Howto: Vanilla Islands

[adam_bise]

If you've played with the map gen sliders you probably realize it is hard to get repeating isolated islands. But you can go beyond the GUI water scale sliders with the command line.

To make a new save file with mostly isolated large islands, try this method:

Edit Data\map-gen-settings.example.json

Use these values..

"terrain_segmentation": 0.5,
"water": 20,

Then run factorio.exe --create pathto\save.zip --map-gen-settings pathto\Data\map-gen-settings.example.json

[mrvn]

That just gives me a dry desert with a lake at the starting area.

[adam_bise]

Hmm.. You might need to explore a bit. What I call islands you might call continents.

"terrain_segmentation": 0.2,
"water": 20,

Might make the shores closer to the starting area.

EDIT: Actually this makes it further

The islands follow the same awful swamp pattern you see when you turn water coverage all the way up and scale all the way down in the GUI. Don't know how to make them more circular.

[mrvn]

Yeah, it's big. This time not as big as last but that should be big enough to start a rocket. No island hopping required.

continent.png (231.11 KiB) Viewed 3464 times

I thought it would be tiny islands and you had to landfill your way across the water to finish the game.

I've played with the map generator myself a bit a while back trying to get more circular islands with clusters of them close together and bigger gaps between clusters. And much more shallow water so you walk across water between island that are less than 10-20 tiles apart. You have to define your own noise functions for that and it's real hard to get the noise to do what you want.

[adam_bise]

Sorry I went backwards on that last post.

"terrain_segmentation": 0.7,
"water": 20,

May be closer to what you want. Heres a comparison

0.7 - 20

7-20.png (155.62 KiB) Viewed 3456 times

0.2 - 20

2-20.png (375.08 KiB) Viewed 3456 times

[adam_bise]

I've played with the map generator myself a bit a while back trying to get more circular islands with clusters of them close together and bigger gaps between clusters. And much more shallow water so you walk across water between island that are less than 10-20 tiles apart. You have to define your own noise functions for that and it's real hard to get the noise to do what you want.

For larger oceans use a larger water value, like 50. But then you have to tweak the land segmentation to get the size of your islands right.

[adam_bise]

If you make it very small you might want to tweak stone so you don't wind up getting stuck with no landfill

[mrvn]

Oh yeah, running out of stone is a real danger. Imagine having played 200 hours, running out of stone and seeing some required resource just tiles away out of reach.

I think for a real small island game you need boats. That's what I played with but in the end I didn't quite like the boats mod. It lacks small boats and only has super tankers that are way oversized for tiny islands and when starting.