The real problem with the game right now is not what you might think

Morti · 2019-07-30 21:14:58

I do play other games.
I don't enjoy them as much as this.
None of them make me feel as good as this.

I enjoy helping others. I enjoy holding you, as though you are my child, and being held by you, as though I were yours.
Almost every day I find a reason to cry while playing this, because of what it really represents; bringing new life, new people, into the world,
and having to accept the loss of our consciousness, in the end.

The truth of it all, as we know from science.
The feeling of it all, as we share through art.
The power of it, as we express with religions.

All of the things human beings have done, as they have come to terms with what they find as their place in the world.

I can't revel in everything I know about us, in any other game, the way I can here.
Because the most important part, for me, is missing, from those games; the responsibility, people feel for each other.
The fragility, the care, the compassion and the empathy, that comes from being born of this process.
Just how precious, life is, and how exceptionally remarkable, we creatures become, as we emerge from a single strand of DNA and grow into these boys that go to the Moon, and bring a piece home to show our mother, what we've found.

This game, is the closest thing I have found to a recreation of everything that I admire about human beings.

We, just can't get that by putting scrips into NPCs. We may never feel it the same way with any other form of intelligence but our own, behind the characters.

--

Once again, I've let too many thoughts swim around in my head, and they have taken my tongue.

Here, let me express whats going on with a flowchart, that might make more sense.

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 21:17:17

So, anyway, given that answer, I hope you can see the problem here:

green is very "thin", but it's hard to make it "thicker" without really skewing things.

With topo rings, it's impossible to have "big fat areas" of the "middle elevation" biomes.

So we get big fat areas at the top (snow) and (bottom) desert. But that's just because I pushed the range to get much closer to an even distribution.

Visually appealing from a satellite and interesting to walk around in on the ground are two different things.

Here we have "oceans" of desert and snow with little slivers of green in between. I've walked in it. The green feels unsatisfyingly thin (but also very common... little slivers of it everywhere).

I can tweak the curve to make green fatter, but then it will really be "nothing but green".

That's a great idea for the swords, Dodge. Just like cursing (which you gain against families as you speak their language), the war sword could cease to work once a language is fully learned. It's a little hard to measure that in an intuitive way.

There was some talk of war declaration, though....

So maybe there could be the opposite. Maybe all it takes is a PEACE DECLARATION spoken to someone in the other family, in a language that they could understand.

This could be done early if you did the work of radical translation (really hard), or later once offspring become bilingual.

Maybe if you just say PEACE it creates peace with everyone in earshot who can understand you.

If you're getting raided by a strange family, saying PEACE to stop them will be impossible, of course. You can't do radical translation w/out their cooperation.

But all it takes is one Pocahontas to bridge the divide, and suddenly, there's peace.

Potjeh · 2019-07-30 21:42:13

If you're going to have finite play area, you have more options for map generation. Ie latitude bands of biomes. The map example you gave might look better if there was fewer discrete levels of terrain, but the progression terrains varied depending on coordinates. Something like swamp<grass<snow<badlands up north, swamp<grass<prairie<badlands around the middle and swamp<grass<jungle<desert down south. South misses out on iron, but gets rubber. North is kinda iffy on resources, but I think it might be OK just for oil if your town is closer to the north than south. Might have some actual trade going on if there was discrepancy in resources like that. And all the latitude bands get swamp and grass, so they're all technically livable. Fewer discrete levels means less thin bands. And I think water would look nicer if it was the lowest level rather than rings.

Last edited by Potjeh (2019-07-30 21:43:33)

Amon · 2019-07-30 21:42:30

The mountain and desert biomes are clumped together, thus appearing bigger, the border biomes appear smaller due the small border but they are more widespread.
Wouldn't surprise me if grassland and prarie were the most common!
Though badlands/mountain just feels like being the least common, same with jungle since they 'wrap around' less terrain.

But it does feel uncanny to only have 'strips'.
Would it be possible to blotch up or break up strips so suddenly green ends and swamp connects to prarie/yelkow? etc.

Last edited by Amon (2019-07-30 21:46:06)

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-07-30 21:44:29

Going by the map

See it LOOKS like there's more snow
, but I'm thinking its just contrasting in that image and standing out vs all the other colors. Its also the only biome other than desert that seems to clump than spread.

