Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

DestinyCall · 2019-02-11 19:35:40

I've been thinking about clothing and buildings lately and that got me thinking about biomes and temperature. That reminded me of a idea that I'd had a while ago that might kill two birds with one stone. I'm sure I'm not the first person to suggest this, but I would like to see the biomes laid out in a less random fashion. Snow banks in the middle of a desert make no sense. Extreme cold zones and hot zones should be far apart with intermediate or neutral zones in between.

Ideally, I would layout the biomes in "temperature bands" that repeat across the map. The neutral band would contain a mix of grasslands and swamp biome which continues uninterrupted in the East/West direction. To the north and south of this thick strip of grassland/swampland, there would be a thinner band of yellow prairie. Beyond the prairie, you would either encounter increasingly warmer biomes (jungle then desert) or increasingly colder biomes (badlands then tundra). If you continue to travel in a hot direction, you will pass through the desert to more jungle, then reach a new prairie at the edge of a new neutral temperature band. Passing through the neutral zone will bring you to a new cold zone Traveling east/west keeps you in the same temperature gradient, while traveling north/south exposes you to a repeating gradient. Neutral >> Warm >> Hot >>Warm >> Neutral >> Cool >> Cold >> Cool >> Neutral >> Warm >> etc These temperature bands would be fairly wide and infinitely long, with the borders allowing some mixing of adjacent biomes for variety.

Eves would spawn in a neutral temperature band, surrounded by grassland or swamp. They could then travel east or west to find a decent spot to settle, with enough food and water to support the next generation. Early camps would need to be built close to water sources in swamps, so it would no longer be possible to built in jungle or desert from the start. However, finding a decent spot to camp should be much faster for Eves, since there should be many viable locations with the necessary starting resources available and less biome RNG. You won't spend thirty years looking for a good spot, only to find it right as you loss your fertility. However, making and wearing clothing would be much more important to reduce food consumption without the benefits of a nearby warm biome. Houses and fires would also be more useful to keep babies warm and improve temperature around the bakery and smithy.

Hunting for resources in the hot or cold biomes would be a different challenge. You would need to scout north or south to determine which way leads toward colder zones and which way leads toward warmer zones. And you would want to dress appropriately for the climate. Heading into the colder regions would require preperation and planning. More warm clothing and extra food, since there is little to be found in that region. Also, this is where you might encounter bears and wolves. Heading into hotter regions would require different preperations. You would want to dress down to avoid overheating and watch out for mosquitoes while passing through the jungle. Food would be less of a concern because of cactus and bananas, but the threat of yellow fever adds its own challenges, especially with no handy patches of tundra nearby.

Later in the game, more advanced towns might want to tame the jungle so they could move south into warmer climates, building cisterns to water their crops and walls to contain or keep out the bugs. Road networks could be built to connect biomes, using rocks gathered in the hot desert. And constructing rail networks to bring fresh iron to the city might be viable, since iron mines would be in the distant and inhospitable cold biomes.

A logical heat map would dramatically change the game. I think it would make some things much easier (like locating the nearest biome of a particular type), but also introduce new and interesting challenges that would naturally evolve from changing the biome layout and viable eve camp locations.

For visual learners, here is a little diagram of what I'm envisioning. This pattern would repeat across the map, so passing through the tundra would lead to badlands on both sides. Moving to the left or right would reveal more of the same biome(s) in that temperature band. If we get any new biomes in the future, they could be added to the appropriate temperature zone for additional variety, like with swamp/grassland in the neutral zone.

TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
GGGGSSSSSGGGGGGGG
GGGSSSSGGGGGGGSSS
GGSSSSSSGGGGGGGSS
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

T = tundra, B = badlands, P = prairie, G = grasslands, S = swamp, J =jungle, D = desert

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-02-11 23:40:25)

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-11 21:00:39

This is interesting, and not that hard to implement.

Thought I did spend a ton of time tweaking the proc-genned map algorithm to make a good-looking, interesting, varied map. This change would rely on the tuned nuances of that algorithm much less.

