PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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This doesn't give you fly throughs, but he shows the options available as well as several different maps he generated with map previews. You'll see lakes, rivers, roads connecting cities, and various setting combos like a ton of lakes, or various City sizes.

It takes so little time to generate the maps I'll roll several different ones before deciding on a keeper we'll play for several months.

The biggest issue I see with his maps are sometimes blending between poi ground and the generated terrain, but that could be because some user pois are huge, like the theme park with the giant Minions. It's like 8 city blocks squared.

Thanks for looking into it. It could be a HUGE game changer for 7 days, and many of us only play a18 using nitrogen worlds now.

 
One of the main reasons we switched to height map for rwg was so someone could make something awesome, it isn't generated on the fly and cost CPU. Its unified with how static maps work tech wise so zero issues now, other than aesthetics. I thought it was just a bunch of sliders and used our random gen, so does it create everything using new code? At the end of the day the engine runs from images now, so someone could bake a world with whatever software they wanted and it would work.
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No, so what it does is using the user controlled sliders, creates a custom height map using math and stamps, like yours does, then roads, cities and towns generating the .png files etc that the game uses for worlds.

What I /personally/ use it for, is it allows me to use my own height map (that I make in Photoshop or Gaia) and then still add roads, pois and whatnot to it.

That is an important feature, because it lets me decide (using image masks) where I do and don't want towns and cities. That allows me to use its Rwg to fill in the majority, and then I can go back and add specific features I want.

 
There is only so much you can do though. Cut one head off, two grow back. Players who spend that much time learning exploits can easily NOT use them so that they can have a bigger challenge.
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In single player.

 
Something is wrong with your PC, it takes 10-15 minutes at most for me to generate an 8k map.
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2 hours is a long time, but there is nothing "wrong" with his PC, it just is not very powerful. The #1 thing for me in Nitrogen is the map generation time, which he also says takes only a few minutes for him. So... 2 hours or a few minutes, there's room for improvement.

I can generate a map in 2 minutes on Nitrogen, and if I don't like the map generated, I generate another and another etc. After 10... I'd like to not have taken 2.5 hours of time. If you're always happy with the first map you get, then I guess you'll never see the issues others are seeing.

 
Using a laptop (which is where I do all my coding and mod development), it takes 15-20 mins to generate an 8k map (i7-4710MQ, 32GB RAM, GTX 980M, 1TB NVME).

Nitrogen takes about 4 minutes, with better POI distribution (in terms of amounts/how many on the map), better hills and better roads.

The only thing I DON'T like about it, is it doesn't obey POI biome restrictions. So the allowedbiomes property in the prefabs XML file is ignored and they're just put where ever.

 
Aren`t the main features of Random Generated World be to explore and discover, without already know where everything is located and go for it ? ;)

P.S. I know, previewer is important, though, taking advantage of already seen map breaks a bit of the hell out there.

 
I seem to get fatigued and discourage when I have to start from ground one every time I make a new map or an update forces me to make a new map. Is there any rpg aspect that we can have that would carry over long term character progression from map to map. Maybe to have a custom mode and an official/default mode to make this possible. Think of it like how Borderlands does saves.

 
Aren`t the main features of Random Generated World be to explore and discover, without already know where everything is located and go for it ? ;)
P.S. I know, previewer is important, though, taking advantage of already seen map breaks a bit of the hell out there.
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Yeah play wise but for testing and evaluation, you need to see several examples of what a generator can actually do. I don't dig into details when I preview a play world, I jut look at things like biome diversity, size and general placement, as well as number and size of cities.

Just seeing rivers again and real lakes felt SO much better again! (and having to navigate around them vehicle wise), or building bridges across them is something I forgot I missed.

I wasn't overly fond of the plains, but it added needed variety to what I discovered going over the next hill, and as much as I hated the overly loud frog sounds, I really miss the marsh biome because again it added variety.

 
I seem to get fatigued and discourage when I have to start from ground one every time I make a new map or an update forces me to make a new map. Is there any rpg aspect that we can have that would carry over long term character progression from map to map. Maybe to have a custom mode and an official/default mode to make this possible. Think of it like how Borderlands does saves.
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I'm the opposite because early game has the most survival challenges now. I die more the first week than the rest of a 70 day game.

 
I don't think we're going to go there, after the 50th mining helmet from a worker you will be disappointed I think. Random is better.
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Each zombie type could still have some ‘flavor’ to their dropped loot - you just have to include some more widely useful stuff, too. What I do is make a “generic zombie backpack” loot list, and then each type of zombie drops a backpack whose contents are split between generic loot and their unique loot.

For instance, the utility/construction worker zombie has a 25% chance of generic loot (per roll - the pack has 1-3 items), and a 75% chance of dropping mining helmets, forged iron, tools, or whatever other ‘flavor’ items he has. The percentages vary based on how unique or ‘flavorful’ the zombie is. Zombie Boe and others with no visible specialty have 100% generic loot.

I will say maintaining this has been the biggest time expenditure for ComSenMod, but it’s been worth it. Prioritizing nurse zombies when you wanted/needed medicine was really fun!

 
Can we see some pictures of the new lightning ? Are your gameplays close? What is the percentage of the Hype train bar?
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No stuff is changing a lot yet, so no point.

We did get deco on slopes going, looks great, thanks Faatal!

 
As a suggestion, I'd like to see more practical use for collecting exorbitant amounts of feathers. While they are rather hard to come by early on and used to craft arrows almost exclusively, I find most of the bows obsolete once I am only a few days in and end up having upwards of a couple hundred of them, rendering the crafting of large amounts of arrows more or less useless in the long run and with it, feather collection. Additionally, they are only otherwise good for the puffer coat which is a fairly common drop, and unless I am hurting for currency, I have no use to craft more than one anyways. Could we maybe see a recipe to make something like a wing suit? something you can deploy at high altitude jumps to allow you to briefly soar for a while without taking fall damage as long as you land properly? It would be a great way to invest, say, 500 or so feathers, plus some leather (20?) , wood (20?), and a hefty amount of glue or tape to fix them to the apparatus (~30-50.) It would give us a reason to hoard them while upgrading skills, maybe stick it in a high tier science skill, probably under the vehicles and transportation type skill. For those of us who don't really put much into athletic skills but still want to get around faster than otherwise possible in game. It could also come with its own upgrades, such as pockets for extra storage, a jet booster which you can fill with a small amount of gas to cruise a little further and faster, or even insulation elements to allow better heating or cooling while deployed.

 
An interesting Nirtogen Map:

Here, a circular island quickly made in 5 minutes, in NitroGen.Its a 10000 x 10000 map, so quite a long island. (with a mysterious island in the middle that is almost impossible to reach)

There is a very long road circling the island (something like 25km long), so its a nice long trip with the motorcycle. I have also added some mountains to make the map more interesting.

circleisland2.jpg


circleisland.jpg
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That ring world looks pretty cool. 25km of road would be epic. Now if only it could ascend vertically so it would be reminiscent of Halo... ;)

 
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