The only thing I can think might be pretty dramatically effected, in terms of things inside the biome, would be jungle. I can imagine mosquitoes taking up most of the free spread out jungle tiles and kinda overrunning them. They only have a 15% chance of spawning in jungle, but if the jungle is smaller (in terms of individual biome suface area and not the collective) they might seem to be everywhere in a jungle.

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 22:38:33

The answer was posted in the spoiler above. Take a look. green is the most common. Desert and snow are the least common.

Here's one where there's a sinusoidal modulation running north-to-south:

Potjeh · 2019-07-30 23:04:44

That looks better, but could you please try moving swamp to lowest elevation and grass to second lowest? I think it'd look a lot better. Just adjust the elevation thresholds to make those two a little bit bigger.

And yeah, snowy mountain tops being source of salt water is kinda weird.

Last edited by Potjeh (2019-07-30 23:05:36)

Amon · 2019-07-30 23:11:37

The islands that form are great on 2 layers, however the banding of other biomes not so much. I it were possible to combine this with patchwork so certain important biomes in the banding zone have a chance to 'bloat up' ocasionally.

Last edited by Amon (2019-07-30 23:14:50)

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 23:17:08

Yes, it does make logical sense for swamp to be lowest. Maybe like this:

swamp
grass
prairie
jungle
desert
mountain
arctic

Here's what that looks like with an even (pretty close to equal area) biome spread:

This is nice because there are lots of little "valleys" with dangerous jungle/desert/mountain/arctic areas in between. You can kinda stick to the valleys, though, as you navigate.

I'm really leaning away from N-S variation. I think that's a mistake. That makes things look interesting globally, but on the ground, there's a long trek to a known destination. It also breaks down outside the rift (well, unless it's sine based, I suppose).

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-07-30 23:18:52

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yes, it does make logical sense for swamp to be lowest. Maybe like this:
swamp
grass
prairie
jungle
desert
mountain
arctic
Here's what that looks like with an even (pretty close to equal area) biome spread:
https://i.imgur.com/faITLwa.png

Oh shiet that looks like a winrar

I dig it

Last edited by Grim_Arbiter (2019-07-30 23:19:21)

Potjeh · 2019-07-30 23:25:48

Meh, I wouldn't bother with equal distribution. I think size of biomes should be proportionate to their usefulness. I'd recommend reducing snow in favor of more grassland and badlands. And I still like the sine N-S variation, we need unequal distribution of terrain if you want to encourage trade. Or, if you can easily distinguish individual "mountains", use jungle/desert on one half of them and badlands/arctic on the other. It'd look reasonably realistic while also providing this unequal distribution. And then all the "lowlands" around these can use the same swamp/grass/prairie progression.

Last edited by Potjeh (2019-07-30 23:35:53)

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 23:31:51

As cool as this looks, it really doesn't work.

The only big things are swamps and arctic.

The rest are just these very narrow bands.

Still more work to do...

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 23:34:25

Potjeh, not sure that's true. People aren't going to actually settle in those northern areas, right, because they are inhospitable. So I don't think that's the route to encouraging trade. Wouldn't each village send an explorer up there to gather stuff?

I really think trade has more to do with scarcity than anything else.

If you send an explorer out to gather stuff (from close or far) and they don't find that stuff, then you need to look for someone who already found it and get some from them.

Potjeh · 2019-07-30 23:38:46

Hm, true for unhospitableness. I edited my post, can you do that thing with using different progressions for individual "mountains" (identified by floodfill or something)? Still gives resource diversity without making any large area unhospitable, and there's less steps in progression so the bands don't need to be so narrow.

pein · 2019-07-30 23:49:22

in the other topic i had simialr idea without reading this first

we need more edges, where biomes meet, cause a green bioem is useless without water, a savannah is useless without soil (water from sprign can be made but moving initial soil there is bad)
jungles are good at start but slowly become the worst biome
ice and desert is just a wall, more like separators
more elongated biome shapes with less noise, maybe packed with more items

badlands could be the space we need to build on, so more like fillers

i see a few approaches:
-different way to get water and soil on savanah or badland so it can be producing some food

