Random Island - Random Builings?

[tortuosit 485]

Hi,

I know with every game the islands get different (random?) places. What about the buildings on the islands: Do they get different positions as well?

TIA

Michael

[moondrift47 1]

no the islands are pre generated, depending on game level and type the islands buildings will vary in number and strength but they will always be in same place

[Appogee 1]

I agree that randomisation of islands and placement would have made the game HUGELY more replayable.

In fact, way back when the beta first started, I suggested procedurally-generated islands, where we could enter a numeric seed and then the program would generate the ''world'' based on that seed. That way, we could have shared seeds to share challenging maps, compete to conquer them, and ''do over'' certain challenging maps if the enemy carrier defeated us.

I can even conceive how the island creation algorithm would work in concept...

1. determine number of bases on island and plot their (flat) locations at random on a 3D grid, ensuring adequate separation and distribution.

2. create a randomised coastline boundary on a 3D grid, ensuring a minimum number of potential landing beaches per island.

3. use a fractal terrain generator to ''fill in'' the 3d terrain between the beaches and the bases.

4. most importantly, create an ascending path through the valleys, from the beaches to the bases, and also between the bases, reducing the topology of the terrain on each side of the path accordingly.

5. after that, it's just a matter of populating each base with a random collection of buildings, and decorating the terrain from a few different sorts of vegetation palettes.

6. Randomly distribute 25 of these islands either side of the game world's equator.

Voila, randomised islands on a randomised map, and HUGE replayability. No two games are the same - unless you deliberately recreate a game world by using the same seed.

[tortuosit 485]

You are so right. I recommend developers to have a look on Dwarf Fortress http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ - It's not open source and some things may not be possible, but the world generation there is great. And currently replayability in CC is maybe poor, simply because you learn where the spots are.