teragon maps

[Riamus]

 Wow that lots of wilderness POIs but my UK map & square islands map still lack wilderness POIs & too many Old West town, I already max 1000 spawn none worked.

You might be able to get rid of old west towns by striking out the old west line the Town Property List with //

The default:

// town name; min tile count; max tile count;center:tile_type1,tile_type1,...;outskirt:tile_type1,tile_type2,...

// tile types -> commercial, countryresidential, countrytown, downtown, industrial, oldwest, residential, rural

//

//

regular_town;7;any;center:downtown,commercial,industrial;outskirt:rural,residential,countrytown

small_town;3;8;outskirt:residential,countrytown

oldwest_town;1;4;outskirtldwest

To:

// town name; min tile count; max tile count;center:tile_type1,tile_type1,...;outskirt:tile_type1,tile_type2,...

// tile types -> commercial, countryresidential, countrytown, downtown, industrial, oldwest, residential, rural

//

//

regular_town;7;any;center:downtown,commercial,industrial;outskirt:rural,residential,countrytown

small_town;3;8;outskirt:residential,countrytown

//oldwest_town;1;4;outskirtldwest

Its worth a try, but may cause an error or CTD.

With POIs its all about the last 2 settings.

Flatness Threshhold

Altitude Deviation Threshold

You could have 25000 spawn limit and either get a CTD or the same as 300 spawn limit.

The best thing to do is to add 10 Create Region POIs with different last 2 setting (20 Flatness and 20 Altitude works best for me) to get as much as you can. I get around 50 this way and if I get to many its a CTD for some reason.

If you don't want old west, you can comment it out as described (yes, it works fine).  Or, if you like old west POI, but don't like small towns, you can adjust the min and max sizes on that same line (the 1 and 4).  The version that fixes POIs isn't released yet.  You'd need the test version from discord to try it.  Once you have the fix, you won't have issues with POI placement.  As you can see, there is some space around towns, but otherwise, they can appear pretty much anywhere as long as you altitude and flatness aren't less than maybe about 5, which would limit placement on steep terrain.

       Thought I might take advantage of some "Group Therapy", as the previous pages here worked some wonders on my mental state, thanks to you good folks.
       I did have some measure of success today, after following Brad's Terrain and Big Cities vid, making perhaps a dozen various sized maps that look "ok".  I still have a few hurdles, though - one of which is, in spite of doing a 'desert - forest - forest - forest - burnt forest' selection in the Expert\Create Env. Biome Map section - I still get snow and wasteland areas showing in the map as well. How on earth do I create a three-biome map??? 
        Secondly - and this might help someone else - I was getting crashes too often, so I dug a bit, and first finding it only happened when using the 'CP48.6 All inc Vanilla.ini', and then found it only occurred when the 'Create Towns' command happened.  This calls the prefab lists, and prefabs file (I guess) and so, knowing I had ZZTong's tents prefab in the Mods folder - also the Waterland mod there - I considered there could be a conflict happening, as they both have their own Config folders containing biomes.xml and rgwmixer.xml files - and that just might clash with the same in the CP48.6 folder - and maybe Teragon, too, as it does its build. Anyway - I pulled both out, and the problem disappeared.
          A third issue is more of an annoyance, as I've always put lots of color dots along the margins between each biome in the biomes.png when manually creating a map. The effect is very natural-looking, and I'm glad to see it in Teragon: however - I think it only appears when using the default presets - The last map today was the 'giant cities', using the CP48.6 CP preset, and that came out as sharp-edged blob biomes, with no blending whatsoever: have I missed something? "Diffuse biomes transition' is selected where it occurs, but I might have missed it somewhere? Ideas?

Thanks as always, 

pj

You shouldn't get more biomes than are listed in your environmental biome command. Double check that you do not have more than one environmental command active and that you don't have a noise biome command active.  If it still won't work, put you preset on discord and I can check when I get home.

If it is crashing with CP on the Create Town command, update your CP as there was an error that was fixed in CP a day or two ago that was causing that.  Having multiple mods is fine.

Diffuse biomes requires use of environmental biomes and it sounds like you are using noise biomes.

 

[Evil_Geoff]

A third issue is more of an annoyance, as I've always put lots of color dots along the margins between each biome in the biomes.png when manually creating a map. The effect is very natural-looking, and I'm glad to see it in Teragon: however - I think it only appears when using the default presets - The last map today was the 'giant cities', using the CP48.6 CP preset, and that came out as sharp-edged blob biomes, with no blending whatsoever: have I missed something? "Diffuse biomes transition' is selected where it occurs, but I might have missed it somewhere? Ideas?

