teragon maps

[Evil_Geoff]

OH!  Thought about how to do custom bridge placements.  Add a "Set Bridge Ends" command that can be added to the command queue. 

In that Set Bridge Ends command, the user can enter the coordinates of "Bridge End 1" and "Bridge End 2".  If used after the create rivers and create flat water processes are done, and after the preview has updated, the user can use the cursor to get the coordinates of a point on one side of the body of water/river, the move to the other side and get that point.  The N/S or the E/W coordinate would be the same depending on the orientation of the bridge.  Or if you wanted to get fancy, set up a mouse click to populate the point 1 and point 2 positions.

Inserting the "------ Repeat Start ------" and "------ Repeat End ------" commands before and after the "Set Bridge Ends" command would allow the user to determine how many bridges they want, and where to put them.

Then when the Create Main Roads runs, those bridge ends get connected and BOOM!  Neat and tidy roads and bridges across water.

I'm not a programmer unfortunately, otherwise I'd start digging into the code to try to figure out how to do it myself.  Maybe someone will be inspired to jump on this

 

[paulj_3]

Forgive me for asking Geoff, but how do you delete the bridges? ( as in using Blackout's map) I've never used the "Prefab manipulation" part of the game.

 

[Evil_Geoff]

Forgive me for asking Geoff, but how do you delete the bridges? ( as in using Blackout's map) I've never used the "Prefab manipulation" part of the game.

No need to ask forgiveness, no offense is taken.  We're all just players, trying to get a map!  

I use Notepad++ and open the prefabs.xml for the map, and then either delete the bridge pieces I want to get rid of, or comment them out using the <!-- and -->.

If you are not familiar with how the prefabs.xml is set up I'll use this as an example:

<decoration type="model" position="935,115,2448" rotation="3" name="trader_joel"/>


The map center is considered 0,0 regarding East/West and North/South.  Negative numbers in X are West of center, positive numbers are East. Negative numbers in the Z coordinate are South of center, positive numbers are North of center.  The Y coordinate is ALWAYS positive because bedrock is 0. So, in our example above: position="935, 115, 2448" tells us that Trader Joel is 935 blocks East of center, 115 blocks above bedrock (hill or mountain country!), and 2448 blocks North of center.

Rotation is relative to the prefab's orientation regarding it's placement towards a road or tile. 

It's easy to tell which bridge pieces I want to remove.  The coordinates of the pieces of a bridge that runs North/South will all have the same X coordinate value (negative numbers are West of 0, positive numbers are East) and bridges that run East/West, all of the Z coordinates are the same.  Example:
 

<decoration type="model" position="236,12,-1689" rotation="2" name="bridge_end"/>
<decoration type="model" position="1906,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_end"/>
<decoration type="model" position="246,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="256,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="266,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="276,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="286,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>


This example shows the bridge ends first.  First piece placed at X,Z being 236 E, 1689 S (-numbers = S of center).  Second piece at 1906 E and 1689 S.  This thing is a 1.7 kilometer bridge!  No, I was not going to post the whole bridge!    The same Z coordinate tells us this is a bridge that goes E/W.  There are 3 kinds of bridge pieces, bridge_ends, bridge_middles, and bridge_pillars.  Just like Pokemon, you gotta get 'em all!


To comment the pieces out, insert <!-- in front of the first line of bridge code you want the game to ignore, and use --> at the end of the last line you want to ignore.  Commenting out the code using <!-- and --> looks like this:

 

<!-- <decoration type="model" position="236,12,-1689" rotation="2" name="bridge_end"/>
<decoration type="model" position="1906,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_end"/>
<decoration type="model" position="246,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="256,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="266,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="276,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/>
<decoration type="model" position="286,12,-1689" rotation="0" name="bridge_middle"/> -->
<decoration type="model" position="2824,89,-1685" rotation="1" name="trader_jen"/>
<decoration type="model" position="935,115,2448" rotation="3" name="trader_joel"/>
<decoration type="model" position="943,109,2586" rotation="0" name="house_old_ranch_04"/>
<decoration type="model" position="943,109,2512" rotation="2" name="house_old_mansard_02"/>
<decoration type="model" position="855,115,2512" rotation="2" name="xcostum_Farm_06(by_ZZTong)"/>
<decoration type="model" position="855,112,2586" rotation="0" name="farm_05"/>


