Topic: New map, balance, and questions

• Is there a reason why the max. tool size is 10?

It´s arbitrary. 10 has the advantage that you can access all sizes with the shortcuts 1-0. Bigger sizes can be allowed by changing one hardcoded value and recompiling, but it becomes much slower because so many fields are changed at once (I did that once and didn´t like it).

• is there a reason why the map files are not human readable? or did I just not find how to read them? text editor didn't work. I saw a couple of threads where people already asked if one could import the landmass form from an immage, but that didn't seem to be possible. Is there a way to have more infos about the maps files without reading the code?

Use a hex/binary editor (e.g. GHex) to view and change them. You still need to ref the code though to understand the order of the many numbers. I once suggested to convert them to Lua, but apparently that would break map backwards compatibility and slow down map loading…

• fish breeders cann't produce fish out of water, can gamekeeper produce animals out of thin air? (I think I asked that in an other comment as well)

Fish breeders need at least 1 fish left on a node to replenish fish there; gamekeeper really does produce them from thin air.

Ideas in the air :

• make tool size arbitrary big

Would be nice, but as I said, slow. A "filling" tool for terrains would be useful though

• make a "tool form" option for basic forms that scale -relatively- good. triangles, rectangles, stars, and circles shouldn't be that problematic
• a copy-paste tool for parts of the map, potentially with mirror and rotations (I know, that have already been mentionned. But I'm lazy and I really could have used it for my last map, that I intend to make better anyways )

A big +1 for both of these

• a terain that only accept small buildings (realistically it could be like a swamp, too wet to support heavy buildings, but the name swamp is already used) but that's rather game suggestion. (I sliped it here because I just thought of it)

+1, but might be non-trivial to implement (needs a new Is value at least)

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einstein13 wrote:

• a terain that only accept small buildings

The workaround for that is to make terrain with a big slopes, then you aren't allowed to build any big building on them. Just play with random terrain in different amplitude of height.

to expand: a medium building requires that all corners in a 2-steps radius have a height difference no greater than +/-2 compared to its tile, and the flag has a height difference no greater than 1. large buildings have the same requirements, but they also need that the corners in NE, NW and W are free, because those buildings fill 4 corners. small buildings have the same requirememnt for the flag, but then they just need that in a radius of 1 there is no height difference greater than 3. playing with those values, it's easy to make a terrain that cannot take large buildings.

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kaputtnik wrote: If you want to upload a new map, with a better name and maybe more balanced, i can remove the old map. Just send me a PM

Will do that eventually. I'll wait a bit see if I got feedback and if I can improove a couple of things on my own, and I'll write you.

einstein13 wrote:

BoeseKaiser wrote:

• a copy-paste tool for parts of the map, potentially with mirror and rotations (I know, that have already been mentionned. But I'm lazy and I really could have used it for my last map, that I intend to make better anyways )

See that topic: https://www.widelands.org/forum/topic/1634/
In general, the idea is old and noone came with a good solution for that, because only rotations by n*60 degrees are allowed without any lose of quality.

I did read parts of the topic, and if I could probably follow the maths with a bit of effort, I'm way out of my league for the coding part. Still :

• the copy paste should be relatively easy (?)
• rotations of n*60 would already help quite a lot to make maps
• even with border problems or such, even an approximative rotation that you can correct with toolsize 1 is much less work than making up to 6 times the same pattern (or even 2 for the symetry)
• the size of objects to rotate can be limited to prevent overlap

I might be off, but I figured if we don't need to do it perfectly (it's a feature for creating game content, not part of the gameplay) it might make a lot of maths and programming issues irrelevant.

people wrote: things about the small building question

thanks for the details.

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the concept is very nice. i'm just a bit worried that it may be too long for human game, as going thrugh all the bracket and then colonizing the new strip of land and moving in there is going to be time consuming.

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We can play a testgame there, if we get 8 players - how can we organize that and when?

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