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March 10, 2021

Today was spent primarily on cleaning up the infrastructure on the map generation, just making it pretty. But if you saw my other post, you may see that the terrain looks a little different now. Firstly, there are now 7 different types of terrain, now including ICE, DESERT, and SNOW.

I've also changed the way terrain is generated. Before, terrain was generated only using a height map, which was okay, but lacked a little "realism." So now, I've implemented two other maps: precipitation and heat. Precipitation is... well, how much it precipitates, and heat is quite self-explanatory, as well, but each map will affect the level of fertility in each region of the world, meaning that in the future, once settlements are added, each settlement will produce different amounts of resources based on geography. Pretty neat, I think.

It was excruciating, I'll admit that. I've done many changes to the code that amount to very little in the player-side of things, but it was definitely a necessary makeover. 

Top: Terrain Map

Middle: Precipitation Map

Bottom: Heat Map

March 10, 2021 - P2

Extra screenshots of other generated worlds:

You can use html to make links clickable (w3schools link).

Anyway, this is very ambitious, but the fact you have the map generation to show does inspire some confidence.

I do still wonder how engaging a procedural story can be, and how procedural generation will work with choice links, but it doesn't have to be perfect to be good.

However, my bigger question is if making something like this in the CYS editor is worth the effort, or if it'd be easier and better to use something more suitable. But hey, it is an experimental project.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to progress on the text side of things, but seeing the completed map creation will also be neat.

Ah, yes, I forgot to do that. I was using my CYS extension, so it automatically made it a link, so I must have forgotten to set it up accordingly. But yeah, those are some questions I often ask myself, as well. I'll do my best to produce something worth playing!

Oh, while I can respect the tech behind AI Dungeon, I agree, it seems very pointless and random. For this storygame, I want something much more focused and grounded. I'd very much like to lean toward predominately text-gameplay with a little visual flair (like the maps), so for example if someone was fighting a battle, while the code would keep track of where the troops were on the battlefield, it would seamlessly translate to text for the player.

For example:

(CODE) - [Insert logic to store unit positions] (Enemy has 1 unit of militia swordsmen on the hill, 2 units of  veteran spearmen advancing...)

(Text Displayed For Player) - "You duly note the rapid shifting layout of the battlefield, taking care to watch your flanks. After all, the enemy general, Bapoleon Nonaparte, is famed for his tricky antics. You note there is an enemy unit of swordsmen on the hill, though the men look pale-babyfaced, and their uniforms are a disgruntled, unorganized mash of colors—perhaps some sort of citizen militia. Approaching is a large line of spearmen, their spears glinting bronze in the sunlight..."

The issue I need to figure out is how to make it engaging, but not repetitive, after several battles. If the repetition remains an issue, than I may have to fall back on to more "game-like" gameplay (which I'm more apprehensive towards), but will allow for  greater fluidity, but I dunno, it kinda seems to take away from the "text" part of the "adventure".

It's definitely something that will have to go through a lot of testing and play-testing, that's for sure, so that's a long journey ahead.

And yeah, I apologize for it breaking dark mode, I needed to do that temporarily because originally I was using ASCII maps, so it was kind of messing with those, and I just never changed it back. I'll eventually fix that, no worries!

I don't believe he's using the standard editor. Is this JavaScript?

But this site has a built in community of players and a comment system (where unlike other sites, contributing members aren't banned for commenting, or asking for comments, or other trumped up reasons) so it makes sense to put a game here if the primary desire is just feedback.

Can confirm it's broken on Android however, but it works fine on PC.

Happy?

I'm not, but I know protesting too much will make everyone think that I am.

Yes, I'm using JavaScript to read text from my own text files and write it onto the storyviewer. This allows me greater freedom to display variables (such as someone's first name), and also allows me to use JS more flexibly (because I made it so the page isn't refreshing after every link).

And yeah, I mean, the community in CYS seems greate for feedback and stuff. Call me dumb, I don't know, I just decided to make it here because this is the place I know. I'm more familiar with CYS, that's all.

Ah yes, hopefully I can add support for mobile. Those darned things.

Looks interesting. Desert areas seem to be on the small side, which reduces potential for a desert nomad type of people.

You know, I definitely agree with you, now that you mention it. It was something that subconsciously bothered me, but I never knew it. I'll have to do some fiddling with the desert generation, because I think desert people are cool.

