Multipass Map Generator

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
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drakeraider
Posts: 27
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2018 11:49 pm

Multipass Map Generator

Post by drakeraider »

Okay, the first thing I love about the worlds in this kind of game is the exploration phase where you don't know what the world layout will be.

The second is playing on really really huge maps.
Now Freeciv's maps approaches really fall under two extremes. Dense stringy landmasses that are really diverse in the early game but lack late game form and aesthetic once you can see how the landmass lays out. Fully Random Height and Islands area very prone to this. The alternative is of course gigantic continents that have alot of strategic geography and identity once the full world is revealed but have no form or detail for early game exploration.

So here's my solution.

Could we have the option to run the map generator multiple times under different settings for a single map, and select what types elements get kept from each pass? I can do this manually but then I have to combine them in an image editor for a scenerio, and the result is I know the layout without exploration. Wanting to preserve the mystery is something I would like, so I was wondering if we could just have the option to merge multiple generator passes before starting a game. Like the mountains and shallow water from a Random pass on a mega continent created by a Pseudo-Fractal "All" map, see?

For example, in the images below, I can illustrate where I got the components merged into the final map. I am just hoping to automate this process so that I don't know the layout or specifics when it's done, just the numbers that went into them.
You can see, particularly between the first and last, how the second one has far more details, but its still divided into regions that are distinct from each other.


Initial pass:
Image
Just some portions of the landmass for scattered islands:
Image
Water segments for lakes and currents:
Image
Mountains and poles:
Image
Final product:
Image
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