-some dynamic zones which change time to time

-the combinations of two biomes create a different path to progress

green and swamp is good combo cause you can cook eggs on kindlings
and water the soil

jungle is good near savanah cause you can eat while working

now if you would separate the map with a neutral biome, like badlands? which would be just space to gather (maybe change how iron works, it would require discovering plots, getting random metals, so cutting up rocks would use up resources, but then you could get something in return)
so instead of going out, getting the useful stuff and then taking it home, people would constantly need to try to process the rocks, and get lucky
some side products would be stones, flat rocks, clay

this would be a mesh between biomes

then each zone would have 2 out of 6 or 3 out of 6 combo
there would be always something you can combine from A with B but never the same with B and C
i know it's a lot of variables, combos
but one step a time would create some interesting scenarios

badland-filler

what if instead the current biome, we would have different versions based on the variables?
bad biomes- ice,desert,jungle
good biomes green,savanah,swamp
i gues buffing jungle would make different combos

one bad one good
examples:
ice+green more animals with thick fur, cold resistant crops

ice+savanah white rabbits, moose

ice+swamp cold resistant materials, better insulating, maybe white clay?

desert+green cheap, but easy to make clothes
more water needed for crops that grow there

desert+swamp
warm swamps? maybe growing rice?

desert+savanah
long ear rabbits

quite a few combos, but easier ones, 9 biomes so 9-18 new recipes?

i mean all this combos need new name and a few changes in look and maybe some resources
but just cosmetic changes, like the biome would be a blend of those two biomes, would make it decent
as the same combo wouldn't appear in map too often, you could easier combine stuff already there than the things that arent close, maybe you couldn't take out some resources from that biome, only the combined products

if jungles were good (ability to kill squitoes and not so hot)
2 good 1 bad
jungle+swamp+desert= rainforest
very dense vegetation, lot of food but lot of wild animals too

lets say ice would be cold modifier which would mean more industrial resources, desert would mean more heat, more plants and animals , so organic
and in appearance, things would look lighter than the desert modifier, so light skins

savanah would mean more grass and animals
green would mean more trees and birds

swamp would mean more water
jungle would mean wind?
basically some sort of electricity production? not sure what could put them on a scale against each other

it would always choose a spot, there would be a desert a swamp and a green, and a blended color in middle
there is only a few real world biomes you can make, some skin variations and unique combos would do the trick

the combos would be (D-desert,G-green,S-swamp,Y-yellow,J-jungle,I-ice)
DGS -mediterran
DGJ-rainforest?
DYS -temperate grassland
DYJ-tropical
IGS- temperate forest
IGJ-
IYS -taiga?
IYJ -tundra?

i mean grassland and savanah are kinda same irl, and ard to imagine a cold jungle, also swamp and jungle is kinda same
but for full combos it need to be some system

anyway, even if just we would have different color rabbits or other similar animals, and some sort of hue/saturation change (so the skins work for the biome colors) it would make enough difference, same for trees and clay or other stuff
combo biomes would be refreshing

Thaulos · 2019-07-30 23:56:05

Not wanting to derail settlement location related "map rework", I had an idea for incentivizing scarcity and trade in relation with map generation.

How about not spawning veins in all mountains? There could be the odd "ground iron" to allow start up of iron tools but over the time perhaps exploration of iron veins would become a necessity.

What if we only had like 4 or 5 hotspots of iron veins? Having something like 80% of the iron concentrated in these hotspots in the form of multiple veins, keeping "ground iron" to be relatively "common" for small scale/time iron bootstrapping.

Perhaps the same could be done with Oil.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-07-30 23:58:15)

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 23:57:33

All this stuff needs to be in the context of a proc-gen algorithm on a potentially infinite map. That's the infrastructure that I'm working with here. Thus, there is no such thing as "flood fill" in such an infrastructure. You need to answer a question about what's at (x.y), and you're not going to go searching all over the map to answer that question. What's at (x,y) can only depend on x and y as inputs.

Remember, this is what allows Wondible to support infinite zoom-out. He can sample the map at whatever resolution he needs to.

Examples of procedural operations are things like:

sin(x) + sin( y )

srand(x)
rand()

pow(y,3)

and anything you can build with these.

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-30 23:59:08

Thaulos there already aren't veins in all mountains, right? Nor oil in all snow. Such things are rare enough that just finding snow (or gray) is not enough to guarantee a hit.

BladeWoods · 2019-07-31 00:06:42

If you're gonna give up the hot to cold dynamic why swamp on top and not grass on top.

Potjeh · 2019-07-31 00:06:53

Yeah but you're going for finite world right now, which could allow more powerful mapgen options that require info from other tiles. For example, the narrow bands could be improved by using a diamond-square generated heightmap, which lets you create plateus at all sorts of elevations rather than just having solid blobs at bottom and top.

