[0.13.1] Map generation process is very strange

[someloser]

just got this map from the default settings:



map exchange string:
>>>AAANAAAAXQADAwYAAAAEAAAAY29hbAMDAwoAAABjb3BwZXItb3Jl
AwMDCQAAAGNydWRlLW9pbAMDAwoAAABlbmVteS1iYXNlAwMDCAAAAGl
yb24tb3JlAwMDBQAAAHN0b25lAwMDZ8bYKgAAAAAAAAAAAwCLu9Tz<<
<

The only coal is a smattering at the edge of the discovered area. Other new maps had similar issues, and the terrain seems highly fragmented, even though I never touch that setting




(no copper to be seen - made with:)


edited for clarity

[Rseding91]

Those aren't the "default settings" -> those are tweaked settings with everything on "low".

[scarhoof]

I came here to report about terrain gen. In .12 you could set terrain fragmentation to low and fairly often find yourself with a single biome game. I've generated 20 maps so far in .13 and fragmentation settings don't seem to allow a single (or nearly single) biome anymore.

[someloser]

Those aren't the "default settings" -> those are tweaked settings with everything on "low".

yeah, for the second map. the first map (that I posted the exchange string for) is all default, though.

[Teraka]

I'm having the same issue. Default settings are fine most of the time, but as soon as you change them just a bit, you get exclusively maps that are impossible to play on:

Settings

Map 1 First patch of iron at the edge of discovered terrain.

Map 2 Literally nothing. Ok not literally there is a minuscule patch of coal at a distance one oil well far to the east and a speck of copper way off in the distance.

Map 3 No stone or oil.

Map 4 No stone or oil again.

Map 5 No iron or oil.

Those aren't hand-picked screenshots, they're literally the first 5 maps I got after starting to generate from those settings. Now while I selected those specifically so I would have to go a distance to find new resources, I also kind of wanted to have at least the absolute minimum amount of resources necessary to reach trains, especially since the settings I chose were far from extreme.

Edit: I hid the screenshots... -Loewchen

[ixnorp]

edit: Changing the title to 0.13.1 after a brief test to confirm that 0.13.1 is generating identical maps.

Summary
Water Only In Starting Area causes many small lakes to be generated all over the map.
Increasing the amount of water on a map decreases the size of biomes.
The underlying first step of the map generation process seems to be running amok in unusual ways.

Expected Results
A map with lots of water should have lots of green biomes and trees.
Low segmentation should result in large, contiguous biomes.
Water only in starting area produces a map with water only in the starting area.

Observations & Examples
I was trying to understand the new map generation process so I took a single seed (in this case, 1946374888) and began to generate maps off it with varying degrees of segmentation and water. From what I understand, the old map generation process would make a starting area and then combine that with the rest of the map. What I think might be happening here is that the starting area is basically 'leaking' out all over the map. The starting area seems to be forcibly generated with (very?) high segmentation and water in a sandy biome to create small lakes. I recall one of the devs saying that "Water only in starting area" was supposed to always generate a desert biome.

The clearest example I can offer is this. Using the same seed with two different segmentation settings and water only in starting area give identical maps. (generated in 0.13.0)
Seed 1946374888, Water: Only In Starting Area, Segmentation: Very Low
Seed 1946374888, Water: Only In Starting Area, Segmentation: Normal

When doing the same thing but varying the amount of water on the map, we can observe the map generation steps. They all clearly use the first map as a base as can be noticed when flipping from one map to the next. All of the initial highly segmented biome area as well as all of the many small lakes are preserved except where overwritten by the new biome and water generation steps. What I find especially odd and probably not intended is that as the area taken up by the water grows, all of the other biomes shrink! This leads to the map with the most water having tons of desert everywhere and almost no trees. These processes seem to be running in reverse from what I would expect.

The following maps all use Seed 1946374888, Segmentation: Normal (generated in 0.13.0)
Water: Only In Starting Area
Water: Very Small
Water: Small
Water: Medium
Water: Big
Water: Very Big

[MrGrim]

This is excellent! Thanks for putting the work in to showing the clearest example that I've seen so far of the wonkiness of the map generator!

[5thHorseman]

Very interesting stuff. The fact that changing segmentation does not change the map (except the sparsest of pixels smattered here and there) tells me that that's not working as intended. The water looks reasonable to me if the rest was corrected, though.

[ytsejam]

That's great work. Players bothered by this need to keep this and viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27199 alive. There's no doubt in my mind this is indeed a bug, not an intended feature, since there's no mention of terrain segmentation changes in the 0.13 changelog and also because it pretty much breaks lots of options in the map generation settings.

