teragon maps

[spud42]

no idea, i didnt write this just trying to use it. 

sea level is set to 20 in teragon, if the land the river cuts through is at 100 then you are going to have a 80 m drop to water.

there is no river map to adjust as far as i know teragon randomly generates them and where the cities are and how big. each generation seems different even if you dont change anything. maybe maptools could edit the river banks but 80 m is a whole lot of wide smoothing that would look weird. For now i am generating with no rivers. maybe later there will be more control on them or maybe i need to learn how to adjust the generation . I just dont know. 

I have been generating 10K maps because i like to travel and explore but they take a long time to generate to preview and thats before the roads are calculated.

I have wilderness POI's set to a max of 500 but for some reason in the last 3 maps i generated i have 0 poi's .  so thats over 30 minutes to generate a map i dont like another 30 minutes to figure out what to tweak, watch brads videos again etc.

and still no wilderness pois in the render just finished.  i tried Brads idea of lassoing an area in gimp and filling it with a level. i got more and bigger cities but no pois in the wilderness.....  the huge flat areas look a bit weird on the map but probably ok in game.

 

[spud42]

the top 5 cities, so the big 2 and north are generated on an area that was lassoed ans filled to 1 specific colour grey. you can clearly see an edge to them. There are going to be vertical cliffs  from surrounding natural ground to the artifical flat area. A feather brush to the edges might smooth it out a bit more. but the bottom 2 cities were generated on areas that were made using the smudge tool in GIMP. they blend in better and seem more natural.

these are just rough drafts of a world and in cleaning up areas for towns to generate i have mucked up the coastline in many places. 

A better height map capture is required or a better resource than tangram heightmapper is required. i suppose i would get more detail if i had a 4K monitor because essentially you get a screen capture and then have to scale it up.

But why no wilderness poi's ????   the Tassie map almost has too many and this one has 0. at least i havent found any. on the upside the road generation was a lot quicker without all the dirt roads...

 

[Riamus]

 Thanks for the info, Riamus. I'll try some of those things.

Would you have a copy of the Python script you mention? I'm not on the Discord. (For some reason they want uniquely identifying personal information in order to join the server. Info that would give them my full name, address, location, etc. That's not going to happen. I'm not doxxing myself to Discord who already have a sketchy relationship with privacy.)

Perhaps you could repost for me some of the more valuable info from that site. That would be great.

Thanks a lot!

Par

Here is the link for the Python script to create a POI Property List file for use with Teragon.  Credit goes to grumpybeard.

https://github.com/grumpygabe/TeragonPOIParser

no idea, i didnt write this just trying to use it. 

sea level is set to 20 in teragon, if the land the river cuts through is at 100 then you are going to have a 80 m drop to water.

there is no river map to adjust as far as i know teragon randomly generates them and where the cities are and how big. each generation seems different even if you dont change anything. maybe maptools could edit the river banks but 80 m is a whole lot of wide smoothing that would look weird. For now i am generating with no rivers. maybe later there will be more control on them or maybe i need to learn how to adjust the generation . I just dont know. 

I have been generating 10K maps because i like to travel and explore but they take a long time to generate to preview and thats before the roads are calculated.

I have wilderness POI's set to a max of 500 but for some reason in the last 3 maps i generated i have 0 poi's .  so thats over 30 minutes to generate a map i dont like another 30 minutes to figure out what to tweak, watch brads videos again etc.

and still no wilderness pois in the render just finished.  i tried Brads idea of lassoing an area in gimp and filling it with a level. i got more and bigger cities but no pois in the wilderness.....  the huge flat areas look a bit weird on the map but probably ok in game.

Sea level doesn't seem to have any impact on anything right now.  You want to adjust the flat water map that I mentioned.  That is how you will raise or lower water levels.  You can also lower the base terrain level, which will also help cut down those differences if you prefer.  The rivers should generally follow the terrain and stick to lower terrain areas, though I haven't done serious testing as my computer isn't great and generation takes much longer for me so I only consider adding a river if I really like a map and feel a river would be good.  For me, the rivers crossing the entire map isn't ideal either.  I'd prefer to have shorter rivers, but that isn't currently an option with Teragon.

