Map generation changes

[ssilk]

Edit:
TL;DR
- The map generation should be solved by loading the right mod (or mods) and to this mod choose eventually a scenario and/or a known map-seed, instead of tuning this in all details by yourself.
- the mods/scenarios have a promising description. And it should have some kind of "preview", like a picture, or a generated part of the map.
- the mod can have simple (!) controls to change some settings.The look and feel of the controls can be quite different.
- an expert mode reveals all possible settings. That excludes it eventually from having a map seed (cause of limited size of the seed). But you can make a mod or scenario out of it (which preconfigured these configs), which reenables that.

The rest (2 to 5) are descriptions of mods.




Map-generation should change in some ways in my opinion (some of that I said meanwhile many times, now I put all into one thread):

1) the map-generation-control should be made much easier.
The devs already talked about it. I don't want to make too much prequisites, but I think it would be good to have some overall control like "No natives", "Super easy", "Rich ressources", "Are you crazy?" etc.

1b) The most common/best adjustments could be found out as part of a small contest. The players tend to use maps with high resources and low biters, but in my eyes that is no challenge. There are many ways to play factorio with different types of resources and amounts of natives. No wood for example. No coal. such things.
Beside that I see also a cool way, with (tested and working) map-seeds, like "The best place you can have", "Hell" or so.

1c) An expert-mode (the current map generation) is available, but this will have a big warning on it, that it will generate maps, which are not usable.
This mode might have some kind of "visibility". Either it generates a piece of map visible like in the "map-view", and/or it shows the "graphs" of the resulting waves with different resolutions.

1d) In the end the (whole) map generator can look and feel like a rack-plugin for making music: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/synchronous/

2) This one changes the gameplay!
I would like to have the option to have "concentration-points". That are areas, which are in a distance between 500 and 5000 tiles and in that areas there are much more resources, but also attract more biters. The rest of the area is more or less "clean" then, there are small fields of resources and also some biter nests, but the space is empty.
It goes into this direction: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=4433

This forces the player to spread out by car/train into quite large areas (500 tiles minimum) without the high danger to be killed very soon or getting into a dead-end, enclosed completely by biters.
It will distract some type of players, which don't like to explore. It will enable a gameplay, which is much more about exploring, working together (multiplayer), having named areas, concentrating more into expanding.

(One inspiration for that comes from here: http://www.illustris-project.org/ - the galaxies tend to center into gravitation points)

3) there should also be the (low) chance for some "old, destroyed bases" with some chance on points, which are free from natives. Many other possibilities into that direction: For example a (partly existing) rail into nowhere. Some kind of "old river", valleys,
There are also other suggestions about doodads etc. But I think bigger stuff: A mineable "hill" (like the Ayers Rock in Australia). Really big lakes, which needs minutes by car to surround. Pure dessert for more than 3000 tiles. There could be hundrets of ideas and creating those could be also made as a conquest.

4) Not directly map generation, but big influence:
- Because suggestion 2) creates big empty areas, we need natives, which spread into that areas, especially those, which are rich. I think to flying queens and drones. Many other possibilities here.
- we need to be able to "see" far away resources.
--- something like an "explorer bot", to handle the big maps
--- "test explosions" to find directions of (highly demanded) resources.

5) Others, depending stuff:
- If there will be bridges or boats, which can load a lot of stuff in the game at any time, I would like to have also rivers.
- For bridges: Some "ramp" is needed. You can built bridges only from those ramps to other ramps. A ramp is like a rock, think to the "second level" on a map in starcraft.
- Colder an hotter areas, but I think this is already planned.
- Weather. Rain, which makes areas impassable. Wind, which destroys big parts. Clouds, which lower the solar energy.
- The map may change with the time depending on some influences, like weather, mining etc.

[Sparkerish]

+1 (nice collection of ideas ssilk)

[Kazuar]

Wow, what a huge chunk of suggestions
Here's my own wall:

[...]1) the map-generation-control should be made much easier.
The devs already talked about it. I don't want to make too much prequisites, but I think it would be good to have some overall control like "No natives", "Super easy", "Rich ressources", "Are you crazy?" etc.

You mean some kind of a themed, more general setting to control all generation settings at once, where you set one box, and it auto-fills the other boxes?
That would be nice to have, indeed.