In Notepad++ the commented sections change to a uniform color so it is easy to tell where the commented section starts and ends.  Commenting things out is the safer way to edit the placements.  You can always come back and remove the <!-- and --> to put something you accidentally removed back in.  Deleting the code is rather... permanent.

As always: COPY AND SAVE A BACKUP!

Have fun!

Addendum:  The position of a prefab is always the SW corner of the prefab.  If you teleport to a prefab, you will always arrive there, and the prefab will be to your north and east.

 

[paulj_3]

          Hmmmm... Ok I assumed you meant 'deleting with the built-prefab editor' when you wrote "other than going in and having to delete most of the bridges" on the earlier post.
          I reckon I caused the issue, as the water height looked wrong - compared to Blackout's preview, and probably in the map as I installed it - I used MapToolz to edit the biomes.png, then using mapconvert.  What happened was a change in the water height, as none of the bridges lined up with the roads, and the bridge roadbeds were a block or two under water. I abandoned the map this afternoon, (day 13!!!) - then re-copied its files to a fresh mapname, but including the new biome and no Toolz. I'm on day 3 atm, and have just come back to base, having ridden around a few bridges, and all seems right, with the water at the right height, and the Burnt Forest all there.

        Thanks for that detail, though, Geoff - you worked your backside off! You could write technical manuals for a living!  
Yeah - I've been using Notepad++ for a number of years, too, for almost everything text - I guess since Far Cry 3 and 4. It's a super tool, and there's nothing else close - and free, too!      XML Notepad 2007 is ok, - and I use ExamDiff Pro for long heavy comparisons, and grepWin for those big searches.

ATB

 

[Evil_Geoff]

I appreciate the compliment!  I worked doing tech support for Bellsouth DSL back in the day.  If I could talk a 63 year old grandma getting her Win98 PC connected to the internet?  I think I could damn near talk anyone through anything if they will actually listen to the instructions and do what I tell them to.    Nothing like trying to work with someone who screwed stuff up, knows they screwed it up enough to call for help, and then wants to argue about what you are telling them to do to fix their screw up!

 

[paulj_3]

Hahahahahah!   Man!   Four wires!!   Just think of that crazy bandwidth!!  and then A -DSL  Wow!!!    Hahahahahah!
 

 

[Riamus]

This is what helped me with the rivers:

I set my smoothing to 2000 on rivers for the heck of it and it seems to be an OK setting. The rivers I got were about 5 deep not including banks and I could drive my motorcycle down and through the river to the other side.

In the command panel I have:

Create Flat Heightmap: 30

Then after all the rest and right after Scale Heightmap.

Create Rivers: Depth 25 - Smoothing 2000 - Branch 3

Subtract Height Map: 25

Create Flat Water Map: Water Elevation 25

With this I get decent rivers.

Your rivers are 5 deep because the flat heightmap is 30 and the river elevation/flat water map is 25 (5 less).  Smoothing just affects corners on the river as shown in the screenshots in the documentation.  Higher definitely makes nicer looks corners.

I am totally loving this latest release (0.39.0) of Teragon, other than the bridge building and road generation times.

With that said, I have a suggestion or three for consideration in future updates to address the bridges:

During the main road or side road creation regarding bridges and bodies of water (rivers/lakes) - First, limit the maximum number of bridges across any given body of water.  3 - 5 would not be an unreasonable number.  OR, insert a variable that can be set by the user.

