A man has to have a little bit of variety

[Devil of Truth]

...or things that go "clump."

Don't you sometimes just hate the default CTP2 maps? They're so ordered, clumped and sometimes they're downright hideous. This SLIC script tries to address these glaring inconsistencies by adding a little bit of variety to most terrain types. For example: Those plains that span an entire continent may now have some hills and mountains or maybe some deserts or grasslands scattered about.

Have you ever wondered whether it is even geologically possible to have so many mountains in one hemisphere? The script also aims to enhance those mountain ranges that seem to stretch forever. For example: Instead of a solid wall of mountains stretching halfway across the map, you'll now find some grasslands or forests etc. scattered about between the mountains. Now you can actually build cities within mountain ranges.

Have you ever seen coral reefs anywhere on a standard CTP2 map? I haven't. This script will add some reefs too.

To rebuild a 140 x 280 (Gigantic) map took about 20 seconds on an AMD XP2200+, so you may be in for a wait. However, the script will only execute once, right at the start of a new game (it will not affect games in progress in any way), so all you need is a little patience.

To play god with your CTP2 maps, you need to:
1. Copy the SLIC file to the ...\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\ folder.
2. Add the line

#include "TerrainDiscombobulator.slc"

to the bottom of the script.slc file in ...\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\
3. Start a new game.

The code has been tested, and seems to work fine with the following:
Unmodded CTP2 - v1.11
Apolyton Pack - v1 & v2
Ages of Man – Alpha 2
Cradle – v1.3+
GoodMod – v1
MedMod – v2.2
World At War – v1.04

If you find any errors, or some strange things are happening to your maps, or have any suggestions, comments or complaints – please don’t hesitate to let me know.

(And all you experienced SLICers, don’t tell me this code is plain or easy – I know that already.)

[SMIFFGIG]

ok ive downloaded and tested the mod, and generally its quite good afew things though

1. Plains-glacier-grassland=glacier=plains-glacier. Isn very realistic, or not in the abundance in which it appeared on my last map

2. Kelp and coral maybe a little to abundant

3. The GIGANTIC masses of swamp clusters are unrealistic and annoying (on the last map there was screenfulls of the stuff

4. Maybe not quite enought Plains grassland

5. Maybe a little to much forest

6. A nice addition would be if you could get mountains to appear in lines as well as clumps (like fault lines)

7. Another nice addtion would be to have more and better spread smaller islands around the map

8. Finally i have to say, this mod has great potential

[Maquiladora]

The best way (i have found) to get your perfect spread of tiles, like fault lines and such, is to make specific rules in the tile file. So everytime a certain type of mountain appears you can make a mountain appear at any of the 8 directions around it, so it would eventually stretch into a fault line. Ive managed to iradicate the "swamp mass inside forest" effect with this method.

I havent tried this slic yet though...

[Martin the Dane]

Wait a minute Maq!

Do you say that the TileRules in the .til files have an effect on the map-generation?

Martin the Dane

[Locutus]

Of course they do, defining which terrains should/could go together is their whole purpose of existance - you're telling us you didn't realize that, Martin?

Looks very interesting, DoT, I'll have to try this out...

[Martin the Dane]

Well no I didn't realize that, I thought it was purely a mater of wich tile graphics to use for a given tile.

That explains some of my troubles getting the 3x3 view to work in TileEdit.

Martin the Dane

[primemover]

FINALLY... someone notices this besides me.

To be frank, nearly everything about these CTP2 maps is geologically impossible (or at least inconsistent). This was the first thing I noticed (being an earth/space science double major) about the game that led me to want to reinvent it. Weather patterns, geology, and other factors all have an effect on terrain that make these maps utterly ridiculous. Here are some of the major problems that have to do with this (by no means a complete list):

In reality you would almost NEVER find a mountain range in the middle of a continent... and yet that is were a majority of them are in CTP2!!!!

And to have two mid ocean ridges side by side is completely impossible! (I have seen this a number of times).

No volcanoes on land!

Tropical forests next to deserts... many inconsistancies like this.