1b) The most common/best adjustments could be found out as part of a small contest. The players tend to use maps with high resources and low biters, but in my eyes that is no challenge. There are many ways to play factorio with different types of resources and amounts of natives. No wood for example. No coal. such things.
Beside that I see also a cool way, with (tested and working) map-seeds, like "The best place you can have", "Hell" or so.

Really? I usually play with low resources and high biters
Well, currently, there aren't too many settings that would allow for a lot of distinctivly different settings, in my opinion, but that could change in the future. And I don't think there are too many things you could "turn off" for a challenge (Care to try a "No Iron - Deathworld Challenge"?).
Tested and working map-seeds would be scenarios, then - some contained, campaign-like maps with predefined parameters, with or without some "editing touches" or victory conditions attached to them.

I could, however, see some very "hand made" generator settings working that would lead to a scenario-like, unique gameplay experience, yet would yield completly random maps each time you play.

Example

"He who controls the oil, controls the desert"
All biomes other than desert are turned off - water is very scarce, and far in between. There is no coal, and only farcial amounts of wood.
In addition, as if the infinite desert wasn't inhospitable enough, big worms are aplenty here, however - every big worm is spawned with a single oil patch beneath him, making them the only sustainable source of fuel next to the ever-scorching sun.

In this challenge, you'll start with the "Oil processing" technology, but the technology "Advanced material processing 2" is unavailable.

1c) An expert-mode (the current map generation) is available, but this will have a big warning on it, that it will generate maps, which are not usable.
This mode might have some kind of "visibility". Either it generates a piece of map visible like in the "map-view", and/or it shows the "graphs" of the resulting waves with different resolutions.

If you put all "recommended" presettings on one page, and "hide away" the fine-tuning into a subpage, both pages could use a "preview area" on them - this could be an example of the map, in mapmode, fully revealed for comparision, or it could be an informative, pre-created screenshot of a map, that is displayed right on the "front page". Showing graphs of whatever intermediate data used for generation would, in my own personal opinion, completly confuse about 98% of the users (i.e. everyone not intimately familiar with how procedual map generation is usually implemented, including myself).

I would really, really suggest against calling it expert-mode, though - "user-defined" is sufficent, and won't scare away potentially interested players.

1d) In the end the (whole) map generator can look and feel like a rack-plugin for making music: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/synchronous/

...and no-one outside the music-making business will unterstand what the UI wants from them
Again, I can't see more than like 2% of the people not be confused by this - give the people results, not intermediate products. No customer wants to look at graphs of the music they buy - they want to hear it. Likewise, I'd imagine people wanting to see the result of their tinkering, an actual (example?) map, not graphs of average resource distribution, or representations of noise patterns.

2) This one changes the gameplay!
I would like to have the option to have "concentration-points". That are areas, which are in a distance between 500 and 5000 tiles and in that areas there are much more resources, but also attract more biters. The rest of the area is more or less "clean" then, there are small fields of resources and also some biter nests, but the space is empty.
It goes into this direction: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=4433

This forces the player to spread out by car/train into quite large areas (500 tiles minimum) without the high danger to be killed very soon or getting into a dead-end, enclosed completely by biters.
It will distract some type of players, which don't like to explore. It will enable a gameplay, which is much more about exploring, working together (multiplayer), having named areas, concentrating more into expanding.

(One inspiration for that comes from here: http://www.illustris-project.org/ - the galaxies tend to center into gravitation points)

Now this would be an interesting setting to tinker with
Another thing that I could imagine would also work as some kind of composite solution between the current "way things work™" and the mod you linked would be not to reserve big areas to a single resource, but some kind of "meta-biome" system in a layer on top of the actual biomes. Instead of defining the terrain and doodads in this biome, a metabiome would randomly give weightings towards and against certain resources, and enemies, during generation.

Basically, imagine the current way map generation works, but in addition to the biomes you can see, there is an invisible pattern of biome-like areas on the map, each of which gives an randomly determined offset (e.g. +1 to -1) to the generation (e.g. size, frequency and richness) for anything the game could generate within it.

