Map Types

[p.stucki]

Hello.

I have been stumbling over this and it seems to be a good option to build an early civilization before Ancient Cities gets released (if it does, that is).

In the Trailer and YouTube videos I have only seen very hilly / mountainous maps. Will there be rather flat maps too or are hills a must in order to get specific resources?

[Passenger 57]

All the ores and the larger sources of flint are on hills afaik.

[p.stucki]

I have seen in a YouTube video, that one can chose between different starting locations. How exactly do they differ?

[martiño]

The different locations are effectively different maps: They are hand chosen random seeds for the map generator, some of them are near rivers or lakes etc... We have about 20 at the moment in the game and we will add more post launch.

In creative mode and some scenarios we have flatter maps that make the game a bit easier.

Also all of this will be exposed in the workshop scenarios, people will be able to very easily upload new locations and tinker with the map generator.

[p.stucki]

Interesting. It is just a bit confusing, that all these maps basically seem to look the same. Tons of mountains with maybe two or three spots barely large enough for a considerably large settlement. I am not a historian, but I am considerably sure that our ancestors had no religious scruples to settle in the lowlands and trade for those things they did not find at their own location.

[p.stucki]

It is exactly how I assumed it to be. Having looked at all starting positions in Continental Dawn, I wonder why there are six of them, when two (river and lake; although it is just different flavor either) would have been sufficient. Everywhere the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of mountains. Did you have religious scruples to set the "flat land" percentage above 5 when procedually generating this stuff? I hope you deliver something more realistic as DLC.

[Cheran]

I remember reading somewhere we would to be able to create custom map types in the future. There is only one (and a half) so far in the game, eurasia - and eurasia-scarce if I remember correctly.

I really hope this will be added to the game, because this will expand the replayability greatly.
If not, please dev team won't clam up and just let this option dangling out of our reach. I will be perfectly unterstanding if this feature might be impossible to implement, but even mentioning such possibillties and then come clean with it is the worst thing a developer could do. Just saying.

[eddieballgame]

Using the 'devs' "BuiltinScenarios" one can modify the 'seed numbers' per each scenario as well as tweaking some other map perimeters.
Thus creating an unlimited supply of new sceanrios.

[KWAiRT]

Originally posted by martiño:

The different locations are effectively different maps: They are hand chosen random seeds for the map generator, some of them are near rivers or lakes etc... We have about 20 at the moment in the game and we will add more post launch.

In creative mode and some scenarios we have flatter maps that make the game a bit easier.

Also all of this will be exposed in the workshop scenarios, people will be able to very easily upload new locations and tinker with the map generator.

Why not an ingame option to create new maps with random seeds? Would also be nice to see flatter maps in general instead of all mountains and no valley. This was what I was looking for on the Roadmap.

[Jeb Bush but super communist]

Sup y'all. This problem has been bothering me as well. I think, however, I may have may the first step towards a solution. I started data mining the game files if I could find anything useful. After unpacking the file, resources.assets with UBAE (Unity Assets Bundle Extractor - click link to download[7daystodie.com]) I located a text asset written in XML that appears defines the terrain object.

I won't link everything but the first portion of the file contains this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<terrain_parameters>
    <noise_amplitude_count value="10"/>
    <file_path value="Assets/Custom/Resources/Terrain/terrain.xml"/>
    <main>

        <!-- How many map objects are we going to split the terrain into -->
        <chunks value="4"/>

        <!-- How big in meters the terrain is going to be -->
        <chunk_size value="512,256,512"/>

    </main>
    <heightmap>
        <algorithm value="HexPerlin"/>

        <!-- The base size for the Heightmap, the actual size will be 2^Base+1 -->
        <chunk_base_size value="8"/>

        <!-- This controls how high mountains are going to be at various frequencies. In meters. -->
        <noise_amplitudes values="0 0 0.24 0.154 0.097 0.045 0.025 0.005 0 0"/>

        <!-- This will make lower heights flatter -->
        <squash_heights value="True"/>

        <squash_factor value="14"/>
        <squash_offset value="8.5"/>
        <distance_height_offset value="0.015"/>
        <smooth value="True"/>
    </heightmap>
    <alphamap>

        <!-- The base size for the Alphamap chunk, the actual size will be 2^Base+1 -->
        <chunk_base_size value="8"/>

        <!-- Above this gradient, we start using the texture -->
        <slope_texture_min_gradient value="0.6"/>

        <!-- How quickly we transition to the full on texture -->
        <slope_texture_transition value="2"/>

        <!-- Above this height, we start using the texture -->
        <high_texture_height value="13"/>

        <!-- How quickly we transition to the full on texture -->
        <high_texture_transition value="5"/>

    </alphamap>

I'm going to keep digging and testing, but I wanted to spread this information to help push the conversation and modding work forward.

Best of luck to everyone.