The new world gen, not a fan

[Blue Hasia]

I'll start by saying this: I started in A16 and have played every alpha since.

I have always enjoyed the random world generation so far, getting put into a world that was so well built and random.

But now there is a linear intent with the world generation. We start in the center (default), and we don't get random cities anymore. The world layout has limits on what can spawn where.

I can no longer successfully play small solo maps. Maps that are 3k and below seem impossible to spawn all the needed traders.

4k maps still aren't guaranteed to have everything either.

Even then, there are issues with 4k maps.

I've played 3 games now up to 20-30 days, and each time, the forest biome has not spawned tier 1 POIs for quests.

Trader Rekt, for 3 games now in version 1.0, can only give me nearby dig quests, or I need to travel 1k to the next city for a tier 1 quest.

I also just don't like how the random generation now favors bigger cities in the higher tier biomes.

Please, before anyone says there's nothing wrong with that:

I am not bothered by loot level. I like playing in the forest. I want my big cities in the forest, and I want all the traders in the forest.

I don't want to be forced into playing a linear game where I need to move around to each biome.

TL;DR: The current world generation has a linear intent that limits random city spawns and restricts map layouts. Small maps (3k and below) struggle to spawn all traders, and 4k maps aren't guaranteed either. Forest biomes often lack tier 1 POIs for quests, making gameplay frustrating for those who prefer the forest. The random generation now favors bigger cities in higher tier biomes, forcing a linear gameplay experience.

[Otheym]

There is a mod on Nexus that fixes this.

[Pain Weasel]

A lot of this is very easy to fix in the XML, specifically in rwgmixer.xml.

To add cities to other biomes, find this:

<township name="city">
<property name="outskirt_district" value="rural"/>
<property name="biomes" value="desert,snow"/>
</township>

and add the tag "forest" or "burntforest" or both to the biomes property (value="forest,desert,snow"). Do that for any town, city or big city you want.

For the traders, find the trader you want to edit (at the end of the doc).

<prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="trader_rekt" biomeTags="forest" bias="20" min_count="2" max_count="4"/>

Add a new biome to his biomeTag attribute like this:

<prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="trader_rekt" biomeTags="forest,wasteland" bias="20" min_count="2" max_count="4"/>

You can increase or decrease the min/max count, move them to new biomes, or make it so every trader can show up in every biome, whatever.

[Jethro]

My random gen 10k world is supposed to have forest center, but looking at the map, it’s really far east…..like really not much more to explore to the east.

All the towns feel way too similar. Main roads lead to a maze of side roads and don’t cut straight through towns. Then you come to a body of water with a broken bridge and a dirt road going around it, with a camp site and a raft out in the water. Copy paste. Could be better. Feels like it’s gotten worse since previous alphas.

[Blue Hasia]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

A lot of this is very easy to fix in the XML, specifically in rwgmixer.xml.

To add cities to other biomes, find this:

<township name="city">
<property name="outskirt_district" value="rural"/>
<property name="biomes" value="desert,snow"/>
</township>

and add the tag "forest" or "burntforest" or both to the biomes property (value="forest,desert,snow"). Do that for any town, city or big city you want.

For the traders, find the trader you want to edit (at the end of the doc).

<prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="trader_rekt" biomeTags="forest" bias="20" min_count="2" max_count="4"/>

Add a new biome to his biomeTag attribute like this:

<prefab_spawn_adjust partial_name="trader_rekt" biomeTags="forest,wasteland" bias="20" min_count="2" max_count="4"/>

You can increase or decrease the min/max count, move them to new biomes, or make it so every trader can show up in every biome, whatever.

Thank you for the info, ill give this a try on my next restart.

[Pain Weasel]

You may want to play around with it a bit just to make sure you get a map with one of each trader. Progression is still dependent on that. I decreased the max_count for example and it worked out well. Plus, who needs 20 traders on a map anyway?

Fixing the progression of Rekt > Jen > Bob > Hugh > Joel would require editing quests.xml. The good thing is the the next trader quests already have the "AnyBiome" tag, so they aren't dependent on the default biomes for each trader.

[Blue Hasia]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

You may want to play around with it a bit just to make sure you get a map with one of each trader. Progression is still dependent on that. I decreased the max_count for example and it worked out well. Plus, who needs 20 traders on a map anyway?

Fixing the progression of Rekt > Jen > Bob > Hugh > Joel would require editing quests.xml. The good thing is the the next trader quests already have the "AnyBiome" tag, so they aren't dependent on the default biomes for each trader.

I did play around with the generator for a while and made around 50 maps. Even on a map that said it had a trader for each biome at 3k, once I loaded into the game, many of the traders were missing in the different biomes.

[onanonehand8]

Originally posted by Blue Hasia:

TL;DR: The current world generation has a linear intent that limits random city spawns and restricts map layouts. Small maps (3k and below) struggle to spawn all traders, and 4k maps aren't guaranteed either. Forest biomes often lack tier 1 POIs for quests, making gameplay frustrating for those who prefer the forest. The random generation now favors bigger cities in higher tier biomes, forcing a linear gameplay experience.

Yep, and giraffes with short necks are now a thing of the past as well. One can play without the linear progression leading from one trader to another. Just pick a direction and go.

It seems to me, you want linear progression, but only on your terms. That's not a bad thing, it just doesn't fit in the game.