The benefit of this, at least in my imagination, would be a less dalmatian-like "good place, bad place" distrubution, where you'd end up with areas of "I want to get there" or "boorish near-nothingness", in which the players think "okay, what direction are my next resources at?".
Instead, you'd have smoother transitions, in which the player won't have a "there is the good spot I've been promised, finally" moment, but in which "areas of increased interest" just emerge, 'naturally', from random dice rolls. It could still lead to near-empty areas (RNG could roll -1 for everything) or super-rich areas (RNG could roll +1 for everything), but he is no longer guaranteed to get either, and with his factory's demand increasing perpetually, he's still going to have to explore for areas more rich in a certain resource, and connect these via trains.
Also, this could lead to the generation of "badland"-type areas, which are poor in every resource, but are completly overrun with spawners, or "paradise"-type areas, where every resource is abundant, and (almost) no biters to be found (boy, that exploration payed off!).

I personally would find something to this extent more interesting, since it provides more variety, and is less predictable.

3) there should also be the (low) chance for some "old, destroyed bases" with some chance on points, which are free from natives. Many other possibilities into that direction: For example a (partly existing) rail into nowhere. Some kind of "old river", valleys,
There are also other suggestions about doodads etc. But I think bigger stuff: A mineable "hill" (like the Ayers Rock in Australia). Really big lakes, which needs minutes by car to surround. Pure dessert for more than 3000 tiles. There could be hundrets of ideas and creating those could be also made as a conquest

4) Not directly map generation, but big influence:
- Because suggestion 2) creates big empty areas, we need natives, which spread into that areas, especially those, which are rich. I think to flying queens and drones. Many other possibilities here.
- we need to be able to "see" far away resources.
--- something like an "explorer bot", to handle the big maps
--- "test explosions" to find directions of (highly demanded) resources.

5) Others, depending stuff:
- If there will be bridges or boats, which can load a lot of stuff in the game at any time, I would like to have also rivers.
- For bridges: Some "ramp" is needed. You can built bridges only from those ramps to other ramps. A ramp is like a rock, think to the "second level" on a map in starcraft.
- Colder an hotter areas, but I think this is already planned.
- Weather. Rain, which makes areas impassable. Wind, which destroys big parts. Clouds, which lower the solar energy.
- The map may change with the time depending on some influences, like weather, mining etc.

YES!!! More variety! To all of them!

[ssilk]

Well, currently, there aren't too many settings that would allow for a lot of distinctivly different settings, in my opinion, but that could change in the future

I just want a see of some "games", which are known to be good on what they promise, so you have something for every taste and make curious to try something, which I normally wouldn't use. On the other hand: Too much distracts and makes the results not comparable, cause it spreads over too less players. That is much later, a community, which shares those "games" and everyone can vote, if it is good or not.

I could, however, see some very "hand made" generator settings working that would lead to a scenario-like, unique gameplay experience, yet would yield completly random maps each time you play.
"He who controls the oil, controls the desert"

I would discinct between scenarios, maps, and map-generation-key. It's all just some sub-type of a game.

Showing graphs of whatever intermediate data used for generation would, in my own personal opinion, completly confuse about 98% of the users (i.e. everyone not intimately familiar with how procedual map generation is usually implemented, including myself).

You know, graphs can be 2D also (not only lines)! And I mean it so: A map is nothing else then a very special graph. I let this open. If it is easy, a ready-genereated map is of course the best. If not a schematic overview of how it might look is also ok.

I would really, really suggest against calling it expert-mode, though - "user-defined" is sufficent, and won't scare away potentially interested players.

Naming problems are one of the biggest problems in informatics.

1d) In the end the (whole) map generator can look and feel like a rack-plugin for making music: https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/synchronous/

...and no-one outside the music-making business will unterstand what the UI wants from them

All I want to show was that there are some buttons, sliders, knobs. You can turn it and see immediately a result. The pictures are to show, how that might look and feel. In design I think here about a cool factorio-design.

[Kazuar]

I would discinct between scenarios, maps, and map-generation-key. It's all just some sub-type of a game.

I was caught in some kind of roll, where I wrote what I thought, completly oblivous to the fact that Factorio already does what I described in the form of scenarios. My bad!

You know, graphs can be 2D also (not only lines)! And I mean it so: A map is nothing else then a very special graph. I let this open. If it is easy, a ready-genereated map is of course the best. If not a schematic overview of how it might look is also ok.

*snip*

All I want to show was that there are some buttons, sliders, knobs. You can turn it and see immediately a result. The pictures are to show, how that might look and feel. In design I think here about a cool factorio-design.

