Change mapsettings

Hello everyone! :slight_smile:

It’s just a simple question. Is it possible to change the mapsettings somewhere for the game?

I want to have more water and less Mountains in my maps.

If it is possible to change theese settings easily? how and where will I do this?

You could try and make a mod that changes how the biomes are made.

http://discourse.stonehearth.net/t/mod-spoilers-water-mod-v0-7-0/10972

doubt its still working but there was a water mod…i havent been brave enough to test it myself, since it looks old judging by the dates…

Uuuuh, don’t use the water mode!

The mod was made to activate water when it wasn’t a stable feature, not to increase the quantity

I would suggest using mods that add bioms that may match your taste

It’ll be easy to find if you search with '[MOD]'and ā€˜biome’ (search ā€˜[mod] biome’)

Isn’t there just a .txt file that I can change a value or two to change the amaount of Mountains there is?

Because I remember it to be much smaller mountains before a certain Alpha update?

I’d like to be able to use the whole map when it’s generated, not just the area that we select with the box.

i don’t think it’s as easy as just changing one text file… but i’m not an expert on biome gen code, maybe @BrunoSupremo could help you out with this

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It is somewhat easy. The problem is that it is not a general rule, you need to repeat the changes to each biome you want.

Go to this file:
mods/stonehearth/data/biome/temperate.json (or the desert.json for the desert)

At that file, in the ver end of it, you will find this section:

  "water": {
     "__comment": "placement of water bodies occur at positive samples, parameters are for a standard simplex noise generator",
     "depth": {
        "shallow": 5,
        "deep": 10
     },
     "noise_map_settings": {
        "__comment": "simplex noise function",
        "persistence_ratio": 0.01,
        "bandlimit": 4,
        "octaves": 4,
        "range": 80,
        "aspect_ratio": 1.2,
        "mean": {
           "plains": -5,
           "foothills": -20,
           "mountains": -18
        }
     }
  }

The lines with ā€œplainsā€, ā€œfoothillsā€ and ā€œmountainsā€ are the values you want to change. Higher values means more chances to spawn water. I think changing the -5 to +5 will almost double the amount of water in plains, but needs testing to get the amounts right.

(plains are only the flat, lowest heights, foothills are the hills with green grass and pines, and mountains are the rock parts)

To reduce the mountains there are two options with different effects. You can change their horizontal space or their vertical height.
To have less horizontal space (more plains), look for this section near the beginning of the file

"terrain": {
	"__comment": "minimum height for surface of terrain",
	"noise_map_settings": {
		"octaves": 4,
		"persistence_ratio": 0.015,
		"bandlimit": 3.5,
		"__comment": "can stretch the terrain vertically to allow for long mountain ridges",
		"aspect_ratio": 1
	},
	"plains_percentage": 40,
	"height_base": 36,
	"__comments": {
		"valley_count": "offset of layers from base",
		"step_count": "number of layers",
		"step_size": "size of layer, for foothills and mountains this has to be multiple of 5"
	},
	"plains": {
		"step_size": 2,
		"valley_count": 1,
		"step_count": 2
	},
	"foothills": {
		"step_size": 10,
		"step_count": 2
	},
	"mountains": {
		"step_size": 15,
		"step_count": 7
	}
},

And change the plains_percentage, which is self-explanatory. 50% means half the map will be flat, and the other space will be mountains.
To change their vertical height, at that same section, change the step_count (of mountains or foothills) to lower values.
Step counts are how many step the mountain has, and the step size is the height of each individual step. So the temperate biome has at max 7 steps, each with 15 blocks of height, made with rocks (mountains) and has 2 steps each with 10 blocks height of foothills (grass mountain steps before the rocks)

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I can’t find the file you mentioned :frowning:

I’m guessing you are not used to modding then, right? In this case, there is a few things you should know first.
At your mods folders, what you see? You should have at least 4 files, all ending with *.smod.
The main one is the ā€œstonehearth.smodā€. It is actually the main game in it.
Each of this files are really just a *.zip file, with a different file name, just that. So you can rename the stonehearth.smod file to stonehearth.zip.
Doing that you now can open it to see what is inside (or even better, extract it all). You will see the files I mentioned all inside this zip.

If you still confused with something just ask. I’m not sure if I made too many assumptions and gave a bad explanation.

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This is just for generation right ? theres no way i can add water to an already created map is there?

Right now only at first generation. But it is probable in future we will be able to somehow add it later through some new game mechanic.

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I hope so! And thanks for your answer :slight_smile:

Once I’ve made changes that I’d like, do I save the document and rename the ā€œ.zipā€ file to ā€œ.smodā€ again and it’s all good?

Yes.
And If you have actually unzip it, it will also work in its own folder.

As long as you don’t have a folder and a smod with the same name (repeated mod) it works.

That’s awesome! Thank you so much.

On another note, is there a way to make mountains appear right beside plains without foothills?
I would like to build structures on the side of cliffs, but there’s no easy way to do that currently.

Thanks,

You can change how many steps of foothills you want, in your case set it to 0.

At the biome generation file, change this:

{
...
	"terrain": {
...
		"foothills": {
			"step_size": 5,
			"step_count": 0
		},
...
	}
...
}

:+1: Perfect!

How many in-game blocks is one ā€œstep_countā€?

Step count is how many layers of terrain it has. In temperate, it defaults to 3, so this means that a hearthling has to climb three foothills before reaching a mountain.
Now, the height of each layer (in temperate) is 15 blocks and is the step_size value.

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Hello! I carefully read your instructions, but could not find the specified path to the files what you mean.
mods/stonehearth/data/biome/temperate.json
It is actual way now?