Designing a custom map.

Daroth · Post by **Daroth** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 10:07 am

I just downloaded a pol 095 server, and i'm wondering how i can start to design a custom map. Any help will be appreciated.

FreeSoul · Post by **FreeSoul** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 10:18 am

(UO Landscaper || dragon) && worldforge && patience && uosir

uosir if you realy need it

but most importand is patience

Post by **Yukiko** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:08 pm

Here is a website that has many map design tools available

http://www.ryandor.com/

I use the tool named "Dragon mod 9 plus"

Firedancer · Post by **Firedancer** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:05 am

Daroth wrote:I just downloaded a pol 095 server, and i'm wondering how i can start to design a custom map. Any help will be appreciated.

I might have an alternate way if you're interested - one which is very fast indeed, though also technical challenging. Contact me on icq51747447 if you're interested.

nevalon · Post by **nevalon** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:33 am

Firedancer I think there could be some more people interested (e.g. me). Could you describe what do you mean here?

Firedancer · Post by **Firedancer** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 7:40 am

nevalon wrote:Firedancer I think there could be some more people interested (e.g. me). Could you describe what do you mean here?

Hmm... it's very hard to describe. I'm talking of Mapgen - a map-making tool that can help you a great deal, but..... hmm I guess I need to start with the history, or you won't understand what I'm saying....

Story goes, in 1999 we started doing a custom map for our shard. Sadly in early 2004 we figured that the map we had was incredible... yet no longer fitting our requirements. We thus knew we had to start over.
We were looking at the tools available - but stuff like dragon, WF.... they all can generate mul files, but they all need you to design your map pixelwise. This not only takes ages but also will cause you to make errors. It's really loads of work - which we were no longer willing to do.
So we went to collect our experiences and create a ruleset out of it. One of our devs started programming a tool that would generate a map based on the very rules we've learned during the first map's design -> Mapgen was born.

Unlike dragon it was designed for automation. Making a map shouldn't take more than a day. So we decided not to care about details... as long as the island is where you want it, who cares how high it's mountain peak is exactly?
So we randomize all that. With a generation run taking less than a minute, you could simply do a few runs and take the result you like best. Also the tool has a lot of intelligence. It does the terrain borders, fixes design glitches for illegal terrain, does nice coastlines etc...

In mid 2004 the tool was done, v0.5.0 was tested and working perfectly - yet on the other hand, shard development was still half done only so, alas, apart of a few test-maps we didn't make real use of the tool just yet... instead we added two last features, changing the sea level to z=-75 so we could get higher mountains and secondly, making terrain tiles customizeable, so that the tool can handle any number of custom made terrains.

we tested it and it seemed to work. It was only in late 2005 that we went back to look at it and render our final map.... this was where disaster struck: a bug had sneaked into the latest version!
To make things worse - the tool was coded in delphi and the developer who made the tool can no longer get his compiler to work, having moved to other programming languages in the meantime. So we have the source code, but currently we cannot fix that bug.

Ok, so what does this mean to you?
Option a)
If you are/got a delphi dev, I can give you the source code and you can try fix the bug. We suspect it's merely a constant being forgotten when we added the sea level change (all landmarks seem to have a too-high altitude, making coasts ackwardly steep).
We'd give you all the support and mapbuilding knowledge we got (explaining all the rules the tool is based on) and only ask in return, that you release the tool to public via our etheria webpage (of course giving all the credit that is due to both, our original dev and you.)

Option b)
I can provide you version 0.5.2 of our tool. Sadly the original version v0.5.0 was lost, so this is an intermediate one. What this means is:
-> I myself used the tool to make a map for our shard within only two days.... and now that I know what I have to look out for I could do a map in a few hours (safe structures), but one must do these actions:

- draw a simple bmp. I can maybe give you some guide how this is done real fast still giving great results. (Takes about a day, once you know how you want your map to look gameplay wise)
It's far simpler than dragon for sure though, as the purpose is to define terrain-outlines and not details like altitude etc...

- start the tool to create the map. (takes only a few minutes)

- use ultraedit to run a hex-file search/replace, because sea levels will be messed as will be certain terrain tiles. (Knowing what search/replace strings to use, this takes only a few minutes)

==>...your map file is done!

when you have the map rendered.... you still have to do a few things though. You'll want coast tiles to be placed, forests to be spawned, dungeons to be designed, towns to be built.

On my shard I have a POL command, that can do the coastlines of your world almost instantly. Some glitches that do occour ocationally will require your gm's to look over them though. A good weekend's job for your staff. I also got commands that greatly help to plant trees or even whole forest parts more or less randomly.

Problem is, all these commands require custom gumps of our shard. I've been meaning to make an independant package that I can release to public using std. gumps too, but as long as the bug isn't fix and as long as we can't release the tool to standard users, I'm not sure it pays.
Ps: I'm also planing to write some code to generate random dungeons and/or dungeon segments. So if any of you wants to join in developing these, I'll be happy to share the code with you then. (The idea is to later use Mapgen to make new maps on a monthly basis or so... Providing additional worlds for quests etc. that our players could visit.... so we want to generate as much as possible in randomized, automated ways.)
So as said.. if you're interested, my icq is 51747447

Tritan · Post by **Tritan** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:27 am

Wow this sounds pretty amazing to me. Every other tool I have tried to make a full map has been a real pain.

I would like to try this out but I do not know delphi at all, never had to work with it myself.

Firedancer · Post by **Firedancer** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:37 am

Tritan wrote:Wow this sounds pretty amazing to me. Every other tool I have tried to make a full map has been a real pain.

I would like to try this out but I do not know delphi at all, never had to work with it myself.

np... I know it's not that easy, but if you catch me on icq I'll be happy to show it to you.
You should just make sure you're fairly adept with your POL and got some hex-editor at hand, so you can get set up for the tool to work for you.

Designing a custom map.

Designing a custom map.

Re: Designing a custom map.