Make sure Create Environmental Biomes is enabled, make sure Create Noise Biomes is disabled, or removed from the command queue.

In the Create Environmental Biomes  options there is a Diffuse biome transitions box, make sure that is checked, and you can adjust the diffusion range.  6 is default, I was using 2 (I like a sharper transition, but not the stark "on this side of the edge I am freezing, and on that side I am suffering heatstroke"...)

 

[bobrpggamer]

       Thought I might take advantage of some "Group Therapy", as the previous pages here worked some wonders on my mental state, thanks to you good folks.
       I did have some measure of success today, after following Brad's Terrain and Big Cities vid, making perhaps a dozen various sized maps that look "ok".  I still have a few hurdles, though - one of which is, in spite of doing a 'desert - forest - forest - forest - burnt forest' selection in the Expert\Create Env. Biome Map section - I still get snow and wasteland areas showing in the map as well. How on earth do I create a three-biome map??? 
        Secondly - and this might help someone else - I was getting crashes too often, so I dug a bit, and first finding it only happened when using the 'CP48.6 All inc Vanilla.ini', and then found it only occurred when the 'Create Towns' command happened.  This calls the prefab lists, and prefabs file (I guess) and so, knowing I had ZZTong's tents prefab in the Mods folder - also the Waterland mod there - I considered there could be a conflict happening, as they both have their own Config folders containing biomes.xml and rgwmixer.xml files - and that just might clash with the same in the CP48.6 folder - and maybe Teragon, too, as it does its build. Anyway - I pulled both out, and the problem disappeared.
          A third issue is more of an annoyance, as I've always put lots of color dots along the margins between each biome in the biomes.png when manually creating a map. The effect is very natural-looking, and I'm glad to see it in Teragon: however - I think it only appears when using the default presets - The last map today was the 'giant cities', using the CP48.6 CP preset, and that came out as sharp-edged blob biomes, with no blending whatsoever: have I missed something? "Diffuse biomes transition' is selected where it occurs, but I might have missed it somewhere? Ideas?

Thanks as always, 

pj

         
        

 

Can you upload a screenshot of you complete settings in the expert section. This will help guys figure what you did wrong.  If you can use gimp this should be easy.

Come to think of it, could you copy and paste the text in your .ini file. You should use the spoiler function for this because it may be 100 or more lines.

 

[bobrpggamer]

This program is like like rolling character attributes in RPG games, you just keep rolling till you get a 18 int for your mage and 18 strength for your fighter and so on, except it takes longer.

It also reminds me of early 3D graphics renders, although those could take the better part of the day.

Does anyone know about these programs:

https://planetside.co.uk/

https://info.e-onsoftware.com/vue/overview

I always wanted these since they came out in the mid 2000s, but they are very expensive.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I think I know what takes so long to create roads.

Whether or not you strike out the bridges with // and turn off all the prefabs in the advanced tab, the program still makes bridges. I have found bridge prefabs in the prefabs.ini and if you look at this you can see the program placing bridge prefabs:

4 QPoint(375,563) QPoint(2213,750)

Number of road POIs 37616

Time drew road (ms) 16

Number of road positions 400039

Gathered road locations (ms) 80

Apply Laplacian smoothing 400039 11753

moving average took (ms) 2145

filterLaplacianSmoothing

laplacian smoothing took (ms) 20419

Number of roadPaths 6

posStart/posEnd QPoint(-1969,3431) QPoint(-3019,1181)

Initialized search grid in (milliseconds) 0

createSearchGrid in (aStarSearch) (milliseconds) 19051

Start vertex: 788 2138

Goal vertex: 525 1575

Generated path from 3151 , 8551 to 2101 , 6301 in (milliseconds) 32694

Path length 5801

What else could be a road POI?

Here is a screenshot I took after finding bridges in my map after I turned them off completely.

23,962 bridge prefabs.

Hopefully this will be addressed in new updates, because if you do not want bridges you should not have them created when making roads.