Here is an unrelated problem as well (but one I thought of while analyzing the problems with the terrain)...

When we are crusaders and voyagers in the early stages of the game, how the heck can we know what the ocean floor looks like? We should only be able to see a map with pretty ocean water. Under the surface knowledge should be gained only with a discovery of sonar or radar or similar technology.

It is myriads of problems and possibilities for solutions such as this along with the educational value they could bring (especially from a science perspective... so many opportunties to teach, such as "why mountains usually occur near the edges of continents") that have led me to some major ideas for a new game. This is the reason I have recently made the following post: "Questions for ctp (and other) modmakers". If you feel so inclined, your response is appreciated.

Meanwhile... I will give your slic a try and give some feedback (if I can find any that would be useful while the above problems are still in need of addressing).

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by primemover
In reality you would almost NEVER find a mountain range in the middle of a continent... and yet that is were a majority of them are in CTP2!!!!

This can be easily altered.

And to have two mid ocean ridges side by side is completely impossible! (I have seen this a number of times).

This might be slightly more time consuming but its possible.

No volcanoes on land!

If someone made a volcano land tile or we used one from somewhere you could make volcanos appear on land at rare intervals, say in the middle of mountain range or a single tile island.

Tropical forests next to deserts... many inconsistancies like this.

I already fixed this in my CtP1 Terrain Mod

When we are crusaders and voyagers in the early stages of the game, how the heck can we know what the ocean floor looks like? We should only be able to see a map with pretty ocean water. Under the surface knowledge should be gained only with a discovery of sonar or radar or similar technology.

Unfortunately this cant be done (as yet(?)) in CtP2, but in CtP1 you couldnt see the bottom of the ocean until you had underwater units (i think!).

It is myriads of problems and possibilities for solutions such as this along with the educational value they could bring (especially from a science perspective... so many opportunties to teach, such as "why mountains usually occur near the edges of continents") that have led me to some major ideas for a new game. This is the reason I have recently made the following post: "Questions for ctp (and other) modmakers". If you feel so inclined, your response is appreciated.

If you have anymore ideas on the look of the terrain just say, im particularly interested in improving the terrain.

[Martin the Dane]

In reality you would almost NEVER find a mountain range in the middle of a continent... and yet that is were a majority of them are in CTP2!!!!

Funny how unusual our planet is. On more then one of this planets 6 continents we find mountain ranges that are not at the edge.

Ural is devides Eurasia into Europe and Asia,

Himalaya devides Asia into a North and South part.

Just to mention the two most prominent mountain ranges in Eurasia.

The Rockies arn't excatly at the edge of the North American continent.

New Ginea has a mountain range in the middel.

The explanation for the three first cases is that they are the results of colliding continents. This however is irrelevant for CtP as it has no tectonic movement. The result is that you have large landmasses with mountains inland.

So for anyone not majoring in earth-sience it does not seem so ilogical.

As for inland mountain ranges on larger islands well that's a cpompletely different topic.

But appart from that I agree with you that the map-generation in the CtP games isn't too good, to say the least.

Martin the Dane

[primemover]

Funny how unusual our planet is. On more then one of this planets 6 continents we find mountain ranges that are not at the edge.

Ok... I was exaggerating a little to get a point across...

But not much... First, one must understand that when I say "coastal" I mean a few hundred miles inland, because there is always a zone of accretion between where the plate subducts and where the real folding occurs. This is still a good long ways from the center.

"Center" mtn ranges are generated by fractal altitude generators that naturally put mtn ranges at the center because they are the center of a high point on the generated topography.

In your explanation for central mountain ranges, you are for the most part correct:

The explanation for the three first cases is that they are the results of colliding continents. This however is irrelevant for CtP as it has no tectonic movement.

But studying quite a bit of Geology in college, a continent-continent collision is the exception, rather than the rule. About the exceptions you mentioned:

The Ural Mts: This IS a continent-continent collision

The Himalayas: The other MAJOR continent-continent collision that exists.

