
swamp would be somewhat more abundant than mountains, can only border meadows and lakes, and would be mostly water so no rivers

I have no clue what other biomes are being thought about/already exist so I'll just leave off here.  hopefully the general idea behind this works though.
why does Fox keep cancelling good shows?

Offline Naed

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #16 on: April 15, 2015, 08:50:53 am »
Mickey, I am generating a map maker in C#, what format would you find the map useful in? I have the map maker but at the moment it just creates a height map in the form of the images posted above.

I can provide the map maker at any time to use as you like.

Current iteration is generating a map using continents random points. From those points, continent_size random points are generated around that point. Continents are prevented from totally overlapping, but some overlap is allowed, these overlaps commonly cause mountain ranges.

From all of these points, I go in a random radial pattern around the point map_smoothing times for a map_smoothing_radius distance from each point.


I am currently processing a 10000 * 10000 world (100,000,000 tiles).

num_continents = 150;

continent_size = 400;

continent_modifier = 3; This is required to increase particle density of continents, larger continents require a larger value or they just end up being islands within a radius.

map_smoothing = 50;

map_smoothing_radius = 49;

While 150 continents sounds absurd its perhaps just my naming of the value. There will be 150 circular land masses with a 400 tile radius. From these 150 islands the hope is some continents will be formed. Map has taken nearly 30 minutes to generate. Map file is as an image is 50 megs.., so not able to attach the large versions. Here is the results at 1/10th size.



Taking request for map values! Please do not exceed 4000*4000 for the size, as it takes quite some time to generate and the files generated are too large to share anyways.

Offline Mickey Kudlo

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #17 on: April 15, 2015, 12:30:26 pm »
10k x 10k ?!?! I can see going to 4k or 5k since memory and CPUs is a lot better since the year 2000 when I first made V1.

Your map "spot"s look too similar. Give us a close up of one.

I have been working on map creation all week. I tried the smoothing idea but had issues getting the elevation smooth enough and it just flatten it too much. Trying a handful of ideas. I have an algorithm from another game I am tweaking to see what I get. But I have only tried 2k size maps so far.
You may have conquered my worlds, but I destroyed them!

Offline Mickey Kudlo

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #18 on: April 15, 2015, 01:10:20 pm »
Here is a 2k x 2k world on a 400 x 400 image.
It still needs smoothing, elevation and terrain/biomes applied.

I tried a 4k size map and it took too much memory, over a gig. Hosting such a world on a virtual machine wouldn't work too well. And that didn't have items added either which means another 500meg, probably.
Although Jon could set something up I reckon but I don't want to burden anyone ... yet :)
You may have conquered my worlds, but I destroyed them!

Offline hazze

Re: World Map Creation
« Reply #19 on: April 15, 2015, 04:37:53 pm »
A 4G VM is like $20 nowadays, who cares!?

Need more exploration!

 

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