I just tested the roads on a waterless map and there are no road POIs:

4 QPoint(713,713) QPoint(750,375)

Number of road POIs 0

Time drew road (ms) 5

Number of road positions 78031

Gathered road locations (ms) 19

Apply Laplacian smoothing 78031 2147

moving average took (ms) 371

filterLaplacianSmoothing

laplacian smoothing took (ms) 323

Number of roadPaths 4

posStart/posEnd QPoint(803,803) QPoint(-1147,953)

Initialized search grid in (milliseconds) 0

createSearchGrid in (aStarSearch) (milliseconds) 696

Start vertex: 713 713

Goal vertex: 225 750

Generated path from 2851 , 2851 to 901 , 3001 in (milliseconds) 1357

Path length 5103

Every time you render a map with water, no mater if you strike out rivers with // and turn them off in the advanced tab, you generate bridge POIs anyway, which are the road POIs in the console. Whether or not you choose complete or incomplete roads you generate bridge POIs as well

 

[paulj_3]

        09:00   Phew!   @zztong   "Or, do you mean Teragon crashes?"   Yes. A Windows message pops up when Teragon begins the Town or POI creation phase, saying that Teragon has stopped working, and it occurred to me that my 7Days, having three rgwmixers in the Mods folder, there might (somehow) be a conflict. I inhibited Town Creation initially, and it then happened as soon as the first POI phase began. I then inhibited both the Town and the first POI creation: it bombed on the second POI. I repeated that for the rest of the POI's, and the result was the same. Upon removal of the (actually three) prefab mods - Teragon completed the next map without issue, so I assumed that was correct. At that time I wasn't aware of the issue being fixed by the CP group ( @Riamus "update your CP as there was an error that was fixed in CP a day or two ago".  Thank you, though this raised another issue - (not your problem) - attempting to log in to the CP/Teragon Discord was thwarted by the verification process: neither my wife or I have cell phones.... Duh!
           Finally - biomes are now ok. Thank you, all - I did not know about the Create Noise Biomes command.  I'll go back into the weeds now. ('till the next mess. . . )

pj

 

[spud42]

Here's another fun map to show the POI improvements.  4k map with max POI of 2500.  I'm sure we don't hit 2500 here, but it definitely shows that it's far easier to get POI now.

View attachment 27294

i would absolutely hate to see how long it would take to generate roads/paths to all those POI's.  I know this was extreme to show that the POI's in the wilderness have been fixed. but Damn thats a few days of work there..lol

 

[bobrpggamer]

To not add the bridge POIs during road making (if you do not want bridges) remove the 2 folders here: Teragon\data\game\

Install_World

POIGroups

Leave the main.ttw file, of course.

Road creation is way faster now. Its been a little less than an hour with main roads at 43% with complete roads selected. The one I did a few days ago took 56 hours.

 

[Riamus]

Just to note, Pille knows about the issue with bridges being included even when disabled.  It will be fixed when he has a chance to do so.

 

[Riamus]

I have started the creation of documentation for Teragon that can be used while waiting for official documentation.  You can find the link for downloads in the Teragon Unofficial Documentation thread in the Mods>Discussion and Requests forum.  It isn't complete, but it has a lot of information in there.  I'll update it as time permits.  Any questions or comments, just let me know.

It also includes a Tips and Tricks section that you may find useful.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Here is my latest 10K map:

10K

Erosion at 80 height
Shallow rivers
Somewhat evenly distributed towns
No old west towns
Fewer river branches (2)
More Gun Store, Schools and the like with the large blue strip tiles
2 Bobs Boars / Carls's Corn
Boatloads of Skyscrapers and Tier 4 and Tier 5 POIs (although you would need a very fast PC to get even 60FPS in the towns.

And an 8K

Erosion at 80 height
Shallow rivers
Somewhat evenly distributed towns
No old west towns
Fewer river branches (2)
A few Gun Stores, A Schools and the like with the large blue strip tiles
1 Bobs Boars / Carls's Corn
Boatloads of Skyscrapers and Tier 4 and Tier 5 POIs (although you would need a very fast PC to get even 60FPS in the towns.

I can upload these and the .ini files if anyone is interested.

I have yet to edit the spawnpoints.xml. I spawned on the 8K in town in a backyard of a house.

 

[paulj_3]

Sure thing, Bob: I'm still enjoying your earlier two, but cannot create anything approaching the perfection of your maps. Thank you.
pj

 

[bobrpggamer]

Sure thing, Bob: I'm still enjoying your earlier two, but cannot create anything approaching the perfection of your maps. Thank you.
pj

Thank you. I will add these to onedrive with the Ini files. They are uploaded the link is: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aql8M7KJmixdaDckKanWH8Agyh8?e=Hb6fSS

I have time for trial and error, that's my thing. I have spent 8 or more hours a day fooling around with teragon. Like most people, you more than likely have a life, and do no have the time to spare with trial and error like I have.