Next, set up the bridge ends to be placed before roads generate.  The middles can then be spawned whenever in the process, either before or after the rest of the road system goes in.  At that point, add the property or tag that forces roads to connect to a Trader (or their tiles) that main roads are connecting to, on the bridge end pieces..  Setting that property/tag for the bridge ends would probably be the easiest fix for having bridges that have no roads connecting them at all.  Here's my last map generation, and other than going in and having to delete most of the bridges, I'm delighted with the results.

View attachment 27389

Bridges will look fine once the bugs related to bridges are fixed.  No need to have a limit put in place as you normally won't have many anyhow.

Placing bridge ends first would be a bit of a problem.  Without knowing where the roads are going, if you place a bridge first, the road then has to convolute its way to the bridge from where it wants to go, which can make for some really bad road layouts.  Roads and bridges are going to be improved at some point and when they are, then we'll see how things look.  If there are still concerns about the layout afterwards, then would be a good time to consider options to make them better.  For now, we simply don't know how the road and bridge improvements will end up looking so any ideas may not even make sense after those changes.

*** Update: Still in testing, but the next version will have a greatly improved tile layout for towns, allowing for roads to no longer be entirely grid-like.  You will now have center area tiles that are not only intersection tiles and you'll have more caps and other variety of tiles everywhere.  This fixes missing POI that were on tiles that couldn't be placed before, such as the hospital.  Take a look at the road layouts for this example I made.  Note that there will be an option to use the current grid layout style or this improved layout so you can have your choice of layout.  The current layout will still have missing POI due to the issue with tiles that can't be placed, though.  But if you prefer roads that connect everything in straight lines, then you can still have that.



I know there are a lot of caps in this example.  Hopefully that gets ironed out as the testing of this continues.  But all roads in the town are still connected even if you might have to work your way around a section of town to get where you're going.  I think it is a great improvement even if the number of long straight roads will be greatly reduced.  Below is one more example that shows you can still get some long roads as well.

 

[zztong]

But if you prefer roads that connect everything in straight lines, then you can still have that.

Speaking generally with Tiles in mind, a city full of only Intersection Tiles would likely skew the POI selection. You may find that POIs of certain sizes tagged for certain districts never get to spawn because the Intersection Tiles for those districts don't contain any markers for a POI of that size.

Example: Assume for the sake of argument that the Commercial District's Intersection Tile has a place for 3 Medium POIs (60x60) and 1 Small POI (42x42) Tile. Also assume that other Tiles in the Commercial District (Cap, Corner, Straight, T) have places for Extra Small POIs (25x25) and Large POIs (100x100). If you only use Intersection Tiles, you'll never see the various XS or L Commercial POIs.

The population of POIs involves some interesting subtleties -- vanilla POIs alone or with community POIs.

The population of Tiles has its own subtleties -- rely to heavily on a handful of the Tiles available to you and travelers in cities will be more likely to experience the "Flintstone Effect" where as they travel through Bedrock, they'll keep passing the same landmarks.

 

[Riamus]

Speaking generally with Tiles in mind, a city full of only Intersection Tiles would likely skew the POI selection. You may find that POIs of certain sizes tagged for certain districts never get to spawn because the Intersection Tiles for those districts don't contain any markers for a POI of that size.

Example: Assume for the sake of argument that the Commercial District's Intersection Tile has a place for 3 Medium POIs (60x60) and 1 Small POI (42x42) Tile. Also assume that other Tiles in the Commercial District (Cap, Corner, Straight, T) have places for Extra Small POIs (25x25) and Large POIs (100x100). If you only use Intersection Tiles, you'll never see the various XS or L Commercial POIs.

The population of POIs involves some interesting subtleties -- vanilla POIs alone or with community POIs.

The population of Tiles has its own subtleties -- rely to heavily on a handful of the Tiles available to you and travelers in cities will be more likely to experience the "Flintstone Effect" where as they travel through Bedrock, they'll keep passing the same landmarks.

