Water-based Tile System - Proof of Concept..... - Pre-Release! now available

[MichaelL.]

So, I've decided to go ahead and do a pre-release of this tile mod, just to give folks a chance to give it a whirl and get some input.   I've worked out a system where the current water dosen't get all messed up, and I've added several new POI's (as well as modify some of my previous Prefabs and some of the TFP vanilla ones).  So if you like to give a try, have at it!  I'd appreciate any input y'all might have!  

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/2458

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Been experimenting with a water-based tile set - in anticipation of the new water system that's (hopefully) coming with A21.  The current water system has it's limitations aside from the tearing and divots- I can only get it to three levels deep, or you end up with huge FPS drops.   The lack of the ability to create custom gateway tiles is another hurdle to overcome.  But otherwise the concept appears to work.  I'm planning on making a bunch of shanty-town, shack-on-stilt and floating home POI's that will be scattered about and connected with rickety bridges and floating walkways.  Basically a swamp town.    I'll be making different versions of each tile to add variety - especially the cap tile as it spawns in at much greater numbers.

 

[zztong]

Very interesting and cool idea!

 

[MichaelL.]

Getting a decent random generation of Swampland.  Still need to add some more corner and T-intersection tiles to add a bit more variety.    

 

[MichaelL.]

 

[Guppycur]

Ya know what would be cool?  Boat mods.  Especially a swamp boat.

 

[Cpt Krunch]

This looks great. Ive done a few water maps in the past for @Ragsy 2145 boats. I started using 5 block deep water probably as far back as A18 in my maps. I couldnt prove the performance improvement, but i always felt like larger deep water areas probably hurt.


The improvement to water in 21 plus the ability to use splat4 without the info.xml will be killer.
 

 

[Weazelsun]

interesting concept and its look pretty good

 

[MichaelL.]

Been continuing work on making some more custom POI's - focusing on higher tier prefabs,  as the majority of vanilla one's that are capable of spawning in tend to be lower level ones.  Converted my Maunsell Fort POI to fit this tile system.       I've also been adopting the vanilla 'docks' POI's to work on my tiles, as well as some vanilla remnants which I've "flooded" and added some of my underwater-spawning zombies.     

 

[MichaelL.]

So, I've decided to go ahead and do a pre-release of this tile mod, just to give folks a chance to give it a whirl and get some input.   I've worked out a system where the current water dosen't get all messed up, and I've added several new POI's (as well as modify some of my previous Prefabs and some of the TFP vanilla ones).  So if you like to give a try, have at it!  I'd appreciate any input y'all might have!  

Link for the download can be found in the first post.   

 

[zztong]

This is an innovative idea for Tiles and I'm a fan. I've been playing with it some today and think it has great potential. The Tiles pull from some of the established TFP districts and sometimes end up with some weird results, specially when a POI lands on an island. For instance, an island house with a driveway. An island restaurant with cars in the parking lot. I thought this POI of mine could be kind of swampy, so I tagged it appropriately, and ...



This one I didn't tag, so the Tiles grabbed it from another district. I guess swamp folks like their computer games...



I got a hearty laugh out of this when I found it...



And then this last one left me more with the impression it wasn't so much a swamp as lands that had been flooded, either intentionally or via some disaster...

 

[Lemon Pie]

This is looking great, exactly the type of variety 7D needs.

 

[Deverezieaux]

I was drawn to this post again, and though I haven't tried your water-based tiles yet Michael, the last image ZZ posted in October got me thinking about doing a Dam or destroyed Dam POI with a flooded area at it's base. I'm trying to think of how best to do this with a tile or large wilderness POI of a dam adjacent to a "flooded district."

This of course presents a host of problems. Having a raised water source and dam on a tile jutting out of the landscape would look weird unless I could somehow guarantee this would spawn adjacent a mountain range and look natural. Making sure it spawns in the correct location to the district and is facing the correct direction. A broken dam flowing away from the flooded area would look silly. Maybe this could be an entryway tile.

I have a POI set I'm finishing up, but I think I'll start experimenting with this to see if it's feasible.

 

[Riamus]

I was drawn to this post again, and though I haven't tried your water-based tiles yet Michael, the last image ZZ posted in October got me thinking about doing a Dam or destroyed Dam POI with a flooded area at it's base. I'm trying to think of how best to do this with a tile or large wilderness POI of a dam adjacent to a "flooded district."

This of course presents a host of problems. Having a raised water source and dam on a tile jutting out of the landscape would look weird unless I could somehow guarantee this would spawn adjacent a mountain range and look natural. Making sure it spawns in the correct location to the district and is facing the correct direction. A broken dam flowing away from the flooded area would look silly. Maybe this could be an entryway tile.

I have a POI set I'm finishing up, but I think I'll start experimenting with this to see if it's feasible.

That sounds great!  I really don't know much about how tiles work, but would it be possible to create a large tile rather than the standard size and use that to place things where you want?  It probably wouldn't be able to work in a city because it is a different tile size, but as a wilderness tile, maybe?

