A19e Nitrogen - UNSTABLE

[kong]

Thank you Damocle for your work:unconscious:

Many buildings are commented out // in prefablist.txt.What's wrong with these buildings?

Excuse me for my poor English:unconscious:

 

[Damocles]

Some POIs dont really work in random gen. Either they are specific Navezgane decorations or need handplacement to fit.

 

[deadbolt]

Hey Damocles, my server's CPU is through the roof at the moment. Every hour the CPU causes the server to get stopped. I believe the map might be causing this.

I get messages in the F1 console that read:

ERR prefab loading failed, prefab loading 'prefab name here' does not exist.

 

[Damocles]

That simply means that one or more of the prefabs are not known by the server.

If you chose CompoPack make sure you have the same version as referenced in the prefablists, and also installed/copied to the games prefabs folder.

Always copy over the updated prefabslist included in CompoPack into NitroGens resources folder.

In case you chose "no traders" you would also get an error, when the trader quest pops up. (can be deactivated)

And whats the prefabname?

 

[noname835]

hello, I have been looking for a long time and I do not know if it is possible to install cities on the map or we want. I have done dozens of maps but I still don't understand how to install the cities we want. Here is an example where I want to establish cities, do you have an idea how to do it or it is not possible?



https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xp...7fiM7GLNHhpdvD

Thx

 

[alphaniner]

I'm gonna be a negative Nancy for a minute, please don't take it personally:

1. The perfectly round, flat area around POIs is unsightly.
   
2. Randomly placed deserts are very 'splotchy'.
   
3. The grid positioning of randomly placed deserts and mountains frequently results in shapes like 'L', 'U', 'T' and 't'.
   
4. Buildings and roads shouldn't exist in craters or on crater ejecta.
   
5. It would be nice if the border biome wasn't perfectly square/straight.
   

Just curious, do you have plans to address any of this?

-----

Re: #5. I noticed that even if you choose no border biome, no POIs are placed near the border. I assumed the empty area was based on the value of MAP_BORDER. So if I were to create a map with no border biome, then edit biomes.png to create a 'rough' border biome that didn't exceed MAP_BORDER pixels from the end of the map, would that result in a usable map?

I can't figure out how to post a reasonably sized image or a thumbnail link to the full image, so see https://ibb.co/SQXB28x for an example. Note I increased MAP_BORDER to 300 for this map.

-----

Edit: possible bug: In trying to reduce the number of craters produced, I found that the smallest possible value for GEN_CRATER_BASE is 2. Setting it to 1 causes the tool to crash:

... running terrain generation ...
exporting (1/3)
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: bound must be positive
at java.util.Random.nextInt(Unknown Source)
at nitrogen.terraingen.c.b(Unknown Source)
at nitrogen.gui.NitroGenUI.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
bound must be positive
Total time taken: 0 min 3 sec

 

[noname835]

I'm gonna be a negative Nancy for a minute, please don't take it personally:

• The perfectly round, flat area around POIs is unsightly.
  
• Randomly placed deserts are very 'splotchy'.
  
• The grid positioning of randomly placed deserts and mountains frequently results in shapes like 'L', 'U', 'T' and 't'.
  
• Buildings and roads shouldn't exist in craters or on crater ejecta.
  

Just curious, do you have plans to address any of this?

Hello Do not take into account the biome, mountain or desert, this is just a picture or I indicated the place where I want to plant cities, but I do not know if it is possible to do it

here is my biome currently on my server

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wj5aWlSUodwhyIoNzs8ah64uAgnSYvUl

 

[Damocles]

hello, I have been looking for a long time and I do not know if it is possible to install cities on the map or we want. I have done dozens of maps but I still don't understand how to install the cities we want. Here is an example where I want to establish cities, do you have an idea how to do it or it is not possible?



https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xp...7fiM7GLNHhpdvD

Thx

You can look into the mask feature. There is an example in the resources.

With this you can set the spawnpoints (green and red dots) of cities and towns on your custom map.

Have a look at the mask example.

 

[Damocles]

Some comments added:

I'm gonna be a negative Nancy for a minute, please don't take it personally:

Randomly placed deserts are very 'splotchy'.