The Rockies: are a different matter all together. Even today I would not say they are in the middle of the continent. But be that as it may, when they were created they were a coastal range, with the subducting plate trench only being 400-500 miles to the west (within normal parameters-- there is always SOME space in the form of an accretion ridge). At the same time, their creation was a bit different than typical mtn building. It was followed by the crustal extension that created the Nevada Basin and range etc... so the Rockies are still more or less a coastal range that has "moved" inland a bit due to post-creation-circumstances.

New Guinea? You are right about mountain ranges on large islands. New Guinea is an Island. New Guinea is the top of a new continent believed to be in the formation stages.

Ok... so yeah I am being a bit picky here... and maybe to most people it wouldn't be so obvious, but to me it was painfully so . Which lead me to the idea of the educational value of telling players why this was so... part of the great library (if we could change it?) or even a new game altogether using all these great ideas and changes.

Now that I have seen that the terrain can be altered... (I did not know this before) maybe a temporary solution is possible (but eventually it would be nice to have a scientifically consistent game)

[Martin the Dane]

Good to se that we do agree afterall.

(but eventually it would be nice to have a scientifically consistent game)

I couldn't agree more to that, but unfortunatey this would require quite a lot of work.

But back to the topic.

Is it possible via slic to start an external mapgenerator and import the output from this?
Or would we have to write a more scientific map-generator in slic?

primemover
Do you have or know of any scientiffic map-geration-routines?

I have experimented a bit with map-generation but as I have allways used fractal generators the result has been wors than the stuff that CtP generates.

While writing this, SMAC comes to mind, as far as I remember the random maps generated was not all that bad. They used a different approach: elevation combined with windpatern (allways from the west) overlayed with fractal rockiness and vegetation maps. Maybe we could use some similar approach.

Well it's pointless to discuss this here untill we know wether or not it is possible to import an externally generated map into CtP.

[Devil of Truth]

Wow! This thread turned intellectual fast! Very interesting reading.

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
ok ive downloaded and tested the mod, and generally its quite good afew things though

1. Plains-glacier-grassland=glacier=plains-glacier. Isn very realistic, or not in the abundance in which it appeared on my last map
2. Kelp and coral maybe a little to abundant
3. The GIGANTIC masses of swamp clusters are unrealistic and annoying (on the last map there was screenfulls of the stuff
4. Maybe not quite enought Plains grassland
5. Maybe a little to much forest
6. A nice addition would be if you could get mountains to appear in lines as well as clumps (like fault lines)
7. Another nice addtion would be to have more and better spread smaller islands around the map
8. Finally i have to say, this mod has great potential

SMIFFGIG:
1. The ratio of glaciers, tundra, plains and grassland is very unrealistic. It is easy to correct, but I made it like this on purpose. Cold tiles are fairly useless (relative to others) and even though I didn’t want to eliminate them entirely I did want to reduce their impact.
2. I haven’t increased or decreased the profusion of kelp, however, if enough people agree that there is too much, I can easily make some go away. I agree on the coral though.
3. My code doesn’t deal with swamps. The map settings I usually use (Cradle 1.3+; default sliders) doesn’t produce any swamp problems, but I can easily generate code to take care of this if you’d like.
4. More plains and grasslands? Are you saying my code takes too much away, or do you just want the code to create more?
5. I’ll look into it.
6. This would be nice. I don’t like the clumps and as primemover et al has pointed out, it’s not very realistic. My code doesn’t really create mountain chains, it just breaks them apart. Creating code to actually form chains would be a lot more challenging, but far from impossible. I’ll look into it.
7. The code doesn’t touch landmasses.
8. Thanks.

Originally posted by Maquiladora
The best way (i have found) to get your perfect spread of tiles, like fault lines and such, is to make specific rules in the tile file. So everytime a certain type of mountain appears you can make a mountain appear at any of the 8 directions around it, so it would eventually stretch into a fault line. Ive managed to iradicate the "swamp mass inside forest" effect with this method.

Maq:
Your solution sounds so much better than SLIC. If you don’t mind, I’d love to have an example please.

