Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: gwillybj on June 08, 2017, 10:16:56 PM

Title: Your map-making ideas, as in #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE
Post by: gwillybj on June 08, 2017, 10:16:56 PM

I'm writing this because for the past two hours I have been wracking my poor old brain ;brainhurts searching for what I thought :scratch: was a recent post containing someone's ideas in the #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE sections of alphax.txt. If you shared your #WORLDBUILDER ideas recently, please lead me to them.

I play around with those settings fairly frequently, always looking for a Really Good Map :read:

These are my current numbers:

---

#WORLDBUILDER
500, ; Land base        (Seeded land size of a standard world)
100, ; Land modifier    (additional land from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
64,  ; Continent base   (Base size of a land mass seed)
24,  ; Continent modif. (Increased size from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
4,   ; Hills base       (Base # of extra hills)
2,   ; Hills modifier   (additional hills from TIDAL selection: x0, x1, x2)
3,   ; Plateau base     (Basic plateau size)
4,   ; Plateau modifier (Plateau modifier based on LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
20,  ; Rivers base      (Basic # of rivers)
20,  ; Rivers rain mod. (Additional rivers based on RAIN selection)
14,  ; Solar Energy     (Latitude DIVISOR for temperature based on HEAT) Smaller # increases effect of HEAT selection
14,  ; Thermal band     (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal banding)  Smaller # widens hot bands
8,   ; Thermal deviance (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal deviance) Smaller # increases randomness
8,   ; Global Warming   (Latitude DIVISOR for global warming)   Smaller # increases effect of warming
6,   ; Sea Level Rises  (Magnitude of sea level changes from ice cap melting/freezing)
5,   ; Cloudmass peaks  (Size of cloud mass trapped by peaks)
3,   ; Cloudmass hills  (Size of cloud mass trapped by hills)
1,   ; Rainfall coeff.  (Multiplier for rainfall belts)
15,  ; Deep water       (Encourages fractal to grow deep water)
10,  ; Shelf            (Encourages fractal to grow shelf)
10,  ; Plains           (Encourages highland plains)
5,   ; Beach            (Encourages wider beaches)
5,   ; Hills            (Encourages hills x TIDAL selection)
35,  ; Peaks            (Encourages peaks)
1,   ; Fungus           (Fungus coefficient based on LIFE selection)
16,26,32,33,65,66 ; Ratio (Continent size ratios)
36   ; Islands          (Higher # increases island count)

#WORLDSIZE
6
128x128 (16384) planet, 128, 128
160x160 (25600) planet, 160, 160
180x180 (32400) planet, 180, 180
128x256 (32768) planet, 128, 256
360x180 (64800) planet, 360, 180
256x256 (65536) planet, 256, 256

---

Title: Re: Your map-making ideas, as in #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE
Post by: Induktio on August 17, 2017, 10:05:03 PM

Personally I didn't like much the default map generator. It tended to create way too much small, useless islands and landmasses with no clear character. In Civ 3, there was a clear option to generate either pangaea/continents/archipelago. Also like in Civ3, the AI doesn't fare well on archipelago maps.

I tweaked the generator to create more pangaea-style landmasses. You can still get more continents by increasing the water percentage. Note that the erosion settings also significantly affects the quantity of land: 30-50% water and low erosion has only a couple of lakes.


#WORLDBUILDER
384, ; Land base        (Seeded land size of a standard world)
140, ; Land modifier    (additional land from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
80,  ; Continent base   (Base size of a land mass seed)
32,  ; Continent modif. (Increased size from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
1,   ; Hills base       (Base # of extra hills)
2,   ; Hills modifier   (additional hills from TIDAL selection: x0, x1, x2)
4,   ; Plateau base     (Basic plateau size)
8,   ; Plateau modifier (Plateau modifier based on LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
16,   ; Rivers base      (Basic # of rivers)
16,  ; Rivers rain mod. (Additional rivers based on RAIN selection)
14,  ; Solar Energy     (Latitude DIVISOR for temperature based on HEAT) Smaller # increases effect of HEAT selection
14,  ; Thermal band     (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal banding)  Smaller # widens hot bands
8,   ; Thermal deviance (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal deviance) Smaller # increases randomness
8,   ; Global Warming   (Latitude DIVISOR for global warming)   Smaller # increases effect of warming
5,   ; Sea Level Rises  (Magnitude of sea level changes from ice cap melting/freezing)
5,   ; Cloudmass peaks  (Size of cloud mass trapped by peaks)
3,   ; Cloudmass hills  (Size of cloud mass trapped by hills)
1,   ; Rainfall coeff.  (Multiplier for rainfall belts)
8,  ; Deep water       (Encourages fractal to grow deep water)
10,  ; Shelf            (Encourages fractal to grow shelf)
15,  ; Plains           (Encourages highland plains)
40,  ; Beach            (Encourages wider beaches)
10,  ; Hills            (Encourages hills x TIDAL selection)
10,  ; Peaks            (Encourages peaks)
1,   ; Fungus           (Fungus coefficient based on LIFE selection)
3,6,12,18,24 ; Ratio    (Continent size ratios)
8   ; Islands          (Higher # increases island count)

Title: Re: Your map-making ideas, as in #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE
Post by: vonbach on September 01, 2017, 01:08:49 PM

What are you looking for in a map?

Title: Re: Your map-making ideas, as in #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE
Post by: gwillybj on September 19, 2017, 03:04:14 PM

I play solo-only, always on 360x180 maps. There is plenty of room on them for decent-sized continents with a variety of landscapes along with some nice islands. I like at least half of the beaches (0-999) to be 2 spaces, and a gentle rise to the ~3500 level. I like peaks and ridgelines.

For those reasons, I've been looking for the line-by-line #WORLDBUILDER analysis chart someone did quite some time ago, maybe as early as 2004 or 2003. I'm trying to remember if it was posted at Apolyton or that person's own site. I had copied it to my PC, but that went kaput and I haven't been able to recover the My Documents folder from its hard drive.

Title: Re: Your map-making ideas, as in #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE
Post by: Lord Avalon on November 20, 2017, 11:42:55 AM

I found this thread by smacksim (https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/alpha-centauri/ac-creation/135424-improving-the-ai-part-i-the-worldbuilder-section-of-alphax-txt). No chart, but the third post has a line-by-line description.

Title: Re: Your map-making ideas, as in #WORLDBUILDER and #WORLDSIZE
Post by: gwillybj on January 09, 2018, 05:38:19 AM

Thank you, Lord Avalon! :danc:
That is the exact post I was thinking of! I recall the red lettering. The date is right: July 2004.
At that time, I was fiddling with some HTML (direct coding and with FrontPage; didn't stick with it, should have), and might have made a table out of smacksim's data. If I did, it's on that old hard drive.
Now I can try to get those results I want.
Thanks again!