If you are getting no POIs, then there is likely a setting giving you problems.  I'd recommend posting your preset in the Discord discussion channel and ask for someone to look at it to see if they can find the problem.  You can also grab someone else's preset from Discord to see how their settings work.  As far as flattening an area, sure, you can do that, but I've made very large cities without any need for that (with elevation and flatness thresholds set well, Teragon will adjust terrain to make them fit) and it doesn't really impact POIs that much.

 

[Riamus]

Here are 4 maps I've made.  Only two were generated with roads, but they give you some basic examples of some variety of maps you can make.  As you can tell, I was playing around with large mountains for most of these.

Note that three of these were done with low POI settings.  The last was done with higher settings and was meant to test certain settings, so it isn't a map I'd actually use, but it does show what you can get for POI in Teragon without using any other software.  No need to flatten anything in gimp or other software.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I just realized something, what about traders? Are they generated at all?

I am a capitalist and need my commerce, so without that (hopefully added later) I will just wait.

 

[spud42]

@ bobrpggamer  yes , they generate in cities.

@ Riamus   are you importing height maps from elsewhere or the generated ones from teragon? I have not had any issues with teragon height maps just the ones i import.

 

[spud42]

Acceptable. Dublin is huge. there is a city near Cork. Derry is a decent size. no Belfast but there is a large "settelment" just west of it..lol

No rivers. they cut the map too much and too deep. link to download map below.

http://gofile.me/6ZBka/ZHgC3D7dC

 

[bobrpggamer]

Here are 4 maps I've made.  Only two were generated with roads, but they give you some basic examples of some variety of maps you can make.  As you can tell, I was playing around with large mountains for most of these.

Note that three of these were done with low POI settings.  The last was done with higher settings and was meant to test certain settings, so it isn't a map I'd actually use, but it does show what you can get for POI in Teragon without using any other software.  No need to flatten anything in gimp or other software.

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What are your POI settings? You have generated a lot of poi's and large cities, that I could not myself with my settings.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Instead of map uploads and downloads is it possible to upload .ini files attached to posts and get the exact same results.

 

[spud42]

i dont think it would help because i am using a custom height map. i play with the settings and the height map to get something i like. the map of Ireland took all day today. i downoaded the heightmap twice from Tangram heightmapper because i stuffed up the first one and realised that if i go f11 or full screen then on my monitor i get a 1920 x 1200 image. which i have to crop to 1200x 1200.  then resize to 8192 x 8192 in this case. 

if i had a 4K monitor i would get a higher resolution and have to scale up less. I also tweak the curves in GIMP to compress the low to high range. 

I had to generate about 10 or 12 maps before i was happy to go on with generating the roads.  

For a quick from memory guide.

i adjusted the set sea level as well as the flat water table. i adjusted the height limits for the biomes, i adjusted the wilderness poi's to 500 left the min town size to 3 and set the max town size to 60. adjusted the settings for slope allowed to build on whatever that setting was.  Then kept generating maps. i do not believe that any two generations in a row are the same. so even if you had my settings and the height map i dont think we would get the same map. that is also the glory of fractals which a lot of the random generation is based on.

using the settings as discussed in Brads video tutorials i have not had any issues with basic Teragon generated maps. Just take your time to check the preview to see if there are enough wilderness POI's for your liking. remember the more wilderness POI's there are the longer the road generation takes.

for reference i have a Ryzen 5800X 16GB ram and run from a NVMe SSD 1 TB. the 8K previwes were taking around 15 minutes each but the final render with roads takes over 1 1/2 Hrs.  roads seem to only use 1 core. you can watch on performance monitor as it stops on 1 core and switches to another. 

 

[Riamus]

I just realized something, what about traders? Are they generated at all?

I am a capitalist and need my commerce, so without that (hopefully added later) I will just wait.

Yes, they are, but only 3 of the vanilla traders for some reason.  Bob and Hugh don't currently generate.  Hopefully that will be fixed soon.

@ Riamus   are you importing height maps from elsewhere or the generated ones from teragon? I have not had any issues with teragon height maps just the ones i import.