Or, if it isn't something that could be done with vanilla RWG after you look at it, perhaps it is something that can be worked out with Pille's Teragon?  It has a mountain parameter to allow placing POI on mountains, so this might make something like that possible even if you might need to work together to figure out a way to make it work.  Just a thought.

 

[zztong]

That sounds great!  I really don't know much about how tiles work, but would it be possible to create a large tile rather than the standard size and use that to place things where you want?  It probably wouldn't be able to work in a city because it is a different tile size, but as a wilderness tile, maybe?

You could make a Tile larger than the standard size. (The Prefab Editor would allow it.) I don't know what RWG would do with, but I suspect it would end in Exceptions and/or overwritten blocks. It never occurred to me to try.

Wilderness POIs do not involve Tiles. You can make a Wilderness POI as large as something like 250x250. I don't know the exact limit, but @stallionsden knows.

 

[stallionsden]

You could make a Tile larger than the standard size. (The Prefab Editor would allow it.) I don't know what RWG would do with, but I suspect it would end in Exceptions and/or overwritten blocks. It never occurred to me to try.

Wilderness POIs do not involve Tiles. You can make a Wilderness POI as large as something like 250x250. I don't know the exact limit, but @stallionsden knows.

If you have tiles bigger the 150nthey overlap, they also have areas of no terrain so a hole.

Wilderness is 250x250 easy enough (minus then wilderness bug tfp know about. 

But technically hard coded is 500x500 tho it is really hard to spawn in have to have a area big enough to place it. 

 

[Riamus]

You could make a Tile larger than the standard size. (The Prefab Editor would allow it.) I don't know what RWG would do with, but I suspect it would end in Exceptions and/or overwritten blocks. It never occurred to me to try.

Wilderness POIs do not involve Tiles. You can make a Wilderness POI as large as something like 250x250. I don't know the exact limit, but @stallionsden knows.

Good to know. I had seen that Teragon supports larger tiles without overlap, so wasn't sure about RWG.  I knew wilderness could be larger, but I was thinking tiles as a way to control layout better.  Maybe setting that as a new type of "town" so it uses tiles and then limiting spawn of that "town" to once as it would look odd to have that multiple times on a map.

Just tossing out ideas without knowing what might it might not be possible.

 

[zztong]

Just tossing out ideas without knowing what might it might not be possible.

Yes, that's cool. Great ideas are born this way.

When it comes to Teragon-unique features, deciding to support them with POI/Tile/Parts is an interesting decision. Any decision I'd make related to making one would be based on the effort to make one, the perceived relative value, and if I want to target the widest possible audience. Any Teragon-unique creations either have to be really quick to make, be super-cool, and/or something I'd be willing to walk away from if Teragon becomes incompatible with future versions of the game. The way I kind of see it, I must support RWG as it will always be there, is a decent world generator getting better all the time, and is widely used.

Consider Tiles of 250x250, for instance. I can't see making a non-standard Tile size since it would be a lot of work and incompatible with RWG.

In contrast, Teragon's bridges are super cool and the parts are not a lot of work. I could see making some of those once it becomes clear how to extend that feature.

 

[Deverezieaux]

To start I will probably make a non-teragon specific gateway tile to work with Michael's tile system. At 150 x 150 I should have enough room to make a convincing elevated location with a water source (think a mountain with a water-filled crater) and a broken dam POI. It may look out of place depending on how it spawns in random gen, but think of it more as a proof of concept. I'd want it to be as usable as possible, and given it would already be dependent on using Michael's water based tiles used in the way Z suggested back in October, it already has a bit of complexity.

 

[Riamus]

Yes, that's cool. Great ideas are born this way.

When it comes to Teragon-unique features, deciding to support them with POI/Tile/Parts is an interesting decision. Any decision I'd make related to making one would be based on the effort to make one, the perceived relative value, and if I want to target the widest possible audience. Any Teragon-unique creations either have to be really quick to make, be super-cool, and/or something I'd be willing to walk away from if Teragon becomes incompatible with future versions of the game. The way I kind of see it, I must support RWG as it will always be there, is a decent world generator getting better all the time, and is widely used.

Consider Tiles of 250x250, for instance. I can't see making a non-standard Tile size since it would be a lot of work and incompatible with RWG.

In contrast, Teragon's bridges are super cool and the parts are not a lot of work. I could see making some of those once it becomes clear how to extend that feature.

Absolutely.  I also would not want to spend a lot of time designing something that is only usable through a third party app or manually editing a map unless the third party app is very widely used and unlikely to be abandoned in the foreseeable future or I felt TFP might decide they like how Teragon generated certain unique map features and would incorporate them into RWG, which I doubt.  It is easier to support some Teragon features that still allow your creation to work in RWG and/or are likely to eventually get into RWG, such as support for regions other than wilderness in order to place POI in areas that would look good (mountains, for example).  I don't believe using a currently incompatible region tag would prevent spawning in RWG, or if it does, it is easy enough to limit that tag to Teragon.

 

[EvilPolygons]

Sorry for the (slight) necro, but is the Swamplands project still being worked on for A21? I remember playing around with this a bit in A20 and it seemed to have so much potential.