If there is a biome mix you prefer let me know and I will add it to a map and upload it to you.

Make sure you load my presets so you can edit them to your liking. Like changing biome settings or whatever. The towns are random no matter what the seed you use, so If you get a different city setup than what you want, just stop at the pause after making the cities and try again. I have the pause right before POI placement so you can continue or stop before doing POIs. I also have Update display after roadmaking and then pause the sideroad making to make sure the roads look right. You'll see what I mean if you load my presets.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Anyone else having a hard time with 12K maps? I get CTD with a lot of towns, but they are placed far away from each other. I also get an error in the console that stops all processes and I have to exit the program.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Just to note, Pille knows about the issue with bridges being included even when disabled.  It will be fixed when he has a chance to do so.

With the new update or release, do you think that 12K maps will be more stable.

Also seeing how you know Pille can you suggest a couple of things?

I would love to see:

1. Bridges section in expert with setting that can control the length of the bridges. Like max 20 to just build on rivers and not lakes and not multiple spawns right next to each other.

2. Biome Min/Max setting. Like setting desert to 20 to 25, and setting wasteland 25 to 30 and forest 30 to 80 and snow 80 to 256.

I am not going to do discord or I would ask myself.

One last thing, tell him to get a PayPal account so I can donate to him. His buy me a coffee uses credit cards and I am not giving that out to anyone.

 

[Riamus]

With the new update or release, do you think that 12K maps will be more stable.

Also seeing how you know Pille can you suggest a couple of things?

I would love to see:

1. Bridges section in expert with setting that can control the length of the bridges. Like max 20 to just build on rivers and not lakes and not multiple spawns right next to each other.

2. Biome Min/Max setting. Like setting desert to 20 to 25, and setting wasteland 25 to 30 and forest 30 to 80 and snow 80 to 256.

I am not going to do discord or I would ask myself.

One last thing, tell him to get a PayPal account so I can donate to him. His buy me a coffee uses credit cards and I am not giving that out to anyone.

I haven't heard too many people with trouble on 12k maps.  It's the maps larger than that that are the difficulty.  If you're crashing on towns, there is likely a reason other than just map size.  If you are making towns that cover most of a 12k map, this is probably the cause of the crashes.  From past tests others have done, there appears to be an issue with too many tiles on a map.  As far as when larger maps (including 12k) are more stable, it depends on what isn't stable.  One of the biggest issues in larger maps are roads and those aren't going to be in the next release, but are on the radar.  The next release is more stable is some cases due to the improvements to POI, but that's not a common crash problem.

Bridges are something that will be worked on and improved beyond just fixing the bugs with them.  I think Pille wants to worry about fixing them before thinking about any changes to them.  But lengths are something that have been talked about.

Biome heights are already there.  The min value is just the max value of the lower setting. There can't be overlap or gaps, so there is no need for a min value.  If you set Desert max to 25, Wasteland to 30, Forest to 80, and Snow to 256, you get the same thing as your example.  The only difference is your example has nothing from under 20, which isn't valid.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I haven't heard too many people with trouble on 12k maps.  It's the maps larger than that that are the difficulty.  As far as when larger maps (including 12k) are more stable, it depends on what isn't stable.  One of the biggest issues in larger maps are roads and those aren't going to be in the next release, but are on the radar.  The next release is more stable is some cases due to the improvements to POI, but that's not a common crash problem.

Bridges are something that will be worked on and improved beyond just fixing the bugs with them.  I think Pille wants to worry about fixing them before thinking about any changes to them.  But lengths are something that have been talked about.

Biome heights are already there.  The min value is just the max value of the lower setting. There can't be overlap or gaps, so there is no need for a min value.  If you set Desert max to 25, Wasteland to 30, Forest to 80, and Snow to 256, you get the same thing as your example.  The only difference is your example has nothing from under 20, which isn't valid.

I kind of see the biome thing. Thank you for explaining this to me.

I kind of want a plateau for a wasteland section with an edited heightmap. Like a somewhat flat area that I want the wasteland to be in and finding the exact grayscale value for 30-35 in the heightmap to edit in Photoshop.

Well I just thought of how easy it would be. just make a 30-35 flat heightmap in teragon, take it into Photoshop and make note of the grayscale value, Uh-Duh.

Say not using any of the 3 heightmap sections and just adding a 30 to create heightmap and keep all noise filters off as well. Do the same for 35.

