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[Virex]

I was thinking about this and solving the problem of how many resources a province has availible in one go.

Each province has a name bar consisting of:

-The flag of the owner (potentially with a dial showing loyalty if we ever get into that) on the left hand side

-The name with behind it a bar to represent urbanization and the damage done by bombardment

-Above the name, several small icons with 2 bars each represent the amount of resources available and the production of said resources in this provinces. The resources available would of course be the same for all connected provinces, but this helps people to see in a glance what's going on.

-On the right hand side a dial representing the distribution of terrain types.

-Below the name some additional information like amount of inhabitants and the governor's name.

-Besides that finally several icons representing the presence of important buildings like factories, labs and spaceports.

These infobars will of course only appear when zoomed in far enough and while pressing a button (I was thinking of space) because otherwise the map gets very crowded

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah. I can see why it needs to be simplified. Will have to think about it.

[Davion]

Why not separate the complex terrain from the provinces completely?

I'd suggest only have the complex terrain play an active role in combat and unit movement and not really play a role in the provinces at all from a coding standpoint. Just define the attributes, resources, and what can be built in a province from an editor, basically have it all defined by the map maker and/or developer. If these maps have to be balanced for strategy and "fun factor" then that seems like the best route to go; a lot easier to pop into an editor and tweak some of the resource numbers and attributes of a province and see how it plays instead of trying to balance terrain percentages on an entire region. The map maker/developer could even define one or two terrain types that are considered prominent and that could have a penalty or bonus for units or buildings or whatever. But overall the province aspect should probably be simple and abstracted so things aren't bogged down.

Terrain in a province/region could probably just boil down to having a one or two sentence physical description of the region which could then be associated behind the scenes with penalties/bonuses, or stated outright.

Terrain for combat could be a bit more complex, maybe something like this:

Spoiler: Terrain Color Map (click to show/hide)

The game engine could pick up that say, red=mountains, green=grassland/plains, dark green=forest, blue=water, etc and apply movement penalties, concealment modifiers, and all that jazz for combat. Note: It'd probably be better if the map editor could do something like that, where the developer could draw or mark off where forests and mountains are so the engine knows that there are special cases if a unit is occupying that x,y coordinate, instead of having to draw out a color map like that for each planet. Obviously this image wouldn't be displayed, but it'd be used behind the scenes to help the engine define the map and calculations for combat.


For urbanization and cities you could abstract it the way say Heroes of Might and Magic does it, have a 'fortress/castle/city' image in a province that represents the urbanization of that area, you click on it and it brings up a little graphic representation of what the province has built, units that can be recruited or are in the area, etc:

Spoiler: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (click to show/hide)

Or go the route of Crusader Kings which is similar to the above, which appears when you click on a province in the game:

Spoiler: Crusader Kings (click to show/hide)

Might not be as cool as having the province slowly retextured to look like futuristic urban sprawl (which is probably doable but a pain in the ass), but it gets the job done and keeps things from being cluttered on the map.

Also, I like Virex's idea of how to display information on the map for players.

[Il Palazzo]

Ok, after rereading my last correspondence with Lap, I've sort of begun to see that it's really not going anywhere interesting.

How about we do the provinces similarly to Dominions 3:
Terrain is a token existing in the province description(status bar).
There would be a few types available, some only on specific planet types, but there would be never more than three per province. No terrain token means plains only. Alternatively, always at least one terrain token present.

Each province starts with the same base income, modified by terrain tokens and initially hidden or shown as "income potential" or "income capacity". Province without existing buildings do not generate income.
Building anything creates urbanisation percentage(I'm unwilling to let it go. It's my pet idea) which appears on the provincial status bar and grows until it reaches 100%(meaning all of the income value is collected).
Alternatively, it could grow over 100% for extra building cost.
Graphical representation could be simplified as well, by having a sprite appear for each 10%(or whatever value) of urbanisation on the central part of the province or in the status bar, next to percentage value.
Or we could even ditch it, and simply keep the percentile value.