[IronCartographer]

I'd love to see a blending of the new biome generation with the old. This new pattern gives more interest locally, but becomes monotonous on a large scale. The old one gave nice variation globally, but was rather repetitive locally.

Segmentation, Biomes, and Starting Resources seem like the only issues though. RSO's make-trains-worthwhile is pretty well baked in at this point if you use low frequency resource spawns.

I've been working on a different design for the map generation config screen, but I'm not sure how compatible it is with their current system. It would need a global modifier for the level of greenery, and a local overlay/filter/blending in/around the starting area:

https://jsfiddle.net/2cn53d3o/10/

Maybe it could be used in a terrain overhaul mod, if such a project is possible given the performance impact for chunk loading?

[o6dukeleto]

I agree map generation is screwed up in alpha 13 -- it is much different than alpha 12 -- and not just the increasing resources as you get farther away from spawn.

If not, devs should at least address how they changed them and what they do now.

[Qon]

Water: Only In Starting Area

Water all over the place! Where am I supposed to build? This is one of the worst parts of the new generator. It always makes water puddles every other tile, with any settings and you can't turn it off.

[ixnorp]

I'd love to see a blending of the new biome generation with the old. This new pattern gives more interest locally, but becomes monotonous on a large scale. The old one gave nice variation globally, but was rather repetitive locally.

Segmentation, Biomes, and Starting Resources seem like the only issues though. RSO's make-trains-worthwhile is pretty well baked in at this point if you use low frequency resource spawns.

I've been working on a different design for the map generation config screen, but I'm not sure how compatible it is with their current system. It would need a global modifier for the level of greenery, and a local overlay/filter/blending in/around the starting area:

https://jsfiddle.net/2cn53d3o/10/

Maybe it could be used in a terrain overhaul mod, if such a project is possible given the performance impact for chunk loading?

I've been giving a little thought to possibly just writing my own terrain generation mod if I wind up totally unhappy with the state of the Factorio map generator and it's not planned to be fixed until 0.14, but I know rather little about that topic aside from the fundamentals of programming so it would probably require a good deal of research. Due to that I'm hoping that the devs just make a really great map generator for me.

I like what you seem to be going for there in your link, but if the map generation interface were to be getting any sort of overhaul I think it would be wise to give a bit more space in between the different portions of map generation settings in order to emphasize their grouping a bit more. It could also allow for an appropriate column heading for each topic. Many users will give something exactly one chance before going "this sucks!" and never touching it again, so making sure all of the settings are clear and easy to understand is very important as it could be the difference between a sale for them or not.

Factorio's map generation primarily comes down to three topics:

• Resources (Ores, Stone, Coal, Oil, and any custom modded resources)
• Terrain (Segmentation AKA Biome Frequency and Water which can be looked at as just another biome)
• Enemies (including the Starting Area since that's basically just how much of an area around you is forcibly cleared of enemies by the map gen process)

Right now all of these are crammed together with no visual separation between the logical groupings of options. If I were to design an overhaul of the map generator screen I would keep these option types grouped together and also spaced slightly away from the other options with some extra white space below / above that grouping and perhaps even go as far as to give it an outline box to emphasize the grouping of items. Enemy Bases and Peaceful Mode should be visually grouped and spaced slightly away from Enable Replay and other miscellaneous options. I would rename "Terrain Segmentation" to "Biome Size" (or perhaps Biome Frequency) since that's what it really is.

I like how you've broken out the frequency of the starting area resources to its own column. That's always a bit of a frustration when generating a map to get a decent initial resource spawn. It could also be handy for mods which add their own ores for advanced materials because then you could do something like specify only iron, copper, stone, and coal for the starting area and have to go out into the world for the special resources. Of course, any of this could be done with the map editor but I think that it's important to have a strong map generator because I find it so much more interesting and challenging if I'm going into the unknown (while also ensuring that I can actually play the game because there's nothing I can do if my spawn Iron is under a dozen biter nests and all I have is a pistol)!

[Engimage]

This is happening since 0.13.0
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27199

[ytsejam]

So, I decided to make a little experience. I used ixnorp's seed 1946374888 to generate a few 0.12 maps under the same conditions. I wanted to make a side by side comparison, but I'm too lazy for that.

I understand using the same seed with same map settings would never generate 2 identical worlds, even without this terrain bug, after all they were generated in 2 different versions of the game, and devs might always tweek some minor stuff here and there. I just wanted to see the contrast using the same seed and settings on both versions.

