Change spawn/generation order on world creation

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:32 pm

TL;DR

Change the order water and ore are generated in a new map.

What ?

Sometimes when making a new world there seems that one or more ores are "missing" in reasonable distance from your starting position. Running around you find biter bases surrounding your starting area, but the only stone you have is the 100k patch that spawned inside the iron patch.

This issue is probably based on that water is generated after the ore patches are generated. So in my case i was unlucky enough that the water was placed over all other nearby stone patches.
I had other worlds where there was no uranium. Even on the map preview that shows a large area, there wasn't any uranium visible.

My suggestion is to have water generated in first, then the remaining space can be used for ores/oil/biter bases etc.

Why ?

This will make it easier to go in blind, without having to start over cause there is no way to get the needed resources to expand. Especially when playing with the biters.

Also it will make the world look more "authentic". No more random blocks of ore right beside a lake. No more lonely worm guarding the seabed.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:34 pm

Instead you would have islands filled with ore in the middle of an ocean and alien bases doing the same. What looks even worse is iron patches on the shore that would reach into the sea.

The spawn/generation does have some extra checks to spawn extra resources in the starting area when there aren't enough because of collisions. If that isn't sufficient then you should post some seeds where it fails so the parameters can be tuned better.

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:09 pm

I'm not suggesting that ore would spawn on top of water?
Sorry if that's what you read out of my post.

After the water have been generated, the rest should take the placement of the water into consideration when placing ore patches, enemy bases etc.

Some example strings.
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3: >>>eNpjYBBksGIAgwZ7EOZgSc5PzIHxQJgrOb+gILVIN78oFVmYM
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hkAAINOnNs=<<<

I'm sure those examples are doable, but for normal settings and "The recommended way to play Factorio", it would surely be a bit difficult

Post by **Bilka** » Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:24 pm

Those 3 maps have all resources in the starting area, just like they should. What exactly is the problem with them?

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:32 pm

Yes, I guess uranium isn't a starting resource. Those where just a few maps I found fast where that resource wasn't easily obtainable.
Like I said, I'm sure they are doable. But with biter bases expanding and evolving, it would be a real challenge to acquire uranium in a reasonable way.

I'll see if i can fin any examples for the other resources.
But i guess with practically infinite seeds there would be really bad luck involved to get those kind of maps.

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:38 pm

So just to be clear, I'm not complaining about the spawn area with the starter resources there. It's the resources that spawn outside that sometimes makes a default world seem like a Rail world or even impossible for casual players.
What I mean is that the expansion and military power needed to clear the way for more resources, can be a bit much if the RNG makes the closest ore patches covered with water.

After going trough countless of seeds, it seems like I've been very unlucky the two times i went in blind and couldn't find more accessible resources to expand my base to.

Or I might just be a filthy casual

So I guess this is so rare that it's not really a problem...

Regardless I'll post some examples.

1: This is the first time I encounter water spawning on top of one of the resources in spawn. In this case the iron. There is however plenty iron available further away.

1

2: Huge distances to closest iron and copper. Also need to take down a few biter bases. Could prove difficult if the evolution have gone to far before expanding.

2

3 and 4: Expanding for coal proves your conquering abilities.

3

4

5: Dont spend all your stone on paths

5

6: Where did all my copper go?

6

Edit: Just some grammar and sentence corrections..

Darinth · Post by **Darinth** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:24 pm

Nothing wrong with being a casual player. One of my favorite streamers is a more casual player. Tune the settings, increase the amounts of ore, reduce or disable biter expansion, etc... Tune the game to your liking, it doesn't even disable achievements to do so (with a few exceptions).

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:33 pm

Yes I know we have lots of tweaking possibilities before starting the game, and I love that!

This suggestion was aimed at the normal settings that states it's the recommended way to play Factorio. But as i wrote in my last reply, it seems like the rarity of encountering any issue with bad ore spawn for mid-game, that it's not really a problem.

Procedural generated levels will always have some kind of bad RNG I imagine.

FuryoftheStars · Post by **FuryoftheStars** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:40 pm

While not a problem, per se, I actually support this idea. It would also help for those of us that turn the water settings up. Or users of the RSO mod, some of the additional resources added by it (like if you choose the oil in spawning area setting to get a couple wells there) are often then covered over by the spawned starting area water. I'd imagine this would give the mod author a way of dealing with it.

mrvn wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:34 pm Instead you would have islands filled with ore in the middle of an ocean

I actually like the concept of that.

