quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 11-25-2000 04:26 AM I never liked the CTP map-generator, but thankfully the CTP-2 map-EDITOR seems pretty effective and powerfull. I think we should have the ability to upload good handmade CTP-2 maps to Apolyton, so we can build up some kind of library of nice maps. [This message has been edited by Ralf (edited November 25, 2000).]

Agreed ..but the ability to generate random ones would be kinda pleasant too

1) allocate an array (x,y)
2) fill it with random numbers between (0 - 16 for example)
3) for each square on the map, add all the squares around it together (including the centre square), divide by 9 and put the result back in the centre again .. (for the side of the array, you can either wrap around or count as 0, depending on map style).
4) repeat that process 2-3 times, and pick a water level (say 0-3 sea, 4-7 flat land, 8-10 hills, 11+ Mountains ..)

You will discover you have a realistic map, if you play about with the water level and original 0-16 setting .. you get different results... the more you loop, the more you smooth

SIMPLE ..

Max player ammount
Max map size

quote: 3) for each square on the map, add all the squares around it together (including the centre square), divide by 9 and put the result back in the centre again .. (for the side of the array, you can either wrap around or count as 0, depending on map style). 4) repeat that process 2-3 times, and pick a water level (say 0-3 sea, 4-7 flat land, 8-10 hills, 11+ Mountains ..)

Your method looks remarkably like (simple) Digital Image processing.

Smoothing tends to produce blurring in images and this would translate to gradual terrain changes. There are similar techniques for sharpening - making abrupt terrain changes.
Diversifying terrain (that is defining how much sea, mountain, grassland etc you want) is equivalent to contrast enhancement in imaging. This is done by varying the size of your bins in step 4 (as you say).

It would be interesting to see the effects of Laplace transforms. In Satellite imaging it tends to show land countours...

I chose a random-generated map with a huge continent and small seas. I got what I liked.

I know it doesn't look very simple to non-coders .. but the code is remarkably small, and amazingly fast .. although, when I first developed it 10 years ago, I only had a Spectrum 128K it took hours to run a map of 100x50 .. but pc's today can run huge maps off in seconds ..

quote: I know it doesn't look very simple to non-coders .. but the code is remarkably small, and amazingly fast

Totally agree. I wrote a program in VBasic that does the blurring/smoothing bit (to black and white photos) in under an hour. And I'd never done that type of stuff before.

quote: Now if I could just get it to stop making 75% of the middle of the map either plains or desert I'd be alot happier.

It should be easy to get rid of too much desert plains or whatever with the technique The Viceroy has mentioned. I'm sure someone could integrate the technique into a map generator.

Is there a bitmap to map converter, I recall hearing something about that. If so, you can use something like Paint Shop to do it and forget about the generator. Although it might get tediuos