Anyway, here's what I got. Same 1946374888 used in all maps. With exception of water and terrain, all settings are at default (including enemies)

0.12.35 water only in starting area - terrain segmentation very low

Larger View

0.12.35 water only in starting area - terrain segmentation normal

Larger View

Those first 2 are related with viewtopic.php?f=173&t=20858 - it's a know bug, but not a critical one. Having most desert is okay, it makes sense in a map with barely any water, even if you set segmentation to very high. The problem is you get high segmentation even with "very low" "low" and "normal" settings when setting water to "only in starting area"

0.12.35 water very small - terrain segmentation normal

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0.12.35 water small - terrain segmentation normal

Larger View

0.12.35 water medium - terrain segmentation normal

Larger View

0.12.35 water big - terrain segmentation normal

Larger View

0.12.35 water very big - terrain segmentation normal

Larger View

It's pretty clear, with the exception of "water only in starting area" option, in 0.12 you get what you asked for. In it's current experimental state, looks like you are stuck in high segmentation hell, not matter how your terrain is set. 0.13 is generating maps you can only get in 0.12 if you set water to starting area only. Water settings also seems to have changed somehow at least to me it looks like you're getting different levels of water using the same settings. Not sure if I'm seeing things or if it's those annoying small ponds you get everywhere across the map in .13, even when you set water to "starting area only". If it's not a bug, they want to force people to use landfill. I'm pretty sure that's not the case

0.13 is generating maps you can only get in 0.12 if you set water to starting area only. If you consider that option is bugged in 0.12, we can say the bug just got worst and is no longer "not critical". At least not for those who don't like high segmentation, because now people can't just change map settings to get rid of it.

As a last test, I decided to use the same seed to generate 2 more maps in 0.12: 1 with water only in starting area, but very high segmentation. No surprises there, it looks pretty much the same map I made with segmentation set on very low:

0.12.35 water only in starting area - terrain segmentation very high

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And finally, what's like with segmentation at very high, but very small water settings:

0.12.35 water very small - terrain segmentation very high

Larger View

Not even very high segmentation settings looks so wierd in .12 when you add a little water.

[Loewchen]

Related: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27199

[xattus]

I can confirm this as well, I started a new game and the map is really weird. Segmentation is really thick and there are lakes and resource fields with completely straight borders.
Something is off :V

[Jj250]

Thank you guys for posting your results with map generation! It's essentially game-breaking for me since I hate High and Very High segmentation

[angmori]

Hey, just wanted to drop in and say I'm very frustrated with this issue. I figured with the new update, I'd start a new game, and this time try to build a base in one of the massive oceans I used to be able to spawn by setting water to Very Big and segmentation to Very Low.

Then it turns out there's basically no difference between the settings and I am completely unable to get the map I wished for. I even started digging around in old versions of the game, and found a couple of old scenarios I had made where I had spawned pretty close to an ocean. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like I can access any map strings, but I did put the scenarios themselves into my 0.13 folder, and when I started them up, they became the same crappy mess as any other 0.13 map.

All in all this is the biggest issue with the game at the moment for me, as it is a complete game-breaker. I don't wanna have to go back to an older version and find a ton of mods, so I really hope this gets fixed soon. I only have a few more weeks of spare time and would be very disappointed if such a dumb bug were to keep me from enjoying Factorio during those weeks.

Gonna keep an eye on this and the other thread, hope we get some information soon.

[ytsejam]

So, I decided to give .13 another go, but since resource generation looks as bugged as terrain segmentation I installed the RSO mod

I noticed I got a much better map than any other I generated with vanilla .13 when it comes to terrain segmentation

0.13.3 RSO mod default settings segmentation low

Doesn't look as good as .12, but still, that was a huge improvement.

After that, I made a test, generating 2 maps using the same seed - 1234567890 - with and without RSO. All settings at default except segmentation (low)

Ignore RSO's resources and enemies. That's what this mod does by default (you can tweek the mod's settings, but that's not the point here):

0.13.3 vanilla default settings segmentation low

As usual, besides the high segmentation, you don't have resources the way an "all default" world generation should be. In this case there's a bunch of oil, iron and stone, but barely any copper around.

0.13.3 RSO mod default settings segmentation low

So, basically, RSO made the .13 playable for me. It doesn't solve the problem (terrain still looks pretty segmented for a map created with low segmentation), but it looks way much better than .13 vanilla.