For now, yes, due to the way the heat map algorithm is written. So it's always hotter nearer the equators than the north and south poles. But I'll definitely change that to simulate more skewed planet rotations.

March 11, 2021

So, I've been working for a few hours straight, and I must say, I need a break. So I'm gonna make this post, then I think I'll be done for today. Also, I don't plan on posting everyday, but since I've done a significant amount, I wanted to share, and hopefully you guys can give feedback and ideas.

The first part of today was spent tweaking the terrain generation in order to better accomodate for desert generation, as suggested. In doing so, deserts typically generate much larger than before, and I've also changed the terrain map colors a bit, just to make it more appealing. I've also tweaked the way the precipitation and heat map generate, which, I feel, allows for more interesting and realistic biome placement.

Secondly, I worked extensively on a bunch of background code stuff, just optimizing things and whatnot. What this led to, is now if you go test, you have options on what to generate. I have also implemented the ability to click and drag the map, so if you generate a map which goes outside of the bounds of the canvas, you can drag it to move it.

March 11, 2020 - P2

Lastly, I've implemented, what I think is the coolest part, and something that will lead to more gameplayish development, which is political map generation. I won't get into how it's calculated and stuff, and it's most certainly not perfect, but it generates what I think are boreders that are suitable for the game. Now, alone it might not seem significant, but trust me when I say this is BIG. Now I'll be able to generate culture maps, political borders, etc. which will make the world much more diverse.

That's pretty much all, but here are some pictures if you're interested. This particular world's seed is 995 and the rest of the setting default, if you want to look for yourselves.

Dang, now that's something I can't unsee.

Well, a lot of these map modes won't be available to the player if the game goes into a playable state, but they are very useful when layered upon each other to make another map (height + precipitation + heat = terrain). Though I'm not entirely certain what specific maps I'll add, I do have a few ideas. For one, I'd love to implement culture maps, which I can use to tweak the political borders a bit and even allow things like fragmented empires, where a certain culture used to be a large empire, but now they're small and fractured. I think that'd be awesome. Also assuming the game gets to the point where each nation has its own dynamic economy, I'd definitely implent something like resource maps (iron, coal, food, etc.), which indicate which provinces are rich in a certain type of resource. The player can then strategically determine which places to conquer or even trade with...

Yeah, it's all very abstract, as of now, but we'll see. Any suggestions?

Actually, I'm glad you mentioned trade routes, I'll have to put that on my list. I'm not sure how I missed that one, really, it opens up a whole sleuth of game mechanics

Seeing this, I am reminded of CKII map creation.

I imagine file size is the main difference, along with the colours you picked for representing terrain, but oh are there some similarities, aha.

Now that the map generation has improved, I'm looking forward to the 'randomly generated world' contest (but that might be better off waiting for the rest of your ideas to be implemented).

I'll add that if deserts were sparse, mountains are too (but less so). I think this is because you've got (mostly) individual mountains rather than ranges. However, I am not sure if you want mountain generation to be different, since I suppose it doesn't stick out as much (or might just be a preference thing).

I'm a little guilty. I have to admit, CK2 is a huge inspiration of mine. I'm definitely planning on "borrowing" a few more systems from that game...

But yeah, regarding the mountains things, I agree with you. Mountain ranges are something I totally overlooked. It's probably going to be fixed in the next few minutes. Fixed!

The changes so far look amazing. Is the political map dependent on the terrain map at all? If not, it should be. Deserts, tundra, and snow should be occupied by fewer countries than rich and fertile areas, where there is more competition. This has been true historically, and it's still true now. Consider countries like Russia and Canada that occupy vast swaths of snow and tundra and North African countries that occupy vast swaths of the Sahara. Of course, if you plan on doing something like desert nomads as previously mentioned or any nomads really, then it might not even make sense to label them as a polity with a distinct border and instead just mark the area as desert.

Tbh, I did try adding rivers, but like you mentioned, it's pretty difficult, and was sucking up a lot of time, so I scrapped my current implementation. I definitely will be going back to that in the future though, so hopefully I don't make too many people mad.

Good point. For now, the political map was a little hastily done, hence the very straight borders between most of the countries. But I'm definitely going to be overhauling the way the political map is generated, in so that the borders make more sense, geographically. And that's a good point you made about nomads, I'll have to keep that in mind