Thanks everybody for your support and interest (and geography lessons ). Keep those suggestions coming. I’ll post an update soon.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by primemover
New Guinea? You are right about mountain ranges on large islands. New Guinea is an Island. New Guinea is the top of a new continent believed to be in the formation stages.

Yeah and its got a great view at the top(as long as you don't go up it in the rainy season). Intrestingly, you have to go through a place called the Markham valley to get the road that takes you upto the top. This valley is so dry,flat and virtually unvegetated that it really does seem like a desert(well dusty tundra maybe ) - right in the middle of a tropical Island.
I didn't know PNG was becoming a new continent!! That would probably explain all the tidal waves,volcanos and earthquakes that have been getting more extreme recently.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Devil of Truth
Maq:
Your solution sounds so much better than SLIC. If you don’t mind, I’d love to have an example please.

An example? Well i could tell you to use Tile View, its pretty easy to understand what each tile rule means from the readme, you can edit the existing ones and add new rules too.

What i havent figured out is if you define 2 rules for the same specific tile, say, a beach tile on the east, then i dont know if it uses each rule at random, or the first one in the whole tile file for that particular east beach tile.

You could actually create lots of rules that make the whole lot of tiles fit into a perfectly realistic geological jigsaw, but that would take away alot of the randomness from the map generator and youd probably just get the same clump of land with water around each, like Civ3

One of CtP2's advantages, theres so many terrain types, but that of course makes it harder to get every one in the right place.

So basically i cant really give an example

I remember Peter Triggs made a script for the map generator too, somewhere...

[Maquiladora]

Top quality commenting by the way DoT

[primemover]

Is it possible via slic to start an external mapgenerator and import the output from this?

I don't think so... but maybe it isn't necessary. If someone knows (maybe a representative of the CTP2 development team.. they do post here every now and then don't they?)... the format of the savegame file/map, we could write a program to generate a map and then translate into a savgame file. (probably a lot of work though).

We might also try a SLIC version... but I would have to think about that over Christmas Break... (no time right now). But in order to do that, we would have to have SLIC actually make the map... don't know if that is possible.

Primemover: Do you have or know of any scientiffic map-geration-routines?

I don't know of any complete ones. I have started work on my own. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=70275]I actually posted a thread with finding volunteers in mind... [/URL] but I don't expect them to. Just am trying to discover if anyone would have the time and/or be interested.

I recently discovered that the writers of "Clash of Civilizations" (an alternate civ on apolyton) are trying to create a map generator to do something of what I had in mind for my own. We might ask them... if we try an external map generator. But I don't think theirs is finished yet either.

Child of Thor:

I didn't know PNG was becoming a new continent!! That would probably explain all the tidal waves,volcanos and earthquakes that have been getting more extreme recently.

LOL ... well... it will take a GOOD long time for it to make a continent... on the order of 200+ million years theoretically. But all the same, I share your enthusiasm... I think its pretty cool myself.

One of CtP2's advantages, theres so many terrain types

Oh really? And I was recently thinking there weren't really enough (at least if we mix climate into the picture).

I'm wondering if it is possible... with terrain improvement slic... to make more (even a whole new basic terrain type?)

PS... who is Peter Triggs and what has he done with map generation? (was it for CTP2?)

[Devil of Truth]

This SLIC has been coded to only terraform once, right at the start of turn 0 (i.e. when the game loads). However, when playing multiplayer it actually does this for every human player playing . (Which makes perfect sense.)

Does anybody know how to stop this from happening?

The code looks a little something like this:

HandleEvent(BeginTurn)'ChangeMyMap' pre {
...
...
...
if (GetCurrentRound() == 0) {
...
...
...
elseif (GetCurrentRound () > 0) {
    DisableTrigger('ChangeMyMap');
}

(If anybody comments that "..." isn’t valid SLIC syntax, I’ll send ‘em a message with no "..." but plenty of "***" .)

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by primemover
I'm wondering if it is possible... with terrain improvement slic... to make more (even a whole new basic terrain type?)