Also, I do plan on adding more biomes in the future, and they don't all necessarily fit into temperature bands.

Twisted · 2019-02-11 21:16:29

I think this is an interesting idea, but I feel like the map would lose a bit of it's charm and make it a bit samey.

I do agree that tundras should never be adjacent to jungles/deserts, but maybe that could be implemented in a different way? An idea that I think would be great (but would most likely take a ton of work to implement) is a linear humidity/temeprature 'heatmap' of sorts, where chunks have a certain heat and humidity and then get assigned the biome according to that. It would also probably require more biomes to actually work in a reasonable manner.

Starknight_One · 2019-02-11 21:26:14

Twisted wrote:

I think this is an interesting idea, but I feel like the map would lose a bit of it's charm and make it a bit samey.
I do agree that tundras should never be adjacent to jungles/deserts, but maybe that could be implemented in a different way? An idea that I think would be great (but would most likely take a ton of work to implement) is a linear humidity/temeprature 'heatmap' of sorts, where chunks have a certain heat and humidity and then get assigned the biome according to that. It would also probably require more biomes to actually work in a reasonable manner.

I was just thinking much the same thing. Have hot and cold regions generated on the map, then do a gradient map of the average temperature of a spot and assign biomes based off that. Although I have no idea how much work that would be to implement.

Twisted · 2019-02-11 21:42:34

Starknight_One wrote:

I was just thinking much the same thing. Have hot and cold regions generated on the map, then do a gradient map of the average temperature of a spot and assign biomes based off that. Although I have no idea how much work that would be to implement.

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to say! Thank you for making it more clear and succint.

DestinyCall · 2019-02-12 00:13:12

Twisted wrote:

I think this is an interesting idea, but I feel like the map would lose a bit of it's charm and make it a bit samey.
I do agree that tundras should never be adjacent to jungles/deserts, but maybe that could be implemented in a different way? An idea that I think would be great (but would most likely take a ton of work to implement) is a linear humidity/temeprature 'heatmap' of sorts, where chunks have a certain heat and humidity and then get assigned the biome according to that. It would also probably require more biomes to actually work in a reasonable manner.

I've played Minecraft with modpacks that distribute biomes in this way and it works very well. Once you are familiar with the different biomes, you can logically figure out which way to travel to reach a warm wet place, like jungle, or a cold dry place, like badlands. It looks and feels more natural if you have more variety, like multiple sub-biomes within each temperature/humidity category, but you can make it work with a smaller range of biomes. The transitions might be a little clunky, but not "snowman next to cactus" bad.

I suggested "temperature bands" rather than a more randomly distributed heat map because of gameplay and balancing issues, among other things. It would provide a relatively "safe" neutral temperature region for new players and early camps, bordered by more hazardous extreme temperature zones that would require more skill and equipment to tame properly. Also, I wanted to address the issue of clothing/housing. As long as settling in a warm jungle or hot desert is a viable option, it will continue to be the best spot for nakeds. Short of completely changing how temperature works, this is not going to change. Jungle is really really good (except for the bugs). But you can't live in a jungle without access to water. By changing how the map generates so that swamps are too far from hot biomes to allow jungle/desert eve camps, it makes jungle living more of a late game achievement, rather than an early game necessity. You can't start in jungles, but you might be able to move there later with the right technology. Or improve your starting village to be more comfortable by building structures and making better clothes, so you don't need to move to a better climate to be warm and happy.

Also with temperature constant across an entire region, you can make plans regarding how you will dress yourself for the biomes you expect to encounter. With the current biome spread, if I am going to walk two or three kilometers in any direction, I can expect to run through every possible biome at least once, usually a lot more than that. And I can also fully expect to get stung by mosquitoes at least once (if not more than that). With less randomized layout, you can safely travel in fully insulated gear when headed toward the cold or while exploring the temperature neutral areas. And the majority of biomes will be bug-free, since jungle only occurs in the hot zones.