Exactly. The current method leaves some POI off and skews others due to the placement of tiles.  The new method will be more balanced and will be able to place every kind of tile and therefore POI.  You will still be able to use the current method if you want the grid streets, but you will have the same limitations for tiles and POI.

 

[Riamus]

After testing even more improvements to the tile layouts that have been made, I think everyone will be very happy with the many options you have for controlling town tile layouts in the next version. What I previewed for you above was just the initial test of the changes and it's gotten even better since. 

I'll have the documentation updated shortly after 0.40.0 gets released so you can see information on the new settings.  Not sure when it'll be released and there is more testing needed and some more things to be added to the next version, but the documentation will be ready to go.  If you haven't checked for updates to the documentation recently, I had updated it last week with more information.

 

[Evil_Geoff]

@Riamus - I appreciate the update on the coming improvements, and look forward to seeing them in action.  The biggest reason I suggested tagging the bridge_ends with a driveway or road attachment is the number of them spawning with *no* roads at all.  Which doesn't make any logical sense.  Who would build a bridge where there is no road to use it?

If it hasn't been reported before to be looked at:  The map I generated earlier - I'm finding a lot of the bridges don't have pillars under the middle pieces, and are collapsing when I get close.  They seem fine for 5, maybe 6 sections from the end, then... *crash, bang, boom*. 

This not a totally bad issue from my perspective for the map I'm doing.  It's Washington, DC.  After a nuclear war.  Think Fallout 3's Capitol Wasteland.  I expect some collapsed bridge spans.  So instead of commenting out the ENTIRE bridge, I just comment out the middle sections. 

 

[spud42]

im with zztong, a majority of intersection tiles is a bad idea. i know you said that its been improved since the city layout you posted the pics of , but there are a lot of poi's in the green tiles that have no roads at all. 

cities especially commercial and business districts generally are straight line roads. in the current vanilla tiles i find it frustrating when the lanes on the roads dissapear or at a change of tile lead into oncomming traffic (  if there was any ) . more attention needs to be taken as to how tiles fit together vanilla as well as teragon.

EDIT: its a quarter past 1 am here.... brain fading fast.......  trying to fix typos....

 

[Riamus]

@Riamus - I appreciate the update on the coming improvements, and look forward to seeing them in action.  The biggest reason I suggested tagging the bridge_ends with a driveway or road attachment is the number of them spawning with *no* roads at all.  Which doesn't make any logical sense.  Who would build a bridge where there is no road to use it?

If it hasn't been reported before to be looked at:  The map I generated earlier - I'm finding a lot of the bridges don't have pillars under the middle pieces, and are collapsing when I get close.  They seem fine for 5, maybe 6 sections from the end, then... *crash, bang, boom*. 

This not a totally bad issue from my perspective for the map I'm doing.  It's Washington, DC.  After a nuclear war.  Think Fallout 3's Capitol Wasteland.  I expect some collapsed bridge spans.  So instead of commenting out the ENTIRE bridge, I just comment out the middle sections. 

This is all something that will be fixed when roads and bridges are fixed.  It sounds like that will be coming in one of the next couple of versions, though I may be wrong to say that.  I know it is something Pille is planning to get fixed as soon as possible, though.

im with zztong, a majority of intersection tiles is a bad idea. i know you said that its been improved since the city layout you posted the pics of , but there are a lot of poi's in the green tiles that have no roads at all. 

cities especially commercial and business districts generally are straight line roads. in the current vanilla tiles i find it frustrating when the lanes on the roads dissapear or at a change of tile lead into oncomming traffic (  if there was any ) . more attention needs to be taken as to how tiles fit together vanilla as well as teragon.

EDIT: its a quarter past 1 am here.... brain fading fast.......  trying to fix typos....

The green tiles all have roads.  What you see in Teragon previews is only an overlay based on the tile type.  In other words, if the tile is a corner, the road will appear as a corner even if the actual tile has a corner road that twists around in some way.  A straight tile will show a straight road on the preview even if there might be a roundabout/rotary in the middle.  It is just a representation so you see how the general road layout is and not the actual roads on the tile.  So if the tile is designed with roads to POI, you will have that in game.  If not... Well, that's an issue with whoever made the tile and not with Teragon.