Spoiler:  a mockup, also using Virex'es suggestions (click to show/hide)

Bad paint skills are bad, I know. The artistic ones can arrange this better.

Depending on the level of resource variety that makes it into the game, it might be more sensible to put resource production and buildings into a separate window/map layer.

On resources: we could go even further with ripping off the Dominions 3, and instead of stacking resources(micromanagement ahoy!), create a yearly-available resource cap, dependent on provincial industry levels and terrain token modifiers.
Going further this road, metal and energy could be rolled into one "resources" stat, whose planetary total is available in each province with unbroken supply chain.

I'm not sure if the "urbanisation decrases resource production" mechanism is worth keeping, though. Seems a bit like too much of a hassle for too little of an effect?

Special resources could be handled Civilisation style - some provinces would have a randomly generated token representing unique/rare resource type, which would enable some otherwise unavailable units to be produced.
On the province status bar, these would show beneath terrain tokens - representing locally gatherable ones, and in the available resource screen/section, to represent those shipped from other parts of the planet/empire.
Some sort of sharing mechanic between planets would have to be invented, unless simply all unblockaded planets gain access to all of these automatically.
Might require special harvesting building.

The above mechanics have the advantage of making random province and planet generation feasible. One would just need to specify what types of terrain and special resources could be found on which planet type.
Seems a better solution than doing all the planets in the editor, as Davion proposes.

edit: shouldn't this be in Creative Projects anyway?

[Lap]

This might be kinnda confusing but what if terrain type had to do with the boarders of Provence's  for example if you went through a province via the top it would count as grassland, however if you entered from the bottom it could count as a swamp. However I am not sure how to calculate the value of the province as a whole, nor how to graphically represent this

Having this sort of thing means a lot of extra work for both me and the mapper and it is hard to make a good interface element that shows exactly what is on each border. I'm going to keep is simpler for now.

Davion, I think you're confused on how the maps are actually stored in the game and such. Basically each province just has a series of traits that are all manually entered in, like the change you were suggesting. All of the options I suggested fit into this current system. The actual map is also just a picture and won't contain any data as far as the game is concerned so there won't  actually be reading anything like color or shapes off of it. All the data is stored on each province is just in an XML file.

On resources: we could go even further with ripping off the Dominions 3, and instead of stacking resources(micromanagement ahoy!), create a yearly-available resource cap, dependent on provincial industry levels and terrain token modifiers.

Micromanagement ahoy? I don't know if the dominions method did anything, but create more micromanagement. In fact, I think Dom is one of the most micro intensive games because of the system they have. Let me explain the two main elements that do this.

1. In Dominions the yearly available resource cap meant that the player spent tons of time making sure he was always spending all the resources everywhere he could.

2. Because the resources are mostly local in Dom, it meant that the player then had to spend even more time herding all the crap he was producing separately in each province.

Therefore, I would suggest getting rid of both of these and simply let resources pile up so there's no obligation to buy things so constantly and to use the already implemented supply lines system we've talked about.

As for terrain types. The token system is pretty close to how I was thinking the previously suggested options 2 and 3 would work.

I'm thinking that a province could have a maximum of one token of each type, with two available types.

One type would represent the elevation. Another would be a measure of the life/fertility.

Elevation
---------
Mountain
Hills
Nothing (Plains)

Fertility/Life
--------
Desert/Barren/Tundra
Swamp
Forest
Jungle

So an area like the Andes might have both the Mountain tag and the Jungle tag. A open grassland would have absolutely nothing. Each token modifies the basic resources and combat values of a basic grassland province.

I don't really know what to do about snow or extreme hot temperatures, but they would probably function the same for gameplay anyways (besides maybe different special resources).

[Davion]

Mappin' !



Didn't make it wrap around or anything, just seeing what I can do. I am still feeling it out as to what will look best and present the information well, though I think this is looking better.

Was even considering going for a DEFCON look, where it's just simple outlines and shapes.

[Lap]

Ohh I like that last one a lot. As an extra bonus, having less specific details it's easier to change and abstract things.