I go out on a limb here and make the assumption that you are already quite familiar with such graphic representations of information. Of course, I can't tell how your idea would pan out exactly, but I can imagine problems with the accessibilty of such graphs - I could imagine such graphs (regardless of which kind) to be very informative for people willing and capable to spend time to decipher those graphs, and who familiarize themselves with them. On the other hand, I could imagine people to treat it as complete "white noise", regardless of their actual value - after all, time spent to "mentally translate" the UI is time you could have spent actually playing.

And, more specifically:

And I mean it so: A map is nothing else then a very special graph.

I kindly disagree with that statement, on basis of opinion, regardless of the accuracy of that statement on a "professional" basis:

A map is something I, the player, can interact with; a game construct fundamental to the game itself. A graph is a bunch information I'm gonna ignore, because I can't place transport belts on a graph. The key here, I think, is how information is represented. If your representation requires familiarity with formulas more sophisticated than basic multiplication then the UI is not accessible to me.


I do think some kind of "feedback" to the current map generation settings, so that people know what to expect before they commit time to "their" game, is needed. I'm reminded here of an example for such feedback, a game I really liked back then used:

Another Example

The game in question is "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri".
In case you're not familiar, "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" (or SMAC) is an old-ish 4X game about colonizing and empire-building on an alien, hostile world, very very akin to the Civilization series. It had, of course, randomly generated maps.

The part why I bring it up here is the exact map generation process. The games main menu featured a picture "taken" from the planets orbit. As the menu guided the player through the various generation settings, the planets appearance changed to reflect the choices the player made during game setup - for a specific example, when asking how big the player wanted his continents to be, the landmasses on the planet in the background shrunk, or grew, as the player hovered over the various choices. Similiarly, when asked about humidity, the planets landmasses became a lush green, increasingly getting covered in clouds, or they got a more barren, "martian" look.

There was no direct correlation between how the planet looked, and how the actual map looked like - i.e. the planets continents always had the same general shape, but in the actual game, these were always looking differently.
What it did allow was to have a very good, general idea of what type of world to expect, once you started the game, while at the same time, it conveyed this idea very intuitively, and immersively.

I'm bringing this up because, I think, conveying what to expect from a map setting can be done in a very clear, intuitive form, without demanding (such a harsh word) time from the player to "mentally parse the UI". As a common saying goes, "What you see is what you get".

[ssilk]

I go out on a limb here and make the assumption that you are already quite familiar with such graphic representations of information. Of course, I can't tell how your idea would pan out exactly, but I can imagine problems with the accessibilty of such graphs

http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/ ... perlin.htm
-> Its a good example of what I imagine as "graph". Every example picture on that page is usable.

The question is not, how it should look, the question is, what's really needed and can be programmed! This is always a compromise...

- I could imagine such graphs (regardless of which kind) to be very informative for people willing and capable to spend time to decipher those graphs, and who familiarize themselves with them.

That was the reason, why I called it "expert mode".

I stop discussion here. There are too much thinkable options and I won't say "Hey devs, the map genration should work like so and a pre-displayed graph must look like this.".

[ssilk]

I reread that first post and added a TL;DR at the top.

[glutamate]

I really like #3 - the devs have mentioned wanting to add more to the exploration aspect of the game, this would be pretty cool. Maybe there could be small amounts of high-tech stuff or unique items. Maybe a stash of alien artefacts. Putting this in there with the scripting open to modding would allow for some pretty cool adventure stuff.

[cube]

yeah, I'd like to do the more structured random parts as well. I have a fairly simple plan of how to do it, let's see in which version there is enough time to fit this feature in :-)

[OBAMA MCLAMA]

I think the map generating window could definitely have a preset. For example setting it to default will set default settings. If you select deathworld, it will max out the biters. If you select stripworld, it will put max 100 height world with water only in starting zone.
Maybe a short description to help. It will give players the the incentive to try a different world setting.

I would totally have created a mod for this by now if it were possible.

[ssilk]

yeah, I'd like to do the more structured random parts as well. I have a fairly simple plan of how to do it, let's see in which version there is enough time to fit this feature in

Cube, I think the idea is - as I see it at the moment - somethink like so: Currently we have the map generator, with it's dozens of options.
But in reality we have two map generators: One for the starting-area, and the other for the rest of the map. The both maps are then "blended" together with one method.