Road changes are again based only on tile types.  Nothing we can really do with that until you have some control over time placements (something that will be coming in Teragon and hopefully in RWG).  It is once again an issue with how people make tiles.

*****

Teragon 0.40.0 was released.  A link to this documentation is now available from the Help Center tab on Teragon itself so you can find it easily.  If you decide to download the documentation rather than viewing it online, I recommend updating it at least each time a new version of Teragon comes out (probably at least 24 hours after so I have time to upload it if I'm not around when the Teragon update comes out).  The documentation is already updated for 0.40.0, so check it out for info on the new features.

 

[Riamus]

Be sure to read the information on town property lists (including the introduction to that) to see the information about the new features in 0.40.0.  Other new information is also on there, but that is where the main things are so you know how they work.

 

[spud42]

first test of 0.40.0

Rivers and erosion on.

forgot to change the diffusion range in biome map, i usually prefer 3 its at 6 default. didnt change biome heights. left at default for first try.

min town size 6 max 60

max town 10

wilderness spawn limit 300

altitude deviation 16

max altitude 100

region poi's

alt deviation 16 , flatness 15

ok its an 8K as opposed to the 10K maps i usually make but this only took 1 hr 56 mins and 27 seconds plus the time halted at preview. I think this is a very usable map. a little dissapointed that with 6 traders i got 2 rekt 2 joel and 2 Jen. no hugh or bob......

 

[Shvonder]

If i import heightmap and road map (all needed maps i mean), is there a way to make heightmap "follow" road paths with smooth descent or climb in the hills in newly generated map? Which command makes so in usual generation?

Usual i mean like greyscale background here:

 

[Pille]

If i import heightmap and road map (all needed maps i mean), is there a way to make heightmap "follow" road paths with smooth descent or climb in the hills in newly generated map? Which command makes so in usual generation?
 

AFAIK no, but it's an interesting idea. Will probably implement it.

 

[Pille]

I know that Teragon is not in a very satisfactory state. However, I am optimistic that future updates will bring great improvements in all key areas, especially in terms of usability, performance and ways to control the program's output. In the long run, the "Expert Tab" should become almost superfluous for most users, because there will hopefully be corresponding presets for all important use cases. But until then it will take a while, because I can only work on the project occasionally in my little spare time. If I could work on this full time over several years, we would be much further along. 

There's a 3-month road maps BTW. (was created 13. Jan.)

Improvement of town generation

Improvement and fixing of POI distribution outside towns

Improvement of road generation including bridges

Better mod support

The patch nodes of the last few updates indicate that item 1, item 2, and partially item 4 have already been addressed (which does not mean that there are no more improvements to these items). And I will turn to the 3rd item soon...

 

[paulj_3]

Pille: Teragon may be not be in a very "satisfactory" state in your mind, as the architect - and it's nice, and good that you should feel that we can use some explanations as to it's future development, but in truth - Teragon already produces better maps than we've ever had - especially when combined with Stallion's continued development of Magoli's Compo Pack - and the support from people like Riamus and Brad - just look at those maps published here, on this forum. Sure - there IS a big learning curve - but time will fix that, as we - all mortals - will begin to use the "right" numbers in our maps. 
So don't get fretting about the finish line - we users (I know I can't speak for everyone here, but I'm pretty sure I'm on solid ground) are pretty happy people as each day we get our new maps finished, and are enjoying the experience and the sharing of what you've created in your mind. It gives meaning to teamwork!
Thanks, and all the best,
pj

 

[Shvonder]

AFAIK no, but it's an interesting idea. Will probably implement it.

That would be great, especially if it's a separate command (like "Create Flat Roads" for example). I spent so much efforts trying to change the finished map, and not once the result is satisfactable) My arms are too curve.