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A19e Nitrogen - UNSTABLE
- Thread starter Damocles
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Bhaaltazar
New member
Just tried this out and I wish TFP came up with something like this 
Works like a charm and maps looks great!
Works like a charm and maps looks great!
Damocles
New member
@Bhaaltazar, thanks for the feedback, that everything worked correctly.
Its a different approach how to generate the world, than the included RWG. It gives me more control about the look of the landscape, and placement of specific settlement types (cities, towns, farms, trailer parks, mountains huts). I could easily add a grand canyon type landscape, or volcanos, or a south asian limestone mountains + blue sea type of area. (If there where the biomes and water for that)
The noise-map based approach of the vanilla RWG turns out to be very hard to handle. Its a tad too random for deliberate landscapes. The noise function based type of terrain generation works better for very large random worlds (flight sim, space sim), not so much for relatively small areas traversed in first person.
Its a different approach how to generate the world, than the included RWG. It gives me more control about the look of the landscape, and placement of specific settlement types (cities, towns, farms, trailer parks, mountains huts). I could easily add a grand canyon type landscape, or volcanos, or a south asian limestone mountains + blue sea type of area. (If there where the biomes and water for that)
The noise-map based approach of the vanilla RWG turns out to be very hard to handle. Its a tad too random for deliberate landscapes. The noise function based type of terrain generation works better for very large random worlds (flight sim, space sim), not so much for relatively small areas traversed in first person.
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Damocles
New member
Does the generator complain about files already being in the directory? Its a safety check that can be turned off.
If not, this might be a case of Java running out of heap-memory. Its quite memory intensive to process the data. An 8k map should be done in about 3 to 5 minutes with the default settings.
Try starting the generator using the commandline option / edit the .bat startscript:
java -Xmx2G -jar nitrogen.jar
or even
java -Xmx4G -jar nitrogen.jar (for 4 GB of allocated memory)
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If java complains about that, you might have the 32 bit version of it installed. In this case you would need to upgrade to a 64 bit Java to generate the large maps. (4k maps are quite ok for a singleplayer game though, as the world can be populated more densely).
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n2n1
Well-known member
It's a beautiful view...
I take it You don't have a city street generation right now?
By the way, everyone loves the mountains?
Unnatural mountains - the most common trouble of all generators.
In 16 alpha i did the generator settings that removed such high mountains - and it looked so natural!
It is not even necessary to make them low, but you need to make gentle slopes, and when the mountains are less common in the journey - they cause more admiration.
Otherwise, everything I've seen always looks like an extraterrestrial landscape in the distance.
Perhaps You should make it a standalone utility as soon as possible.
I understand that the convenience of programming is important for You now...but...You need to come up with something
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Damocles
New member
Cities also generate streets of course. Its nessecary for gameplay reasons anyway (certain resources).It's a beautiful view...
I take it You don't have a city street generation right now?
By the way, everyone loves the mountains?
Unnatural mountains - the most common trouble of all generators.
In 16 alpha i did the generator settings that removed such high mountains - and it looked so natural!
It is not even necessary to make them low, but you need to make gentle slopes, and when the mountains are less common in the journey - they cause more admiration.
Otherwise, everything I've seen always looks like an extraterrestrial landscape in the distance.
Perhaps You should make it a standalone utility as soon as possible.
I understand that the convenience of programming is important for You now...but...You need to come up with something
The mountains: the game only allows terrain hights from 0 to 255 meters. Since some POIs have extensive underground areas, the normal hight of flat land is at 35 meters. So there is not much hight to play with. Realistic Alpine mountains would not work anyways.
The player can turn off each landscape type in the settings, if needed.
Also: since its a first person game (walking around), the scale of the world and its features need to be compressed compared to realworld landscapes. Skyrim is a good example of this. Everything (mountains, lakes, rivers) is actually very small, but seams huge from a distance to convey a scenic look and have enough variation in the landscape.
Each biome is used in a specific landscape type, and not randomly placed onto the terrain. I think thats visually more pleasing and plausible, than random blobs of biomes.
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Hi there, I was wondering is there a way to access settings on your rwgmixer or are you gonna add more options for landscape, I created mountains and flatlands and maps are 80% or more high mountains, can we adjust the ratio or make desert/forest/mountain maps somehow? I would also like to add big or huge lakes instead of many small ones.
Damocles
New member
I can add more variety in the future. The landscape dropdown has a variety of predefined mixes, that turn on an off more or less of the features.
I can make that ratio more specific on future versions.
Whole new landscape types would have to be made too, but that takes a bit more effort.