Oh, I missed that.  This is fully within Teragon.  If there is an issue with imported height maps, I'd suggest posting the info to the bugs section in Discord so Pille can look into it and maybe fix it.

What are your POI settings? You have generated a lot of poi's and large cities, that I could not myself with my settings.

Spawn Limit 500, Flatness Threshold 25, Altitude Deviation 15.  Towns are the same thresholds, Max towns 25, Min town size (currently doesn't do anything) 4, Max town size 250, Min town distance 5 (I've also used 1 and even 0 for closer towns), Min water distance 1, Max altitude 200.  Leave Tile size alone as 150 is the size of tiles and changing that will mess up your towns.  As I mentioned, other things play a part as well, including how smooth/rough your slopes are and how your biomes are set up.

Instead of map uploads and downloads is it possible to upload .ini files attached to posts and get the exact same results.

Yes, you can use someone else's presets.  You may have to correct any paths so they point to the right place on your computer, but it works.  I don't know about rivers or roads, but the maps themselves generate the same each time.  See the two below that I did last night.  I ran the first and liked it and wanted to add roads, but didn't want side roads, but they were still enabled.  I stopped generation so I could disable side roads and then re-ran it and you can see the maps are identical other than the roads/bridges.  And, yes, bridges are currently bugged.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Yes, they are, but only 3 of the vanilla traders for some reason.  Bob and Hugh don't currently generate.  Hopefully that will be fixed soon.

Oh, I missed that.  This is fully within Teragon.  If there is an issue with imported height maps, I'd suggest posting the info to the bugs section in Discord so Pille can look into it and maybe fix it.

Spawn Limit 500, Flatness Threshold 25, Altitude Deviation 15.  Towns are the same thresholds, Max towns 25, Min town size (currently doesn't do anything) 4, Max town size 250, Min town distance 5 (I've also used 1 and even 0 for closer towns), Min water distance 1, Max altitude 200.  Leave Tile size alone as 150 is the size of tiles and changing that will mess up your towns.  As I mentioned, other things play a part as well, including how smooth/rough your slopes are and how your biomes are set up.

Yes, you can use someone else's presets.  You may have to correct any paths so they point to the right place on your computer, but it works.  I don't know about rivers or roads, but the maps themselves generate the same each time.  See the two below that I did last night.  I ran the first and liked it and wanted to add roads, but didn't want side roads, but they were still enabled.  I stopped generation so I could disable side roads and then re-ran it and you can see the maps are identical other than the roads/bridges.  And, yes, bridges are currently bugged.

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Thank you. Using your poi settings did the trick, I wished brad would have covered that.

Edit: It seems that lowering the Flatness Threshold to 15, Altitude Deviation 8 works better with lower overall hieghtmaps.

This program is great with a lot of features but sometimes the settings do not make a lot of sense, to me anyway.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Does anyone else get random CTD after preview, this has happened 6 times so far.

 

[Riamus]

Does anyone else get random CTD after preview, this has happened 6 times so far.

Incorrect settings are usually the cause.  Missing necessary map files, such as regions can cause it.  Settings causing because values can cause it.  Too large maps can cause it (stay to 12k or less for best results).  Too many tiles can cause it (try not to have to many large cities).  Other things can cause it.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Here's my first one complete with erosion, rivers and connected roads:

Problem is that the roads are not complete and for the time taken it should be. Its also flat as a pancake and as mentioned the river banks are to steep, so if you run your vehicle in one, good luck getting it out. I also used wasteland as a low biome at 11 high so the river banks show the wasteland on the sides which is weird looking. another thing is the towns are carved out a couple of blocks lower than the terrain which also looks bizarre.

I think these things will be fixed and some more testing would be in order.

I know that the flatness and river banks could be fixed by editing the hieghtmap, so that's possible to fix. The  problem for me is I am terrible at airbrushing with a mouse so it would take a lot of time to do right, I wish I had a wacom tablet to airbrush.

The multitude of exportable layers in terragon also makes editing things much easier, I think the roadmap is also editable which is cool. So unlike MapToolz the roads may be baked into the final map without trees, boulders and grass on the asphalt.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Does anyone also get AV, Firewall popup on the newest update. I had to cancel the update due to this.