I've been able to get a lot done in the past few days. I coded in all the original buildings from EotFS so I can test out some things. Buildings are flexible enough that I can easily make a building that shoots missiles, heats up the planet, and harvests food all at the same time. It should allow for some interesting buildings down the road.

Terrain tokens are in as well as the similar system I plan on using for rare resources.

The most time consuming part so far has been creating the interface elements. I had to code my own scroll bars and self sorting tables. Surprisingly, things like the scroll bars and tables take far longer than you'd expect. They actually have taken more effort than a lot of the map elements. Luckily, he time spent on the interface will definitely pay off as so many elements of the game will be reusing these basic components. Not to mention the players will end up seeing these quite often so they need to be done well.

[dephbokks]

I've been working on a map editor for Lap. After seeing all these nice maps being made, I decided to add a map generation capability to the editor. Here is a sample of the images it generates. It is fast too. Each image is generated in under one second.

Click to Enlarge   Click to Enlarge   
Click to Enlarge   Click to Enlarge   

I think I may have a pretty feature complete editor finished by this weekend. The good thing about this editor is that maps can be used for other things since it saves the generated heightmaps. I am going to allow feature tweaking so that there will be alot of control over the characteristics of the maps and even the texturing. The images above are a first draft and someone with more aesthetic sensibility than me can maybe offer a few pointers of how to make them look better.

[Virex]

Davion, your map looks awesome. (Doubly so because it reminds me of Krig-7b). I especialy love the water.

[Lap]

Wow deph! Terrain generation?  Way to go above and beyond the call. I've found that the best way to solve the aesthetic portion with situations like this is externalize as many variables as possible. Let as many visual parameters as possible be easily configurable and then let the more artsy among us make their masterpieces.

Might as well do the same for the terrain generation parameters.

Also, I initially ruled out any random map generation because of how complicated it would be. Since you clearly have a better handle on it than I do feel free to try run with it as far as you want. I don't really know how to appropriately link provinces or to draw in the province boarders, but then again, I didn't even know how to do random nap generation in the first place.


What is everyone thinking on the style of the maps? Should the aim be more towards paper maps? Old board game style provinces? A more futuristic electronic wartable type? Photorealisticish satellite photos? I'm currently partial to Davion's last work.

[Virex]

If I have a say in this I say we go with Davions work. It just looks awesome and very atmospheric.

As for province generation, could you start with vorronoi noise and distort that? That should give some rough but consise borders.

[Lap]

Faction customization is something that hasn't been talked about very much  (I am using faction, side, and house interchangeably here).

As with most things, nothing is set in stone right now. It hasn't even been decided whether players will be able to customize their factions at all. I do not think that each faction will have their own unique set of units and tech trees. That's too much to balance.

I would prefer that players be able to make their own factions or use one of a few premade factions with their own back story, strengths and weaknesses.

Players would be given a certain number of points to give their house strengths and weaknesses. It is just like the orginal EotFS or any of the other numerous games that use this system. Picking positive traits costs points and negative ones give you points. These points need to be positive for you to start the game.

Bonuses to certain types of research, combat, production, income, etc. will almost certainly be among the available options.

The following traits need to be considered:

-Starting with certain technologies.
-Access to special technologies or entirely special technology trees.
-Better relations with certain NPC factions.
-Modifiers to how your voting power is calculated.
-Unique units

[Players love having fun units that most other people don't have so they have a certain level of fun factor. General combat bonuses or semi-specific combat bonuses to units tend to work better though because they tend to not get obsoleted. In the Civ series civilizations could each have one unique unit. However, some nations had a better caveman and some had a better stealth jet. Trying to balance unique units with early access vs ones with later access is very hard. It is possible to simply give a unique set of units that can be upgraded through time so they stay relevant or to have a unit like a transport that might be viable throughout the game. However, is there any reason to do this instead of just giving the player a bonus to all tanks or something similar?]


-Traits that significantly narrow the game for you.

[i.e. Some terrible weakness that says you suck so bad at voting that you might as well ignore that aspect entirely. A player might use all the extra points to become godlike at combat or something. Not only do min/max situations like this often ruin game balance, they also lock players into a certain course of action right from the get go.]