Things like swamps, high green mountains, very deep canyons on a high desert plateau.
I have not finished implementing big lakes (7DtD is quite picky about water flooding the level if not placed correctly, so that has to be done carefully).
There are lots of smaller lakes - at different elevations - dotting the landscape, to have a source of water available in all areas.
I can make that ratio more specific on future versions.
Whole new landscape types would have to be made too, but that takes a bit more effort.
Things like swamps, high green mountains, very deep canyons on a high desert plateau.
I have not finished implementing big lakes (7DtD is quite picky about water flooding the level if not placed correctly, so that has to be done carefully).
There are lots of smaller lakes - at different elevations - dotting the landscape, to have a source of water available in all areas.
n2n1
Well-known member
Whoa!
Well.... then why is there such a difference in the generation rate compared to the vanilla generator ? Nothing is free.
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No, i did not mean that you need to do the mountain higher. I was doing gentle slopes, global restrictions does not interfere here. I've seen real mountains, their base(footing) is very extensive.
Yes, this is a very important and fundamental thing!
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Damocles
New member
New version 0.21 (same Download-Link).
- Map now generates larger lakes.
- You can now import your own hightmap. (handdrawn, real data)
Its quite flexible, and takes any greyscale image, as long as its square. (read details in the readme.txt)
There is an example hightmap included, that I had drawn in a minute.
The generator will use the hightmap and generate the POIs and streets etc randomly ontop of it.
(The imported hightmaps also allow you to have nicely sloped mountains then)
- Map now generates larger lakes.
- You can now import your own hightmap. (handdrawn, real data)
Its quite flexible, and takes any greyscale image, as long as its square. (read details in the readme.txt)
There is an example hightmap included, that I had drawn in a minute.
The generator will use the hightmap and generate the POIs and streets etc randomly ontop of it.
(The imported hightmaps also allow you to have nicely sloped mountains then)
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Damocles
New member
Different approach how the map is generated. The vanilla RWG is probably putting a lot of effort into the noise-map generation, and its also embedded in a larger project, wich tends to slow things down.
(I also have full creative freedom ... if I want a feature, I just implement it. No design-paper to write and standup-meetings to attend to)
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mr.natural
New member
RH uses its own RWG so no it is not (likely) to be compatible.
Damocles
New member
You can use NitroGen to use your custom POIs (or in this case import the Ravenhearst POIs)
For this you would need to edit the included resources/prefablist.txt
the format is like this:
business_old_01,COMMERCIAL;DOWNTOWN,2,-1,21,18,47,downtown
add a new line to this list, using the following format:
my_poi_name, something(not read), 2(face north), y-offset, x-wide, y-high, z-deep, NitroGet-Zone
the y-offset is usually -1 for most flat pois with a ground layer. The x,y,z dimensions are visible in the prefabeditor.
example: (if the POIs filename is called Ravenhearst_house_poi)
Ravenhearst_house_poi, COMMERCIAL, 2, -1, 34, 20, 45, smalltown;downtown;houses
(Then start NitroGen and generate a new world, and copy the generated world to the games "GeneratedWorlds" folder)
You can check if your prefab was inserted by looking at the generated prefabs.xml, and look for the pois name there. It defines its name and location in the world at startup.
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I have not looked at how Ravenhearst is structured, but the POIs could be theoretically be copied to the vanilla prefab folder, and loaded by the game using the NitroGen generated world.
But is would then require to insert all af them into the resources/prefablist.txt for the generator to insert them into the map-file.
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If anyone knows where the prefabs dimensions (x,y,z) are stored, other than inside the binary files, I could quickly write an importer for that.
The y-offset is descibed the prebals xml, but for knowing the dimensions I would have to open each POI in the prefabeditor and note it down... not fun.
The dimensions are needed for the generator to place the POIs correctly in the world, else they might float in the air, or are placed in a hole...
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Hell_Vice
New member
Hello Damocles,
first of all thanks a lot for this new tool which give us new way to make "custom" maps very efficiently and with great speed.
I'm really into it and as your versions update I'm sure to add custom prefabs on my list (will keep you inform of dimensions if so).
I generate around 10 maps and playtest 3 of them, You can have massive maps around 550ko prefabs size in 8k (which is to much tbf) and can adapt them to your playstyle easily so it's really good for that.
On the "minus" side it seems that ground level needs a small amount of smoothing because atm it felt too rough (spikes of land ground) imo.
The biomes are not my tastes but i have a good collection of them on my own so i don't really care but feel you should add more options on this side.