I read somewhere on this forum from a programmer on CtP2, that you can only have a maximum of the 24 terrain types already there. But ive seen the generator use the bridge tile and the little huts from the tile file in the Magnificent Samurai scenario.

I havent tried basically but it certainly looks promising.

PS... who is Peter Triggs and what has he done with map generation? (was it for CTP2?)

Peter wrote a small script to change all the pretty useless tiles at the start of the game, to ones that are useful for gameplay. So it would change swamp to grassland or plains, stuff like that.

[LDiCesare]

I recently discovered that the writers of "Clash of Civilizations" (an alternate civ on apolyton) are trying to create a map generator to do something of what I had in mind for my own. We might ask them... if we try an external map generator. But I don't think theirs is finished yet either.

It definitely is not.
(edit) There is an altitude only map generator, which gives small maps and is not very efficient IMO (/edit)
You would probably have problems converting it to CtP2 anyway because we want to have different data dor elevation (hills/mountains/plains) and vegetation (woods on hills). Though CtP2 has hills/desert hills, the representation of the data would be hard to translate. Also, rivers are going to be on-edges and not in-square, so that makes a difference too.
Any comments in the relevant thread (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...77#post1529727) are approeciated. You will also find some links there to previous models and some map generator programs (have to follow some links, though).

Note that if we get a map generator program working for Clash that would suit you, the resulting file is a quite simple format, and I could explain it to you if needed.

[LDiCesare]

DoT,

Can't you use a variabel like int_t isAlreadydone = 0 and set it to one when you have generated it, then test if (isAlreadyDone == 0) instead of GetCurrentRound?
I don't know the exact SLIC syntax, but I think there are global variables that you could use.
And, no, ... is not valid SLIC syntax.

[Locutus]

DoT,
Don't put the DisableTrigger function in an else clause, it should be disabled after the very first time it's executed (which is still in turn 0), so just move the DisableTrigger to the very last line of the handler.

[The Big Mc]

This slic look interesting it may be possible to add my underwater mountain chains after all.

[finfahey]

Quick dirty suggestion...

I really like the idea of alternate map generation systems. But that's the kind of thing that you go into and never emerge from - OTOH to make the map more interesting, why not take a leaf out of SMAC and 'overstamp' the map with SLIC routines putting blocks of terrain and/or goods in random places once the main generation is finished?

So, just as SMAC has stuff like Uranium Flats and the New Sargasso, you could have the Sea of Whales or the Emerald Mountains. The thing is balance and restraint - you want to invent lots of enriched terrain areas, but any given game would only include, say, a third/half of them. This adds big fun to exploration for a start.

The other feed-in is that it gives you, or your opponents, areas to covet and fight for. This feeds into the Civ3 thing about strategic goods.

e.g Invent block feature called 'Oil Lake' - have it turn up in the most (already) conflict-ridden part of the planet and you've got some of our geopolitics right there (but in ctp2 it might just turn up somewhere unnoticed to that time, has to be desert, though).

And you don't have to dump the goods into the area until one of the players gets the requisite advance, so that's a well Civ3-type thing.

Just a pity that the names can't appear on the map a la SMAC. Hey, I might have a go at this, though - could be fun making up these map features.

[The Big Mc]

sounds a good idea

but the problem with that is it all most gets rid of the point of pollution as you have five recourses to kill not just one.

[finfahey]

Well, pollution would still be a blight. I'm not suggesting that *all* the resources be gathered up into these features - even without the strategic resource idea, these features would add a bit of variety to the map.

And pollution blasts ordinary improved tiles too. I've never thought that its effect of resource destruction was the most important one.

Global warming still operates.

But note: I play a very green game - I try to avoid polluting developments if possible and get recycling centres going as fast as I can. Besides the fact that I hate those ugly dead squares, it's a sort of self-imposed handicap when playing the AIs - and it makes me feel righteous.

[The Big Mc]

I love the dead tiles i even maid a volcano ones based on a dead tile.

[SMIFFGIG]

i added fault.dll to the userprofile.txt and tried this little bit of slic and well
look

dunno if i prefer it yet, but why isnt fault.dll default anyway?