Last edited by Potjeh (2019-07-31 00:08:30)

Thaulos · 2019-07-31 00:19:07

They aren't in all mountains but they aren't concentrated, just randomly spaced (even with the current hotspots). I was thinking more of some areas where you could see vein after vein after vein instead of having it spread out around the map.

This could potentially cause groups of people to monopolize (fence around?) a great quantity of the server's iron. Perhaps ruling over the other groups or by exchanging iron for other resources. If iron is plentiful enough maybe we could see the emergence of mining towns.

In a infinite world with arbitrary rift borders it might not be possible to guarantee a specific amount of iron though, so it might be a bit harder to achieve specific quantities of iron while planning rifts.

Anyway, just an idea! Important thing are settlements! Pretty excited about the map.

Last edited by Thaulos (2019-07-31 00:23:18)

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-31 00:44:00

Okay, here's a map where biomes are given custom weights:

And here are the numbers (samples from entire rift area):

Biome 1 (Swamp ) 	count = 52250	10.4%
Biome 0 (Grass ) 	count = 124116	24.8%
Biome 2 (Yellow) 	count = 114250	22.8%
Biome 6 (Jungle) 	count = 67427	13.5%
Biome 5 (Desert) 	count = 55207	11.0%
Biome 3 (Gray  ) 	count = 74881	14.9%
Biome 4 (Snow  ) 	count = 13133	2.6%
1624	Wild Gooseberry Bush            (actual=0.016142, expected=0.013889
6287	Big Hard Rock                   (actual=0.062491, expected=0.013889
6477	Stone                           (actual=0.064380, expected=0.013889
3914	Seeding Wild Carrot             (actual=0.038904, expected=0.013889
5876	Juniper Tree                    (actual=0.058406, expected=0.013889
3049	Milkweed                        (actual=0.030306, expected=0.027778
1658	Maple Tree#Branch               (actual=0.016480, expected=0.013889
1591	Lombardy Poplar Tree#Branch     (actual=0.015814, expected=0.013889
646	White Pine Tree                 (actual=0.006421, expected=0.013889
3792	White Pine Tree with Needles    (actual=0.037692, expected=0.013889
1536	Tule Reeds                      (actual=0.015267, expected=0.013889
1615	Clay Deposit                    (actual=0.016053, expected=0.013889
3520	Flint                           (actual=0.034988, expected=0.013889
1643	Sapling                         (actual=0.016331, expected=0.013889
1528	Canada Goose Pond               (actual=0.015188, expected=0.013889
1536	Yew Tree#Branch                 (actual=0.015267, expected=0.013889
3923	Rabbit Hole#hiding,single       (actual=0.038994, expected=0.013889
1718	Fertile Soil Deposit            (actual=0.017077, expected=0.013889
4162	Ripe Wheat                      (actual=0.041369, expected=0.013889
263	Iron Ore                        (actual=0.002614, expected=0.001389
3992	Flat Rock                       (actual=0.039680, expected=0.013889
227	Wolf                            (actual=0.002256, expected=0.001389
2494	Willow Tree                     (actual=0.024790, expected=0.027778
2684	Bald Cypress Tree               (actual=0.026678, expected=0.027778
530	Mouflon                         (actual=0.005268, expected=0.002778
245	Bear Cave                       (actual=0.002435, expected=0.001389
2000	Limestone                       (actual=0.019880, expected=0.013889
12	Gold Vein                       (actual=0.000119, expected=0.000069
75	Penguin                         (actual=0.000745, expected=0.001389
235	Ice Hole                        (actual=0.002336, expected=0.003472
55	Antarctic Fur Seal              (actual=0.000547, expected=0.000694
1317	Indigo                          (actual=0.013091, expected=0.003472
1206	Rose Madder                     (actual=0.011987, expected=0.003472
146	Alum                            (actual=0.001451, expected=0.000694
1886	Dead Tree                       (actual=0.018746, expected=0.013889
684	Barrel Cactus                   (actual=0.006799, expected=0.004167
200	Rattle Snake                    (actual=0.001988, expected=0.001389
255	Wild Horse                      (actual=0.002535, expected=0.001389
1	Monolith                        (actual=0.000010, expected=0.000014
1734	Burdock                         (actual=0.017236, expected=0.013889
1565	Wild Onion                      (actual=0.015556, expected=0.013889
22	Iron Vein                       (actual=0.000219, expected=0.000139
648	Wild Rose with Fruit            (actual=0.006441, expected=0.001736
230	Snow Bank                       (actual=0.002286, expected=0.003472
1296	Teosinte                        (actual=0.012882, expected=0.003472
191	Wild Potato                     (actual=0.001898, expected=0.001389
484	Wild Bean Plant                 (actual=0.004811, expected=0.001389
603	Wild Squash Plant               (actual=0.005994, expected=0.001389
270	Wild Cabbage                    (actual=0.002684, expected=0.001389
237	Wild Boar                       (actual=0.002356, expected=0.001389
522	Bison                           (actual=0.005189, expected=0.001389
713	Wild Mango Tree                 (actual=0.007087, expected=0.001736
51	Lapis Lazuli                    (actual=0.000507, expected=0.000278
61	Cinnabar                        (actual=0.000606, expected=0.000417
3616	Rubber Tree                     (actual=0.035942, expected=0.013889
249	Hot Spring                      (actual=0.002475, expected=0.001389
2338	Oil Palm                        (actual=0.023239, expected=0.006944
1281	Banana Tree                     (actual=0.012733, expected=0.003472
2164	Mosquito Swarm                  (actual=0.021510, expected=0.006944
555	Turkey                          (actual=0.005517, expected=0.001389
83	Tarry Spot                      (actual=0.000825, expected=0.000278
29	Dark Nosaj                      (actual=0.000288, expected=0.000069
475	Malachite                       (actual=0.004721, expected=0.002778
550	Calamine                        (actual=0.005467, expected=0.002778
265	Niter                           (actual=0.002634, expected=0.001389
456	Glasswort                       (actual=0.004533, expected=0.002778
1095	Sand Deposit                    (actual=0.010884, expected=0.006944
1367	Sugarcane                       (actual=0.013588, expected=0.003472
1380	Wild Tomato Plant               (actual=0.013717, expected=0.003472
1223	Wild Pepper Plant               (actual=0.012156, expected=0.003472
42	Electrum Ore                    (actual=0.000417, expected=0.000278
209	Natural Spring# gridPlacement40 evePrimaryLoc  (actual=0.002077, expected=0.001389

