Here's another run with the new nation expansion algorithm. One of the unfortunate side-effects of this (slightly more complicated) algorithm is that it increases the amount of time necessary to create nations by a not-insignificant amount. I'm running this code on a fairly heftily-powered gaming laptop (dual core 2.26ghz, 4 gigs RAM, 1 gig graphics card) and it still takes ~3-5 minutes or so to run 150 years of expansion for land-heavy maps with a high random number of nation-states. Of course, my desktop at home that runs four cores at 4ghz a core would probably halve this time (or better), but I realize a lot of people will be working with older rigs, so I don't want to go
too crazy here.
I am mildly tempted to go all hardcore and multi-thread the expansion process, since the way I've recoded it would be much more conducive to doing so without running into a bunch of weird conflicts. We'll see how that works out, it's not a priority at the moment.
150 years of initial expansion is more than adequate to create original nation borders. I figure they'll probably start warring in a second phase which I've yet to code. It's slightly less realistic, but it'll prevent the code from bogging down peoples' computers to a standstill. Most of these hard numbers (i.e., the 150 year setting) will probably be user-configurable along with many other worldgen settings, although it remains to be seen exactly how in-depth with this stuff I'll be in the end.
(Note to self: I
really need to take a good long look at the language gen code and consider scrapping/rewriting it at some point in the near future. If there's anybody out there with a lot of experience at creating language/dictionary generation code, I'd love to chat/bounce ideas off one another.)
Just another quick map-gen:
Though it's pretty hard to tell at this scale, villages/cities/castles are now back into the nation gen process. I've reduced their frequency quite a bit (I didn't like the look of a map that was too tightly clustered with settlements, and I feel that the prospective adventurer should have to walk more than two tiles or so to reach civilization). It's also worth noting that there are some significantly-sized areas of unsettled wild. These types of places will probably eventually make great areas to start new civilizations/settlements should the player choose to go that route.
Also on the to-do list for now: make an actual dev blog. Though I will try to keep updating threads here and on the Doryen forums, I think it'd probably be wise to finally get an independent page set up at this point for the ease of both those keeping up with the project (and also for myself from a maintenance standpoint).
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Topic: Cult - New Development Video (5-10-12) (Read 114441 times)