But there could be a simple check to see if the resources are being spawned on water or not and shift it elsewhere if wanted.

slippycheeze · Post by **slippycheeze** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:32 pm

FuryoftheStars wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:40 pm
mrvn wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:34 pm Instead you would have islands filled with ore in the middle of an ocean
I actually like the concept of that. But there could be a simple check to see if the resources are being spawned on water or not and shift it elsewhere if wanted.

I use the "many islands" mod or whatever it is called because I love those. ...but I see the point, and without mods that is somewhere between kind of annoying and a game breaker. It and the other island mod both recommend setting resource patch size through the roof because they get overwritten by water, too, so you can end up with a patch at "5 million per spot" distance giving you 10k - 100k resources on the sea shore.

On the other hand, after bugs elsewhere that caused resources to spawn in the exact same spots - now fixed bugs, forever - this thread makes me think that there should be some sort of warning when resources get overwritten available to mod developers. That way the "sand, the 'ore', is placed under other resources, so i get a tiny 10k crust of it" for a large number of values of "sand" over several mods hit it seems like...

IDK, like noise expressions are super hard, I guess, so better support for mod developers to avoid too much messing up would be a good thing. I don't know if the recent bug related changes for some of the overwriting things have addressed it, but given an outdated definition in a mod caused overwrites, I'm guessing "not hard enough yet"

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:33 am

arZic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:09 pm I'm not suggesting that ore would spawn on top of water?
Sorry if that's what you read out of my post.

After the water have been generated, the rest should take the placement of the water into consideration when placing ore patches, enemy bases etc.

That's not how the map generation works. It doesn't take anything into consideration like that. The noise function for each resource says where to place each resource. If there already is a resource there then it gets replaced. So if you say ore should be placed after water that means the ore patches currently covered by water would instead be ore patches covering water, meaning they would have to put land back there.

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:32 pm

mrvn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:33 am
arZic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:09 pm I'm not suggesting that ore would spawn on top of water?
Sorry if that's what you read out of my post.

After the water have been generated, the rest should take the placement of the water into consideration when placing ore patches, enemy bases etc.
That's not how the map generation works. It doesn't take anything into consideration like that. The noise function for each resource says where to place each resource. If there already is a resource there then it gets replaced. So if you say ore should be placed after water that means the ore patches currently covered by water would instead be ore patches covering water, meaning they would have to put land back there.

Yes I know that's not how ore placement work now, and that's the reason I posted here in the suggestion board.

Making that consideration on mapgen is exactly what my suggestion was aimed at. Change the map generation so that ore placement take the already placed water into consideration. So that it would only use available land to place ore, and with the information on how much land available, place a reasonable amount of ore patches. This would also apply to enemy bases, so probably would be more biter bases, but as long as it's balanced with distance to new ore patches it's ok.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 3:17 pm

arZic wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:32 pm
mrvn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:33 am
arZic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:09 pm I'm not suggesting that ore would spawn on top of water?
Sorry if that's what you read out of my post.

After the water have been generated, the rest should take the placement of the water into consideration when placing ore patches, enemy bases etc.
That's not how the map generation works. It doesn't take anything into consideration like that. The noise function for each resource says where to place each resource. If there already is a resource there then it gets replaced. So if you say ore should be placed after water that means the ore patches currently covered by water would instead be ore patches covering water, meaning they would have to put land back there.
Yes I know that's not how ore placement work now, and that's the reason I posted here in the suggestion board.

Making that consideration on mapgen is exactly what my suggestion was aimed at. Change the map generation so that ore placement take the already placed water into consideration. So that it would only use available land to place ore, and with the information on how much land available, place a reasonable amount of ore patches. This would also apply to enemy bases, so probably would be more biter bases, but as long as it's balanced with distance to new ore patches it's ok.

I think that's impossible with how factorio generates maps. What you ask comes down to either

a) defining a noise function so it only has peaks where a number of other noise functions don't
b) moving resource patches if there is already water there.