So - as far as I understand it - when we look into the details, then we have just one map-rendering method, which can have some parameters and a "blending"-method, which blends both maps together. He can define some more: If the created map so far still doesn't contain coal, then create a map-part with much coal and blend it in at this point. And much more of such "events".

So, what I would suggest is, that a map-designer can make the same: He defines map-fragments, either by the map generator or from existing maps (and/or blueprints) and he can blend them into the resulting map. Either on somehow fixed positions or by random. And he can define the random and probability (only once per map, in a distance to about 100-500 from the center for example).

However: The map-seed is then also dependent on what "mod" is loaded. I mean, that are special mods (map mods?), cause they could be relatively small, if they use only the default game content.
The result is then just, that the player doesn't need to tweak the maps, until he finds something useful, he thinks he wants to play. Instead he loads such a mod, which "guarantees somehow" to behave like in the mod-description.

The player can just choose between simple options ("Low, middle, high or crazy amounts of biters", "No water", "Longer nights"....). The complexity is - if the player chooses this (which in my eyes should be the normal way to play a map, instead of the current complex)- hidden.

I guarantee, that there will hundreds, no, thousands of cool maps (and scenarios), if a modder/map-designer can create a map in that way, because that gives him the feeling, he is creating an endless world of his own.

[katyal]

#2 is something I've been trying to achieve by playing around with RSO mod, but unfortunately there seems to be a limit to the size of resource patches.

Edit: Jan. 16, 2015

I've been looking deeper into this ...The algorithm used in factorio's stock map generator is "perlin noise". One of the defining features of this algoritm is that it produces random but similar-sized elements so I don't think we could get some rare vast patches of ores using only the base game generation.

[cube]

yeah, I'd like to do the more structured random parts as well. I have a fairly simple plan of how to do it, let's see in which version there is enough time to fit this feature in :-)

Cube, I think the idea is - as I see it at the moment - somethink like so: Currently we have the map generator, with it's dozens of options.
But in reality we have two map generators: One for the starting-area, and the other for the rest of the map. The both maps are then "blended" together with one method.

So - as far as I understand it - when we look into the details, then we have just one map-rendering method, which can have some parameters and a "blending"-method, which blends both maps together. He can define some more: If the created map so far still doesn't contain coal, then create a map-part with much coal and blend it in at this point. And much more of such "events".

So, what I would suggest is, that a map-designer can make the same: He defines map-fragments, either by the map generator or from existing maps (and/or blueprints) and he can blend them into the resulting map. Either on somehow fixed positions or by random. And he can define the random and probability (only once per map, in a distance to about 100-500 from the center for example).

However: The map-seed is then also dependent on what "mod" is loaded. I mean, that are special mods (map mods?), cause they could be relatively small, if they use only the default game content.
The result is then just, that the player doesn't need to tweak the maps, until he finds something useful, he thinks he wants to play. Instead he loads such a mod, which "guarantees somehow" to behave like in the mod-description.

The player can just choose between simple options ("Low, middle, high or crazy amounts of biters", "No water", "Longer nights"....). The complexity is - if the player chooses this (which in my eyes should be the normal way to play a map, instead of the current complex)- hidden.

I guarantee, that there will hundreds, no, thousands of cool maps (and scenarios), if a modder/map-designer can create a map in that way, because that gives him the feeling, he is creating an endless world of his own. :)

Nice idea, but it is not that easy. The two map generators are tightly linked to each other.

[hitzu]

I dream of rich river system, based on Voronoi diagram or something similar, with water flow and all the possibilities, bonuses and impacts, based on this. That would be cool.

[ssilk]

@Kovarex: I think a good start would be to enable loading blueprints or parts of other maps in the map editor.

@hitzu: I found that: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~am ... eneration/
And a cool demo-map generator: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~am ... /demo.html

[hitzu]

@hitzu: I found that: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~am ... eneration/
And a cool demo-map generator: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~am ... /demo.html

Yeah, I've seen this some time ago. Really intresting toy.
Also there is somewhere in the internet another wonderful generator, that uses Voronoi diagram for generating right in browser planets with continents, tectonic plates, relief, climate, sea currents, winds etc. Unfortunately I cannot find it anymore.

EDIT: I was wrong. I saved it in bookmarks in folder in another folder
Here it is http://experilous.com/1/planet-generato ... /version-1