For swamp, green, yellow, and mountian, this feels great. The areas are pretty large, even if they do feel like bands

But jungle and desert just feel weird. Very narrow bands... Little strips of jungle.

Now, the whole thing could be scaled up, making all the bands much bigger. But when you do that, the "pocket" areas get bigger as well (like the swamps).

I suppose the "problem with banding" is that there has to be something in the center that isn't a band, and whatever that is feels like an ocean compared to the other bands.

Heck, there could be just one mountain in the center of the rift, with swamps around the edge, and huge bands of everything else in between.

But this has been a very long day, and I don't feel that much closer to solving this. It was a nice experiment, but nothing has felt right.

By "feel right" I mean down inside the game. What looks nice from above is not the same as what feels right walking around.

Currently there are huge, forboding jungles in the game that you run into sometimes. Or endless deserts. That's what the patch system allows. Rings just feel different.

I mean, unless I make really really big rings.

Morti · 2019-07-31 00:44:37

jasonrohrer wrote:

The answer was posted in the spoiler above. Take a look. green is the most common. Desert and snow are the least common.
Here's one where there's a sinusoidal modulation running north-to-south:

I like this sort of thing, I could see different playstyles thriving in different regions.

Makes me think of one of those color arrays with the variations of RGB values.

Except you could potentially have 7, 8 or more variables.

By the end of making that picture I started wondering if the makers of Pokemon thought of this sort of thing.
(Note: I have never played Pokemon, in any form. But I do know there are creatures that have elemental properties, but I don't think they had variations of them in arrays like this... don't hate me.)

Just in the process of making that picture I thought of more things that I didn't say before doing so, like the 4 ranges (w,x,y,z) and how the biomes might fit into them, obviously those could be changed, and they aren't perfect, for instance, tundras are probably less humid than deserts, due to the water being frozen, and, prairies and grasslands have nothing to do with either end of an iron spectrum, but, I think you get the point? At least, I hope so.

Now, how to translate that into code --- zero clue.

Potjeh · 2019-07-31 00:48:36

Yeah, that latest map looks pretty livable to me.

jasonrohrer · 2019-07-31 01:00:29

Liveable yes.

Aesthetically pleasing when you're walking around, no.

But I guess I'll have to go with it and see what happens.

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