Can't wait for new additions to Nitrogen more water and stuff and i'm gonna give a try to HM generation which seems really cool.
Thank you for your work which is highly considerate.
first of all thanks a lot for this new tool which give us new way to make "custom" maps very efficiently and with great speed.
I'm really into it and as your versions update I'm sure to add custom prefabs on my list (will keep you inform of dimensions if so).
I generate around 10 maps and playtest 3 of them, You can have massive maps around 550ko prefabs size in 8k (which is to much tbf) and can adapt them to your playstyle easily so it's really good for that.
On the "minus" side it seems that ground level needs a small amount of smoothing because atm it felt too rough (spikes of land ground) imo.
The biomes are not my tastes but i have a good collection of them on my own so i don't really care but feel you should add more options on this side.
Can't wait for new additions to Nitrogen more water and stuff and i'm gonna give a try to HM generation which seems really cool.
Thank you for your work which is highly considerate.
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Damocles
New member
Hi, thanks for testing.
The maps get a smoothing run, but I could make the amount a settable parameter. Too smooth also looks boring.
The biomes where done relatively quickly, I can add more in the future.
Water is a bit risky at the moment. The small lakes work good, but the large lakes (filled into areas below 34 hight) use a different water spawn mechanicsm. And water in 7DtD is pretty "leaky", where a wrongly placed waternode can quickly flood the level. Hard to track down beforehand.
So the large lakes are at a set hight below any POI spawns. (small lakes can have any hight, as they are prepared more precisely using the POI methods)
As you can import your own hightmaps, I suggest to use the same size as the final map, else the generator runs some smoothing over it. You could use any graphical editor to draw your own map then, save it in a greyscale PNG and let the generator load and populate it.
When manually editing the biomes.png, 7DtD is very picky of using the exact color values. (use the vanilla RWGs output as a color reference). So you can also manually "paint" all areas in the biome of your choice, and replace the generated biomes.png... adding the dreadful wasteland biome in again for example.
You can basically create any map of your liking within 7DtD contraints that way... playing on a cat picture map for example.
For a "serious" multiplayermap, I suggest to replace the main.ttw file with one generated by RWG (just generate a map of the same size and copy it over), as I down know if there are issues with the unique identification of the gameworld in multiplayer. In singleplayer it works fine.
The maps get a smoothing run, but I could make the amount a settable parameter. Too smooth also looks boring.
The biomes where done relatively quickly, I can add more in the future.
Water is a bit risky at the moment. The small lakes work good, but the large lakes (filled into areas below 34 hight) use a different water spawn mechanicsm. And water in 7DtD is pretty "leaky", where a wrongly placed waternode can quickly flood the level. Hard to track down beforehand.
So the large lakes are at a set hight below any POI spawns. (small lakes can have any hight, as they are prepared more precisely using the POI methods)
As you can import your own hightmaps, I suggest to use the same size as the final map, else the generator runs some smoothing over it. You could use any graphical editor to draw your own map then, save it in a greyscale PNG and let the generator load and populate it.
When manually editing the biomes.png, 7DtD is very picky of using the exact color values. (use the vanilla RWGs output as a color reference). So you can also manually "paint" all areas in the biome of your choice, and replace the generated biomes.png... adding the dreadful wasteland biome in again for example.
You can basically create any map of your liking within 7DtD contraints that way... playing on a cat picture map for example.
For a "serious" multiplayermap, I suggest to replace the main.ttw file with one generated by RWG (just generate a map of the same size and copy it over), as I down know if there are issues with the unique identification of the gameworld in multiplayer. In singleplayer it works fine.
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n2n1
Well-known member
Couple of questions:
- Will there be support for the caves?
- Will there be support for multiple biomes? (now the code allows you to add a lot more types of biomes than vanilla)
- Still...32K support for those who don't care about memory. (if it's not difficult to introduce. But, those who want - can see for themselves the usefulness of this mode).
and...
perhaps, someday, when will get - You could share the generated map which in your opinion is very good, as a demonstration.
(well, to be honest for those who do not want to install Java, but want to see
)
- Will there be support for the caves?
- Will there be support for multiple biomes? (now the code allows you to add a lot more types of biomes than vanilla)
- Still...32K support for those who don't care about memory. (if it's not difficult to introduce. But, those who want - can see for themselves the usefulness of this mode).
and...
perhaps, someday, when will get - You could share the generated map which in your opinion is very good, as a demonstration.
(well, to be honest for those who do not want to install Java, but want to see
)
Last edited by a moderator:
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