One Large Globe Instead of Random Maps

Suggestions
21

I’d say chunks the size that you load in on is pretty good size for pregenerated area and generate chunks that have certain requirements like match the side geogrophy of tile next to it and a gap inbetween to smooth out terain (having a requirement to match greatly reduces deffects inbetween)

this would change how a world would generate and how you choose an area but you can now have chunk names and include chunk number into world maybe starting chunk this way it has a higher chance of being the same world but probably will never be as well

then they could make their own original globe chop it up and label each of those chunks and bam the pregen chunks and have their original globe as a choice to start with

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22

Also since you can choose where you would embark it gets rid of this problem altogether.

23

if I remember right you only generate a ninth of the map then what you got to choose from so that could mean starting tile is the one it firsts starts branching off and inbetween will be slight randomly generated areas to smooth the terrain to make it look none slapped together chunks and then you could choose from them to start on

only problem is not repeating a chunk number/name and having a limited pregen database

so it wouldn’t actually change how you decided a starting area

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24

That’s one of the advantages of the full globe pregen, you would be able to choose anywhere to embark, where as the half half you would have to stick w/ the current system.

Not saying that the half half is bad, just pointing out a pro/con

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25

that’s why I added this part

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26

Makes sense, I would say the best formula at this point would be a half half, there are two downsides I can think of,

-Non infinite terrain.
-Tons of extra dev work

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27

ohohoh don’t forgot player created terrain chunks they can use them like they plan to with player created mobs and scenarios

why did I not include this in

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28

You would have to say that players could implement their terrain chunks until the first full release of stonehearth, then it will be closed otherwise every time you opened a new world you would need to download a new globe.

29

that doesn’t sound quite fair to limit those that want to make their own chunk of land

how large would a globe be how many chunks? will they give an option for larger/smaller globes? will they give an option for “infinite” generation (not limited to globe)? how long exactly will someone play on one globe before making a new one? what of the new players that buy the game later? how will we control the type of player created terain chunks? will they give an option to disable use of player created terain (original globe)?

so many more questions for them to ask about this

I think it’s still okay to have the sytem I suggested because you still get the opertunity to talking about it and if someone wants to see it they can use it as the starting chunk seed

still would be a lot of work for devs but the work they have done so far is amazing and the best dev team I know of I love them

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30

Yeah I completely misunderstood this post :blush:

I would think yes, the smaller the globe the less randomly generated terrain, the smallest being all the pregened terrain. The biggest would be infinite because you could keep adding more random terrain.

Again same thing, they could keep adding infinite random terrain between the pregened chunks.

It would vary from the size of the globe, and the creativity of the player.

I’m not sure how this would effect anything

Simple, put it instead of randomly generated terrains.

They easily could.

That’s what it all boils down to xD

31

what I meant by this are falicy/inapropriate terain and sloppy terain that is just a joke

will they prevent custom terain chunks in anyway

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32

Also another good point would be ruins could have a bit more sense of being there as it is the same world but’ll be very hard to find

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33

This is a good example of “deep” lore.

ahh I see, that is a problem, there would have to be a large filter team, and once it got past them it would go into the database where it could randomly be selected for use in a global map, and to make it even better have the ability to “flag” player chunks in game.

That leads me to another idea, the ability to switch player chunks it would require a reload and you wound’t be able to have anything in the land.

Of course this would cause tons of problems, but in theory that’s how it should be done.

34

maybe they could have it so that you could choose to add what custom player created terain you want to add and a preview of it this way it’ll take care of inapropriate items and they could be flagged

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35

That is a simple and good way to filter it. I always think to big xD

36

you can think big and then think of the pros and cons then question how can you make it better with the aspect of the target goal/audience

this is why feedback is always good

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37

The thing is that it’s against the very design of the game (which, at least, has been preached by Tom countless times on the stream): Stonehearth doesn’t have round things (“the roundest thing would be the arched chair”). A globe is the definition of “round” (in my book) - it doesn’t make sense to have a globe where everything, except the globe itself, is a cube.

It’s the player’s decision if he wants to re-use the same seed again and again. Note that there are two world generations, the first is the “rough” generation you see at that table-thingy (clicking the dice will change the seed and re-generate the world), the fine generation happens once you’ve selected a square and embark on your adventure. You’re, technically, free to re-use the same seed as many times as you wish, you can then select the same or a different starting square.

If you have a “globe”, but walking in any direction for an infinite amount of time will never get you back to the starting point, isn’t it rather a plane than a globe? An infinitely huge globe is, locally, just another plane. So what advantage would you have from a globe to, say, a pre-defined seed where (scripted) stuff happens?

The way world generation works, right now, is that there’s a global seed, from which the world is derived (it’s actually the same as in Minecraft, really). That means no matter whether I start at (5, 1) or (1000, -1595), as long as I’m using the same seed, all chunks will be the same. Even if the world will support exploring further to new chunks, these are (at the hearth) not completely randomly spawned, but follow the seed (for consistency and other things).

That means that you could have a map where you said “Okay, from (-1000, -1000) to (1000, 1000), I’ve placed various fixed scenarios/ruins/dungeons to explore and give you a story. It’s up to you where you start.” So you can build “adventures” for others to explore, where there might be better places to start than others. It’s not required to have a “globe” for that, just like there isn’t one in Minecraft.

38

I don’t think you correctly understood my post. A better word to use would be “pregenerated” terrain, but a lot of it. if you’d like you can call it a plane. I’m going to edit my starting post to make it clearer.

That’s exactly what I was saying, if you had only pregenerated terrain there would be a limit. However Taklu came up with a better formula which I have been calling the “half half” where parts of the world are pregenerated, then there are “buffer” parts and then random parts. So there would be an equal mix of pregenerated and new terrain. And maybe even the feature to control the percentage of pregen and new terrain.

39

I don’t really understand how this differs from the current system? A mixture of pregenerated “components” like ruins, settlements, temples, whatever, that fit in to everyones games mixed with the randomness of a generated seed.

Plus you’ve got the fact that time would need to be spent creating a static world on top of everything?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding everything. I mean if we think of Project Zomboid - different type of game yes, but - it has a map that is the same for everyone, player content can be modded in … benefit of that being that there is a narrative driving the game, there is both a desire and a need to have a static world map … something I’m not sure Stonehearth would benefit from?

40

The difference is your talking about “components” i’m talking about chunks of the terrain themselves.

That is the big problem with this idea, time.

Exactly why we would use the half half system, some of it would be lore driven the rest would be randomized terrain.