It would be kind of cool to have a crater that goes down to 10 and put the wasteland there but it would mean not using water to do so. To bad I cannot mask off an area that has no water, but I know this is not possible. To keep water out I could set the sea level at 1 or 0 and the flat water map the same, I could try it I guess to see if it would work.

It would be something I would want to use a 12K map for.

 

[spud42]

in gimp or photoshop make the RGB values 30 and you will get a 30 grey. you can flood fill the eniire map at 30 then save it as a base for future maps. then just set colours to 35RGB and paint on with a brush with feathered  and lowered opacity. this way you can paint a height map any way you want.

dont forget to save as 16 bit greyscale though..lol

 

[Riamus]

I kind of see the biome thing. Thank you for explaining this to me.

I kind of want a plateau for a wasteland section with an edited heightmap. Like a somewhat flat area that I want the wasteland to be in and finding the exact grayscale value for 30-35 in the heightmap to edit in Photoshop.

Well I just thought of how easy it would be. just make a 30-35 flat heightmap in teragon, take it into Photoshop and make note of the grayscale value, Uh-Duh.

Say not using any of the 3 heightmap sections and just adding a 30 to create heightmap and keep all noise filters off as well. Do the same for 35.

It would be kind of cool to have a crater that goes down to 10 and put the wasteland there but it would mean not using water to do so. To bad I cannot mask off an area that has no water, but I know this is not possible. To keep water out I could set the sea level at 1 or 0 and the flat water map the same, I could try it I guess to see if it would work.

It would be something I would want to use a 12K map for.

Water is placed and then isn't updated.  This means that if you place water (using the Create Flat Water Map command) and then make a crater, the crater will not be filled with water.  That will give you what you want.  You can use Fill Biome command to place a specific biome in an area.  It fills in from the point you select up to a height of whatever value you use for offset.  So if you put it in the crater and only want it on the bottom, place an offset of 1 and point it to the bottom of the flat crater and that will be wasteland.  This, of course, has to be done after the normal biomes are placed.

*Ignore Set Sea Level.  It currently does not appear to do anything.

*Water isn't like real life.  You don't have a water table, where if you dig down far enough, you'll have water.  Instead, it only fills in appropriate areas based on height.  Afterwards, if you don't use the command again, any changes to lower the map (making lakes, craters, rivers) will not get filled in.

 

[bobrpggamer]

in gimp or photoshop make the RGB values 30 and you will get a 30 grey. you can flood fill the eniire map at 30 then save it as a base for future maps. then just set colours to 35RGB and paint on with a brush with feathered  and lowered opacity. this way you can paint a height map any way you want.

dont forget to save as 16 bit greyscale though..lol

Thank you. I did not think that the scale is the same as a standard 256 shade grayscale bitmap. This makes things way easier.

Now that I think of it, 256 grayscale is 8 bit not 16 bit. I wonder if that would make a difference.

I also just thought that using contours of 5 levels up and down as selections with the polygon or lasso tool and then using gradients to blend the contours may be the best way to create a heightmap. Although that is harder to do than it sounds and I am not terribly great with Photoshop myself.

Water is placed and then isn't updated.  This means that if you place water (using the Create Flat Water Map command) and then make a crater, the crater will not be filled with water.  That will give you what you want.  You can use Fill Biome command to place a specific biome in an area.  It fills in from the point you select up to a height of whatever value you use for offset.  So if you put it in the crater and only want it on the bottom, place an offset of 1 and point it to the bottom of the flat crater and that will be wasteland.  This, of course, has to be done after the normal biomes are placed.

*Ignore Set Sea Level.  It currently does not appear to do anything.

*Water isn't like real life.  You don't have a water table, where if you dig down far enough, you'll have water.  Instead, it only fills in appropriate areas based on height.  Afterwards, if you don't use the command again, any changes to lower the map (making lakes, craters, rivers) will not get filled in.

Thank you, I will try this on a 12K map someday. I found out that my troubles on 12K are the towns and POIs. If I add to many towns (but still spread way out) I get a CTD, If I add less but larger cities I get CTD, If I get by with a preview and do not add POIs, the message for building roads does not display and CTD.

For now I am back in game adding more things to my massive base, like a rooftop gyrocopter runway and solar and battery banks for lighting. I just went out and finished my level 5 quests yesterday, thing is, I only did a boatload of level 4 quests because I did not want to do any skyscrapers yet, but somehow got a level 5 completion anyway, weird.

Thanks for the help though guys.