Of course there's always the odd traits that are totally unique and those will have to be considered on an individual basis. Feel free to spew out some of the more unique ones you might have thought of.

In short, what things should a player be allowed to customize about their faction and what shouldn't they be able to have?
Should there be any other restrictions on customization (i.e. Limit of picking only 4 traits total or only 2 negative ones)?

Buildings

Should buildings be required to harvest the basic resources or should they only boost them?

Should multiple of the same building be able to be constructed in a province (i.e Can I build 10 farms in the same region?)

Unit Production/Recruitment

I'm fleshed out the unit production screen a bit more, but I need to figure out what the general method should be.

Should multiple units be able to be constructed at a time? Would certain buildings give more unit production slots?

Should units be able to be built anywhere that has the resources or only at regions that have certain facilities?

Should you be able to construct buildings and units at the same time?

Should units have their "Turns to produce" be a flat number, or determined by the number/strength of production facilities (similar to civilization style games using shields or hammers)?

I want to have unit recruitment for most units require factory type buildings be present in order to produce units. Units could be recruited at the same time as buildings, but how many units should be buildable at once I don't know. I also can't find a reason to go with any single method for how long units should take to build. I can see both sides of the debate on what should determine how fast and many units you can produce.

My overall goal is to avoid having the player need to recruit dozens and dozens of units from all over the place each turn. This ends up creating way too much micromanagement. I'd prefer units to need to be built in regions with specialized buildings to stop players from engaging in wars that can't end because units keep being produced in every region.

[dephbokks]

Wow deph! Terrain generation?  Way to go above and beyond the call. I've found that the best way to solve the aesthetic portion with situations like this is externalize as many variables as possible. Let as many visual parameters as possible be easily configurable and then let the more artsy among us make their masterpieces.

I just thought that random terrain generation would keep the game fresh... like there are almost infinite possibilities. Games like Civ iv use random map gen and that for me is a very fun part of it; exploring the things you do not know about.

So as far as exposing the variables, I am with you on that and that is what I'll do.

In terms of the province borders, I was going to let that be hand drawn (ie mouse drawn). So I've fixed the maps a bit and I keep getting them better with every compile.

From Virex:

If I have a say in this I say we go with Davions work. It just looks awesome and very atmospheric.

As for province generation, could you start with vorronoi noise and distort that? That should give some rough but consise borders.

I like Davions work too. It just might be a lot of work to generate them all (he's using photoshop, right)? By the way, my editor will still load his files too and output the correct xml data format.

Province border generation is a hard problem from what I remember of my digital image processing class I took a few years back. We should look into this though; it'd definitely be cool.

So here is some updated images; I gave them more of an aerial satellitey flavor:



Edit: I think I found a possible way to procedurally generate borders, so I am trying that now.

[Davion]

That last batch of generated terrain looks awesome, dephbokks. The only thing I'd say, aesthetically speaking, is not to to have the landmasses stretch at the poles like a satellite image, because it looks like the terrain gets a bit warped. Other than that the colors and everything look great. Maybe have an option to set it between satellite version and normal? The satellite version would definitely help in rendering out the spherical planet since it wraps properly:



It doesn't take long for me to generate the terrain in Photoshop, but it does take awhile to make the terrain look interesting and atmospheric. Using that generator would save me some time and allow me to fiddle with parameters and then get right into detailing maps we wanted for all the planets.

Hell, could just add  the generator to the game and allow an option to either play with 'historical' static maps, or have everything randomly generated using dephbokks generator.

[PsyberianHusky]

On the subject of buildings I am personally a how galactic civilizations had so many "Slots" per a planet that you could add improvements too.
Your home planet say earth would have a nice number of 10 slots, an infertile planet such as mars may have like 2 slots to build improvements. In a game like this it would help give some territories value that is not necessarily resources. For example you may some planes on a planet you control that are just worthless in terms of resources, but they have enough space to slap down 15 improvements.