About the new world generation

Development
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I don’t post the following into suggestions because the topic is important to my eyes and there is some need of development here. I hope to see some constructive discussion so definitively I’d like to see @Tom, @Ponder, @Sdee, @Albert, @not_owen_wilson, @yshan and everybody participating or at least having and eye over here.

As provocative introduction I will say the new world generation is BAD.

So let’s see. From one hand, at first side it’s a nice improvement and I can imagine there is some lines of code behind it. Indeed, the feel is more “natural”, the system is trying to mimic with quite some success the way things look like in nature. So from this side it’s a great.

On the other hand, we have a very specific design for SH and from my point of view, it’s here that we have a problem with the new world generation:

IT SIMPLY DON’T MATCH ANYMORE THE SH GLOBAL DESIGN PHILOSOPHY.

So simply? Yep, basically things are smoothed.
Where we had previously a squared touch even in the overall world generation, now we have smoothed features, smoothed mountains, smoothed lakes, smoothed templates.
AND to get those, we see a change in the global scale. Previously we had a huge map full of opportunities, now we have a small portion of the world. The new maps are like a zoom in of the previous maps.

So dear devs, personally I would be intransigent with this question of design because this is what will add that special feeling to your product. Strong design are rare. You have (had?) one, don’t waste it, even if many code hours are involved.

From what I read, the person who did the new world generation is not a TR element and to me it’s probably why he/she missed something here.

We really need to have the SH design philosophy everywhere, it’s important so I would strongly recommend to reverse the world generation to the previous version and improve/build upon it. The ratio mountain/plains was great. The scale was great. The noise was great (lots of interesting small places to start from). The max level (6/7) was sparse and so great because it was participating in diversity. Adding some rare big lakes, rivers (squared of course) and shores would have been perfect.

So to resume, yes, as a casual lambda player I can feel the new world generation is better and I can say good job. But as a interested person in the dev and the future of this game, I can feel a deep design problem.

Despite my bad english, I hope I’ve been clear enough so what do you think about this design question?

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I would argue that the “new” style of terrain is actually returning to Stonehearth’s roots. Here’s some Kickstarter-era concept art.
The new terrain is still more square - which I actually prefer. I do think the mountains can be a bit excessive, but for the most part I’m fine with that. My one complaint is that the medium pine trees are kind of awkwardly shaped, but I really like the new terrain.

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I really like the new terrain system. Now we have cinematic size lakes surrounded by massive mountains, not to mention it’s much easier to find islands now.

The new style just feels nicer and now I only have to generate a new seed one or twice to find the look and feel that I want.

It would be nice to have a couple generation options in the future though:

  1. Large land masses / small land masses
  2. mountainous / flat
  3. Biome
  4. River heavy / light

Etc etc

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@Beatrice, the first time I loaded the game with the new terrain generation, I was surprised too. It’s a lot more “realistic” than the old one. I like my towns to look like Zelda towns, which means: mountains in the north, deserts to the south, and a temperate band in the middle where the castle and houses go. Once I loaded, though, I realized that the new maps still allow for that, because the “realistic” shape is at the really-zoomed-out level; once I zoom in, there’s still more than enough room to make something that feels “right.” At the same time, the new terrain allows for more drama, if you want it; higher mountains, huge lakes, islands.

Thanks for the feedback, though, since we’ll probably see more tweaking still, as Winnie and Albert’s work was to implement new noise functions and externalize a lot of the variables into a .json file, where they can be more easily tweaked. If you want to give it a shot yourself, I’m sure @albert knows where the file is. :slight_smile:

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In my above post, I was mainly referring at the word generation, not really at the actual game once on ground despite the new map generation do impact quite a lot the games but I’ll talk about this later. Just have a look to the World seed thread, right here at the transition between the old and new system. The “spirit” is gone!

SO of course it is so cool to have big lakes and islands, I think I have fight enough with water in a certain thread to be more than happy to get big lakes but that’s not my point. Lakes, rivers, shores, all this is a must have on such map generation, so being on the old map or new map, that’s the same. The point is the feeling, it’s not anymore the same and apart the “visual” design I think it may affect the games. For exemple because all is smoothed it will be pretty hard to find both mountains and lakes because to get things smooth, you need a certain distance between world features. Before you could find some varieties of tiny lakes on many different levels. That is now almost impossible.