-> you can set the main biome to forest, and the north and south to have desert/snow. This will then not have desert spots in the center of the map, but a large desert in the south

The grid positioning of randomly placed deserts and mountains frequently results in shapes like 'L', 'U', 'T' and 't'.

->Thats related to the way landscape tiles spawn. If I make it more random, desert and snow patches might overlap, wich looks not good. Ingame you will not notice those patterns anyhow. You only notice that in a complete overview.

Buildings and roads shouldn't exist in craters or on crater ejecta.

-> You can block POIs from spawning in craters and burned forest with the POI limit selection

It would be nice if the border biome wasn't perfectly square/straight.

-> The default is a water border, wich is rather random, and not a straight line. Other borders CAN use a biome to make the edge more visible. They are very straight, as they need to follow the radiation line - to show players where the impassable area begins. The realistic choice would be to disable the border biome, and only have the radiation pop up.

The best visually is the water border - it prevents players from running into the radiation zone naturally.

-----

Overall there are always tradeoff between complexity and performance. A lot could still be added.

But its not a product I sell, just a free hobby project.

The fallback if you want to have more specific features and more control, is to use your own hightmaps, masks and biomes.png, and edit the road-splatmap.

I will have a deeper look again when A19 hits, and what changed then technically.

..Im sure RWG will also be great by then, as it has years more development time to it..

 

[alphaniner]

you can set the main biome to forest, and the north and south to have desert/snow.

I still like random mountains and rocky terrain, so I use the N/S setting and manually set the landscape sliders to 0 desert.

You can block POIs from spawning in craters and burned forest with the POI limit selection

Thanks, I wasn't aware of this.

They are very straight, as they need to follow the radiation line - to show players where the impassable area begins. The realistic choice would be to disable the border biome, and only have the radiation pop up.

I guess I'm confused by the fact that the radiation map is always 512x512, and I'm unclear how it scales to the actual map size. For example if I scale it to 8192x8192 in an image editor, the red only extends to ~50px from the edges. So I assumed that only a fraction of the default 200px border area was irradiated.

The fallback if you want to have more specific features and more control, is to use your own hightmaps, masks and biomes.png, and edit the road-splatmap.

Are there any posts that explain how this works? For example, I once tried to generate a map with an existing biomes.png in the output folder and 'import from' set to "output folder", but the tool either aborted generation or deleted it based on the 'check folder' setting.

Overall there are always tradeoff between complexity and performance. A lot could still be added.

But its not a product I sell, just a free hobby project.

I understand, and I hope it's clear I don't mean to tear you down.

 

[Gamida]

Hey damocles, What setting makes the roads in city in a grid pattern? I made maps before and thought it was "Tight" option but when I used it this time the roads were random.

I like to open up my bicycle on the straight aways and feel the wind rush through my hair lol

 

[alphaniner]

You can block POIs from spawning in craters and burned forest with the POI limit selection

Generation fails when 'border biome' is "none" and 'no POIs in biome' is "burned and wasteland":

... running terrain generation ...
exporting (1/3)
exporting (2/3)
exporting (3/3)
... terrain generation ... DONE ...
... running world mapping ...
... detect biomes ...
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 1024
at nitrogen.a.c.a(Unknown Source)
at nitrogen.a.c.b(Unknown Source)
at nitrogen.a.c.c(Unknown Source)
at nitrogen.a.c.a(Unknown Source)
at nitrogen.gui.NitroGenUI.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
1024
Total time taken: 0 min 44 sec

I duplicated it in a 'clean' environment without any of my manual changes to resource files, and all other settings at defaults.

 

[Guppycur]

Alpha

So basically after a world generates, you're essentially left with image files and XML files.

Editing those image files directly can change biomes, roads, radiation and even the terrain.

Editing the xmls can change water heights and poi placement.

So what a lot of us do is run nitrogen to get a base map, then tweak as needed, i.e. what dam is talking about when he says "fallback features".

You had the right idea, editing the biomes.png, but it sounds like you did it in the wrong order. You want to do it after the world is generated not before.

About the only thing you can do before the world is generated is edit the height map itself, and use the import setting for that when generating a world. Then it will build a world around your height map.

The radiation map will scale with the world size, so if the border thickness is 10% of 512k then it will be 10% of 8192. So if it's 50 pixels in the small map it will be 800 in the large one.