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by Blue Hasia:

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

You may want to play around with it a bit just to make sure you get a map with one of each trader. Progression is still dependent on that. I decreased the max_count for example and it worked out well. Plus, who needs 20 traders on a map anyway?

Fixing the progression of Rekt > Jen > Bob > Hugh > Joel would require editing quests.xml. The good thing is the the next trader quests already have the "AnyBiome" tag, so they aren't dependent on the default biomes for each trader.

I did play around with the generator for a while and made around 50 maps. Even on a map that said it had a trader for each biome at 3k, once I loaded into the game, many of the traders were missing in the different biomes.

Yeah, I did that too - and also got similar results. I also tried fiddling with city tile sizes, forcing certain types of towns to not spawn, and tried adding traders-allowed in Old West towns, etc.

I'd guess you might eventually happen upon some combo of .xml tweaking that might make it work for smaller maps a lot more often - where the no-biome-specific-trader in a biome was fairly rare to occur, at least - but I don't know what that is. I got tired of trying. Whatever formula they're using to decide how to distribute traders seemingly gets a bit wonky for tiny maps.

You can add Traders manually in via the prefabs.xml for each world folder, but generally too much bother, as well. Edit: if you get one where traders are in each biome but it's the "wrong" one for the biome, that's easily changed in the prefabs.xml by searching for traders and just changing the name from "Trader_Bob" to "Trader_Hugh" etc. But that's not the same as a trader totally missing.

[CatPerson]

Postscript: in case someone doesn't know to what I refer to re: prefabs.xml, they're located here:

Users\(yourPCname)\AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\GeneratedWorlds\(name of your generated map)\prefabs.xml

You can alter the lines relating to traders for that map in there. Example:

  <decoration type="model" name="trader_jen" position="-1117,33,2031" rotation="1" />

Just change jen to someone else, start new game.
This assumes one knows generally where the traders are already tho, and/or have jotted down approx map coords to remember etc, so you know switching them around would place them where you want.

[CatPerson]

I took another brief stab at fiddling with the rwgmixer.xml, shrinking bigcities and largely trying to confine RWG to spawn those over anything else. I've been able to get 4k maps to spawn pretty reliably with a trader in every biome, that way, even with Jen/Rekt/Joel also all in Forest (joel also in Wasteland as supposed to be), although I'm not sure how smaller "bigcities"/and no "towns" might affect Trader T1-T5 Quest stuff. I don't bother with quests so not familiar.

I've been unsuccessful at even that much (traders in all biomes at the least) re: 3k or lower, still, tho, using similar concepts.

But my 4k maps during this run ended up looking like this a lot, which probably isn't what you'd want, but just to show:
https://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/media/132/7DtD-B1-0-008.jpg

In my brief test attempts, I felt like the "Circle" layout has the best odds vs. the Center types. No proof of that, just what it felt like in short bursts.

[CatPerson]

Oh, addition: the last post in this thread, by the creator, indicates the Teragon editor has been updated to support 1.0. I have not tried it so I don't know how easy it is to use/configure etc, but maybe it would have better ways to force certain conditions. At the least it may make prettier maps? I may try it when 1.0 goes stable since I'm kind of annoyed with 1.0's RWG generation myself.

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/35308-teragon-random-map-generator/

[JaH Warrior]

I was also dissapointed with the forced citymaking. annoying you can't have big citys in forest biomes anymore.
The higher tier biome, the bigger the citys. would love a big city in each of them, or multiple.

Me, im afraid of touching the files, so mods and xml alteration is not my thing :p
Ill just go with whatever the devs present to us. Its their game and their choice after all.

[Pain Weasel]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

In my brief test attempts, I felt like the "Circle" layout has the best odds vs. the Center types. No proof of that, just what it felt like in short bursts.

I actually had good luck with the Line layout, with almost even size distribution. Not my favorite but I was able to get a good mix of cities, towns and traders in every biome that way. The biggest problem I had was getting it so the wasteland didn't border the forest and block access to the other biomes.

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

Originally posted by CatPerson:

In my brief test attempts, I felt like the "Circle" layout has the best odds vs. the Center types. No proof of that, just what it felt like in short bursts.

I actually had good luck with the Line layout, with almost even size distribution. Not my favorite but I was able to get a good mix of cities, towns and traders in every biome that way. The biggest problem I had was getting it so the wasteland didn't border the forest and block access to the other biomes.

I meant it seemed best for the 4k and smaller size maps trying to make those sizes actually do what the gameplay wants - a trader in every specific biome. :)

Try making a bunch of 2-3k sized maps, see what happens. It's not very ... great.

[Pain Weasel]

Got ya.

I did just try making a 4k a few times and I was able to get all the traders by dropping mountains to 0%. When I initially tried it traders were missing, so I set mountains to 0% to allow for more space and generated the map again with the same seed and all the traders showed up.

I did edit the xml to move some things around.
Towns - forest, burnt forest, desert, snow
Cities - burnt forest, desert, snow
Big cities - desert, snow, wasteland.
I didn't touch the traders.

I think that is all I changed, other than the preview colors for some of the districts but that shouldn't matter.

The end result is a fairly decent map with all 5 traders, 8 total, and a large town/city in each biome. At first glace at the POI list it seems to have everything I'd look for. Seed was "smaller" because I'm not very creative, if you want to try it out.