Option a) has the problem that you want to keep the amount of ores placed the same. Any dampening effect at one spot has to raise the noise somewhere or everywhere else. You have to define that mathematically and for all the building blocks a noise function can use.

Option b) would be a more reactive approach than a). A correction after the noise was evaluated. Much easier to do. Problem is to make this deterministic and independent of the order in which chunks are generated. Say you have ore in the middle of a lake. The player approaches the lake from the north. So all the chunks in the north are already revealed, can't move the ore there. So lets move it to the south.

But seeing the ore in the south the player reloads an old save and expands to the south of the lake directly. Now all the chunks in the south are already revealed, can't move the ore there. Suddenly the ore is somewhere else. Fatorio tries not to have the order of exploration affect the map.

Another problem: What if the lake is larger than the visible radius? The player might run all around the lake and no ore is placed. Then later a radar is placed revealing the chunk that should have ore but is water. Where to move the ore patch now?

That leads me to option c: Keep track of the amount of each resource and modify any new resource (size or amount) to keep the ratio of resources within limits. So if too many coal patches end up in water the fewer patches you find are better. Still makes the map depend on how you explore but avoids the above problem.

And option d: Like option c but modify the resource type to keep the ratio of resources within limits. You would have one noise function to determine where ores are placed and then pick the resource at random, weighted by how much of each resource exists already and should exist.

arZic · Post by **arZic** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 6:51 pm

quote mrvn

mrvn wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 3:17 pm
arZic wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:32 pm
mrvn wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:33 am
arZic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:09 pm I'm not suggesting that ore would spawn on top of water?
Sorry if that's what you read out of my post.

After the water have been generated, the rest should take the placement of the water into consideration when placing ore patches, enemy bases etc.
That's not how the map generation works. It doesn't take anything into consideration like that. The noise function for each resource says where to place each resource. If there already is a resource there then it gets replaced. So if you say ore should be placed after water that means the ore patches currently covered by water would instead be ore patches covering water, meaning they would have to put land back there.
Yes I know that's not how ore placement work now, and that's the reason I posted here in the suggestion board.

Making that consideration on mapgen is exactly what my suggestion was aimed at. Change the map generation so that ore placement take the already placed water into consideration. So that it would only use available land to place ore, and with the information on how much land available, place a reasonable amount of ore patches. This would also apply to enemy bases, so probably would be more biter bases, but as long as it's balanced with distance to new ore patches it's ok.
I think that's impossible with how factorio generates maps. What you ask comes down to either

a) defining a noise function so it only has peaks where a number of other noise functions don't
b) moving resource patches if there is already water there.

Option a) has the problem that you want to keep the amount of ores placed the same. Any dampening effect at one spot has to raise the noise somewhere or everywhere else. You have to define that mathematically and for all the building blocks a noise function can use.

Option b) would be a more reactive approach than a). A correction after the noise was evaluated. Much easier to do. Problem is to make this deterministic and independent of the order in which chunks are generated. Say you have ore in the middle of a lake. The player approaches the lake from the north. So all the chunks in the north are already revealed, can't move the ore there. So lets move it to the south.

But seeing the ore in the south the player reloads an old save and expands to the south of the lake directly. Now all the chunks in the south are already revealed, can't move the ore there. Suddenly the ore is somewhere else. Fatorio tries not to have the order of exploration affect the map.

Another problem: What if the lake is larger than the visible radius? The player might run all around the lake and no ore is placed. Then later a radar is placed revealing the chunk that should have ore but is water. Where to move the ore patch now?

That leads me to option c: Keep track of the amount of each resource and modify any new resource (size or amount) to keep the ratio of resources within limits. So if too many coal patches end up in water the fewer patches you find are better. Still makes the map depend on how you explore but avoids the above problem.

And option d: Like option c but modify the resource type to keep the ratio of resources within limits. You would have one noise function to determine where ores are placed and then pick the resource at random, weighted by how much of each resource exists already and should exist.

I'm not here to discuss how they would implement it, or if it's impossible or not. I haven't done any research in how mapgen works now, I was just giving a suggestion based on my observations when generating new maps.

I have no experience in coding, so I would not know how difficult something like that is to code.

So if my idea doesn't make any sense or if it's bad, then that's that.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 10:29 pm

You idea makes sense. Just wanted to explain why it can't be done with the map gen as it is.

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