Well ok, tiny lakes were not as cool as big lakes with islands but why not having both? Diversity through squared design. That’s what is needed. Big lakes? Ok but why should we get a shape as any 10 years old child would draw? All this new map are so “déjà vu”…
What we need are squared water body and rivers should be that way too. Imagine a minute some rivers in this nature like method, once you will put a lake, a mountain and a river, the map will be full to respect the soothing distances. And because the player will see only a tiny part of this big picture, he won’t be able to get plenty of features in his game zone. Bad.

So that is my feeling about the “macro” new world generation. On a side note about the “micro” (once in game), the tree repartition is too regular and need noise. Ok for the rule “dense at foothills and near water” but we need some “air” to get something pleasant. We had that before.

Stephanie, having settings via .json is pretty cool but actually whatever will be the incoming changes, it is important to keep in mind the squared philosophy else, again it’s losing a part of StoneHearth soul. Of course if Albert can tell us a bit more about these settings it would be nice but TR must keep in mind a strong design for the next steps, that’s important for success!

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Beatrice, I’m sorry you feel this way but I have to respectfully disagree with you :confused:

Since before water was added, we kept begging and harassing the team to give it to us. What we’ve been playing with since then is a collection of tiny ponds - something that we’re all used to by now - that was a quick implementation of water in-game. I think the current setup is a lot more representative of what the team originally wanted water to be like. My understanding is that your issues stem from a) the change in distance from different ‘things’ on the map, and b) the smoothness of everything.

Part of the challenge of the game is to pick your location at the start. I don’t think the point is to pick the ‘ultimate’ spot every time, someplace that gives you ore and plains and water and forests and whatever else you need to succeed. Its more to plan ahead and say, “Hey, maybe I’ll build closer to the water for trade/fishing/etc” or “Maybe I’ll build closer to the mountains to mine a ton of ore.” Where you start off from dictates your future settlement a bit more with these changes.

As for the smoothness, its still blocky zoomed in. I personally hated the old mountains as they were basically giant squares coming out of the ground - the same old boring Uluru on every map! The blockiness definitely shines through with the small things, hearthlings, trees, houses, decorative items. Also, compared to other ‘voxel’ games, SH is still really blocky. It feels quite like a 16-bit SNES game map.

What I do agree with is that bodies of water should be more numerous at higher altitudes, but the game’s still in alpha, so I don’t think the current system will be the final one. I think the future might hold some cool stuff for us, possibly springs and waterfalls cascading down 3 levels to join a river and lead out to sea… We’ll see! :smile:

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Hmmm, probably my fault, I may not express correctly what I mean. So bare with me a few more minutes, I’ll try with the help of some images.

The way the map is now generated do not allow anymore “complex” geometry. “Complex” is not the ideal term but you may understand better with this quick mockup below but first a word about it: we are at “macro” level, at map level. This is not meant to be read as a real in game map, it’s more a showcase with many features on a small area (which is globally half a world map), so we have a big lake with island, some mountains (8 levels), rivers (different size + delta) and a shore line.

Trees zones are represented by plain green color. Each kind of tree is bound to a level and may overflow a bit on the next lower level (to mix them). More you climb, less trees. Also, just like the new world generation, a band of tree will follow water bodies and foothills but not sea shores (salt isn’t great for roots). Some noise is added. One pixel isn’t a single tree, it’s a zone where 1 to 4 trees may pop.

I haven’t done the tree distribution on the whole map, it was kind of unnecessary for the topic but theoretically the whole map would look like the top/left quarter.

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So as you can see, that is far from being a smoothed terrain BUT that’s precisely what is needed to get some exiting features! Below, a few close up; that would be like zooming out in game, but you have to imagine trees/plants, clift features etc.

Four levels waterfall, lake, two levels waterfall, river:

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No way to get something close with the new system. :disappointed_relieved:

Tormented mountains with small river cascading to join a bigger river in the plain, some multi level cliffs, an isolated valley in the background:

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No way to get something close with the new system. :disappointed_relieved:

Let’s imagine not anymore tormented mountains but TORTURED mountains (via lot of noise):

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Nice place for cave trolls, isn’t it? Too bad, no way to get something close with the new system. :cold_sweat:

So ok smoothing is nice in general to get “natural” like terrains BUT in my humble opinion, that is not what SH need! We need magic, we need opportunities to build upon. It’s not on a “classical smooth and natural” terrain that player will imagine cool stuff!