If you want some ideas on how you can use nitrogen outside of just nitrogen, I have a few videos on my yt in an um, "Gaia" playlist. Might be worth checking out just to see the kind of potential that you can have.

 

[Damocles]

With normal generation (not importing HM), there is still a bug in the biomes POI-no placement feature (thats why I set to off at default).

Basically sometimes the biome-map does not get loaded in time for the POI placement procedure. This feature was a late addition, and optionally reloads the biome data, which normally is not kept in memory for performance reasons.

You can try to run it again, and see if it works.

The other approach (if it does not work for you) is to just generate the heightmap / biome-map.

Then make a mask around the areas you want to be ignored (craters). Then load the heightmap and mask to finish the generation.

-> its a bit more manual work then of course. But you can then also set your cities and towns where you like them to be.

 

[alphaniner]

@Guppycur

Thanks for clearing things up for me. I was pretty sure the biomes.png could be edited after generation, but not at all clear on what could be imported. In any case I'll definitely check out your videos.

The radiation map will scale with the world size, so if the border thickness is 10% of 512k then it will be 10% of 8192. So if it's 50 pixels in the small map it will be 800 in the large one.

That's more or less what I expected, only the rad maps generated for both 8k and 12k have border thicknesses of only ~0.6% and ~0.4% respectively, both resulting in 48px radiation zones. That's just much smaller than the 200px default border biome, and I thought @Damocles was implying they were more or less the same size.

The other approach (if it does not work for you) is to just generate the heightmap / biome-map.Then make a mask around the areas you want to be ignored (craters). Then load the heightmap and mask to finish the generation.

-> its a bit more manual work then of course. But you can then also set your cities and towns where you like them to be.

Thanks for the tip. I don't know how to create a mask, but maybe I'll have a better understanding of this advanced stuff after watching Guppycur's videos.

Edit: I found Cpt Krunch video about masks.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Alpha

Buried somewhere deep in the mods is a map I made when testing

Nitrogen. Here is the link

https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/-7-days-to-die-pc/game-modification/mods/144108-a18-2-b5-customized-nitrogen-map

Download it and open the resources folder and you will get a visual

idea of what I did. Nitrogen is a template, to make your own design.

I made a personal Height map. After the map was generated, I just

copied my Biome map over the default, to get the layout I like.

Best part is I really like my terrain but each gen the pois are moved

around for variety.

For the round layout around the houses. choose the option for

road condition make it overgrown.

In resources you will see an image called mask.png When making a selection

if you have your own height map choose heightmap import_hm.png and import from

resources.

Heightmap is a grayscale image with shades ranging from 0,0,0 or bedrock to 255,255,255

render ceiling.

Biomes.png is the 5 color image that will let you shape where you want desert, snow etc. and

their shape.

 

[alphaniner]

Thanks for the help everyone, I've now gotten it all figured out. I even created some HMs completely from scratch using just Gimp tools. The filter that I assume was used to create "TEST_512_REL_TILED_NoiseTurbulence.png" can make a great start for an entire map.

One thing I can't figure out is what are the light blue 1px dots usually found in groups on the preview map, surrounded by deformed terrain.

 

[alphaniner]

I've encountered a couple of small issues with hand-made maps.

1. Larger POIs (or their 'circles of flatness') often end up extending into the masked zone. I guess this is because only the center point is considered WRT the mask. Any chance of taking into account the full footprint before committing POIs when a mask exists?
   
2. Something (I think road generation) is causing little dots of raised terrain in masked areas in and around water:
   

(The shaded area indicates the mask)

 

[Guppycur]

I call them "the little roads that could(n't)".

 

[Damocles]

The POI placement will only check the centerpoint of the POI when checking against the mask. So your mask needs to cover a bit more than the area you want to block off.

Im not really sure about those dots. Have not see those. Maybe you can show them ingame.

The roads will always try to connect to the neighboring towns, so they avoid the masked area and "walk" around it, but only up to a point (its running a pathsearch). You should add some natural landbridges if you want to prevent them from cutting through water.

The mask is more of an afterthought to allow more manual control. The base logic is still the normal random generation, and thus things like the mask only "guide" certain behaviors of it.