You could make the distribution of the warm and cold regions more randomized, but it would require a lot more tweaking to get the proper balance and achieve similar gameplay impact. If one area got all the hot spots and another region got all the cold ones, neither area would be habitable and finding biome-specific resources would be made significantly more difficult. It would need to be "random", but not too random.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-02-12 01:31:53)

robertb556 · 2019-02-12 01:00:43

There are both macro and micro-climates throughout the world that defy the premise of "temperature bands". Nevertheless, I like your ideas.

I love the idea of certain biomes not being close to each other. Along with the idea of biomes being much larger, journeying to non-adjacent biome types becomes a serious undertaking. It makes the tech tree more meaningful when you can't easily gather together resources from all the biomes in one place.

I love the idea of progression from easy areas to hard ones, with Eves starting in easy (relatively easy, but probably still gosh hard). It gives more advanced civ's some kind of a goal to strive for, to equip themselves and explore parts of the map that are actually treacherous, and perhaps eventually tame/domesticate/develop them. "Wow, today I was born into an oil drilling arctic city!"

Last edited by robertb556 (2019-02-12 01:38:06)

pein · 2019-02-12 04:41:21

i think jason did a good job on maps, and seeing one from archipelago view, its a good variety and nice masking together
this map errors which occur near monoliths, biome intersections are special, sometimes very bad, sometimes very good
this adds the real value to good spot

i think minimum size should be a bit bigger, or no animals on it, also some sort of prevention or fix for off biome animals, they can get annoying

but this belt system would be way too generic and boring, the point of exploration is that you never know what is where, even now i an predict another biome

also this wouldnt work without re-balancing everything to work standalone

sure some tweaking could be done, like no ice and desert near each other, bigger savannas and always near green biome

now new biomes need unique properties
which could be like a different green biome with a slightly different approach to food, or geysers, oasis, which is a limited place, with a big deposit of resources but no recharge

the main problem i see is no reason to move anywhere, because everything is kinda the same, for example: you could get a clay or iron mine and exploit it over time, or a spot with 20 rabbit holes next to each other. we need rich places either with a huge deposit of stuff or sustainable income of certain resources
right now you can transport everything to one place, even if its quite inefficient

but also i often feel like terra-forming doesnt have much of an impact, like making a room and have central heating to combat the cold nature of a place

we need more expensive/valuable resources to attract people, gold mine? clay mine with more uses for coal?
stone mine? special big trees?
make nomad life more interesting, like allowing people to find clusters, either temporarily available resources, or limited amount of resources
and uncovering them cost some tool usage and work
for example a layered mountain with different shades of height, a pickaxe hit would uncover some veins, and extracting it would give big chunks which can only be processed on site, then maybe connect different sites. Then maybe the whole trains could be useful.
Right now when most things are depleted, its ok to move after 20-40 generations, but no need to do so when no use for the materials for higher tech.
So the better tools should unlock better structures and the structures allow better equipment, and have some sort of diversity, either you go advanced farming or advanced industry, or advanced culture, etc. this would require more freedom on low level and more limitation on high end.
Like using different soil types with different techniques. And have different price of items depending on rarity.

People arent a fan of decay and destructable items, even if they can be remade later on.
But we would still need a usage based decay maybe, with some repair option, like i suggested washing clothes to get back their quality

or either have higher tier option which allows more and better ations, like buckets where they dont work on lower tier and they are more convenient so they are motivating upgrading the wells. easiest for now it would be sand and making glass bowls and plates, maybe even other things like walls, tables, and allow higher tier food than clay. then it would make sense to make a glass making outpost at least.

Booklat1 · 2019-02-12 04:54:52

personally I'd rather see biomes being larger instead of being less random.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-02-11 19:35:40

Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#2 2019-02-11 21:00:39

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#3 2019-02-11 21:16:29

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#4 2019-02-11 21:26:14

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#5 2019-02-11 21:42:34

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#6 2019-02-12 00:13:12

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#7 2019-02-12 01:00:43

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#8 2019-02-12 04:41:21

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

#9 2019-02-12 04:54:52

Re: Logical Heat Map - Biome Layout Change

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