By using this smoothed design, you can forget what a nice blocky random system can do. Lots of cool places to start from, lot’s of terrain features that will drive the player imagination… Automatically, distance between features is so big that you will lose all that stuff. So having a nice island on a big lake is excellent but if the ore I need is in the mountain just after the in game map edge it’s game over…

So yes there is some choices to do, lake or montain. Fine. What about some more choices: fantastic lake with rivers and island and some good ores OR fantastic mountains with tons of ores and waterfalls and canyons and small hidden fertile valley? That’s the kind of choices I’d prefer to have! :smile:

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I don’t really have much to comment on here, but I admire your commitment and the effort you put into your ideas.

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The examples @Beatrice gave do look pretty awesome. I will agree with @coasterspaul that what we have now may be closer to what the Kickstarter was aiming for, and certainly Radiant should stick to their vision because it’s an awesome vision, but maybe we can get some interesting terrain with rough edges like how @Beatrice is talking about without losing sight of that vision either.

Personally my biggest concern with the new generator was that I wouldn’t be able to find a long enough stretch of straight cliff at a right angle to another long enough stretch of straight cliff, in order to build a rectangular settlement in a natural, more easily-defensible position. I was able to find a large enough nook after a number of dice rolls, but only just barely, and I suspect if I ever want to build a larger settlement than I’m used to building, I may be out of luck. I just hope in the final game, I am able to build great castles in the shadow of a mountain, without all sorts of zig-zagging of the layout. My dreams of recreating Helm’s Deep and battling off giants must not be in vain.

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The kickstarter teaser is a bit off topic because actually the topology in it isn’t “normalized”. For example, levels are not of the same height and the faces of the cliffs are much more animated than what we have. Perhaps we could get that someday but right now, what I’m referring to is the “skeleton” of the world. Let’s say the first pass in the generation, the big lines. Then later, yes we could think about noise, etc…
Now that said, if look at the river and pound in that teaser, what do you have? Straight lines. That’s the SH design I like and I fear to loose if we start with smooth things…

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@Beatrice, thanks for the visual aids! We’re definitely taking a look. :slight_smile:

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Can’t argue with that. Visual aids are always great :slight_smile:

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Video aids are better. They are multiple visual aids all in a row in a short amount of time…so better :wink:

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@Beatrice what app did you use for those visuals? Pretty nifty lookin!

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Gorgeous map! I think it better represents what you were getting at.

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Still Magicavoxel, the voxel editor I was using for my mockups.

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I’ve been feeling like the game could use some finer noise myself. It’s like the harmonics in the noise function are missing something between the world map generation and the local map generation. So on the world map you get only very large formations. Huge mountains and vast forests and plains. Then on the local game map you see very little variation over large areas except for bushes and the occasional bunny statue.

It would also be nice to see:

  • Really big cliffs on mountain sides (20-50 levels high, but not very common)
  • Rivers (with river banks)
  • Hills in the plains so they aren’t so boring and flat (and lacking in stone)
  • Glades in the forests and stands of trees in the plains
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Huhu, 20/50 levels cliffs would be over high! The max level I saw was when I done the carving test in the city of Waytoocool with 7 levels and really once you have 4/5 vertical levels, that really high already…
For the stone in plains, we also can imagine large buried bunny structures (could be a pretext to do archeology! :open_mouth:) or simply resurging rock (some of the small stone piles here and there could hide a very big stone spot underneath). Now one think that we should avoid is rare ores in plains, that should be exclusive to specific zones (mountains actually) OR we could introduce something specific to the underground of plains but what, no idea yet…

I spotted the temperate.json file; yet I don’t have the time to do some testing but I fear some important features will not be doable, like multi level cliffs because the generation “rules” are for the whole map. My guess is some more coding is necessary to get some rules for specific random spots where then we could ask for cliffs or for more noise…

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I think you are misunderstanding my meaning on levels. I’m using it interchangeably with voxels. Each step (radiant’s term) in a hill is about 10 voxels and each step in a mountain is about 15 voxels with up to 7 steps (if I understand temperate.json correctly)… So a mountain peak could be up to 85 voxels above the plains. Having a 50 voxel cliff face in the side of that mountain would be pretty epic, but possible.

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Ok got it and right now I’m into the temperate.json and I’m trying out every settings. Long testing but necessary to understand how it works. Will report later.

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