I am looking forward to a few more updates and to fix the warning in Norton, I will run the program in a VM. I tried this already but It was crashing and I think I need more memory in my VM (possibly make a new VM with the latest windows 10) to try and do a complete map.

 

[Shvonder]

Does anyone also get AV, Firewall popup on the newest update. I had to cancel the update due to this.

I didnt, my antivirus said nothing.

Im using own heightmaps, and hope further updates will fix placing single POIs in wilderness. Without them map is looking kinda weird.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I didnt, my antivirus said nothing.

Im using own heightmaps, and hope further updates will fix placing single POIs in wilderness. Without them map is looking kinda weird.

I added 6 region poi commands in the command quo, each with different settings and still got a small amount of POIs compared to others I have seen.

I hope the roads and the river bridges gets fixed first and hopefully a good tutorial on adding wilderness POI's. The river banks can be edited with an image editor, so that's fine now I guess. Or I could, like yourself use an external heightmap and carve the rivers in myself.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I have a formula that may work to get the roads correct without the long processing.

1) Create a terrain heightmap you like (or import your own) and edit it in an editor of choice if you like.
2) Remove all terrain generators from the command quo and add "import heightmap" instead.

3) Jump straight to creating Cities and POIs using whatever settings to get what you want.
4) export the preview map.
4) Do incomplete roads (the fastest) and export the road map. (this is to see the colors scheme that the roadmap uses for gravel and asphalt, if unlike MapToolz.

5) using a transparent layer over the preview map in an image editor, connect the roads to POIs with a brush (more likely the pencil tool for exact colors) with the same color the road map uses for gravel and asphalt.
5) remove the roads creation command from the command quo and add in its place "import road map".

This should bake the roads into the map properly. Its just and Idea, I have not tried it yet.

Its like rolling your D&D character and choosing skills or spells. You always re roll you character until you get at least one 18 for an attribute, and yes it does require patience. Doing the constant trial and error or rolling characters in a RPG, is one of the only things I have patience for.

this is a reply from Tallman Brad Gameplay:

Me:

Could you make a tutorial that increases wilderness POIs. I have 5 region POI settings with different values in the Que and I still cannot seem to figure out how to get the proper amount I am looking for. Its seems backwards each time I add a new setting.

Him:

I would love to do a tutorial on this but after many hours testing different settings and sharing them with others I can't find a reliable setting that will work for everyone. The shape/height of your map plays a huge part in how it places wilderness. Settings that work for 1 map might not work for another. However, instead of 15, 8 (whatever default is) for deviation and altitude try values of 8, 1. Or 30,1. Lowering the second value has given me very good results in occasion. I have three instances of 'create region pois' in my current preset. Each with different versions of those numbers (16,8 30,1 8,1) but also using [random] as the seed value. If you're using CP you are very unlikely to get many wilderness pois due to the settings in the poi property file. This will most likely all change with an update soon. I hope something here helps you a little. Lots to experiment with in this software.

 

[Par_A]

Here is the link for the Python script to create a POI Property List file for use with Teragon.  Credit goes to grumpybeard.

https://github.com/grumpygabe/TeragonPOIParser

Sea level doesn't seem to have any impact on anything right now.  You want to adjust the flat water map that I mentioned.  That is how you will raise or lower water levels.  You can also lower the base terrain level, which will also help cut down those differences if you prefer.  The rivers should generally follow the terrain and stick to lower terrain areas, though I haven't done serious testing as my computer isn't great and generation takes much longer for me so I only consider adding a river if I really like a map and feel a river would be good.  For me, the rivers crossing the entire map isn't ideal either.  I'd prefer to have shorter rivers, but that isn't currently an option with Teragon.

If you are getting no POIs, then there is likely a setting giving you problems.  I'd recommend posting your preset in the Discord discussion channel and ask for someone to look at it to see if they can find the problem.  You can also grab someone else's preset from Discord to see how their settings work.  As far as flattening an area, sure, you can do that, but I've made very large cities without any need for that (with elevation and flatness thresholds set well, Teragon will adjust terrain to make them fit) and it doesn't really impact POIs that much.

Thanks a lot for that link, Riamus.  Let me check that out.