Improved Level Generator
 

We really need an updated Level Generator. I understand it's meant to quickly generate groundwork to build up from, but cliffs need to be seriously revised. Below I've posted a generated cliff and next to it corrections I made to it.

I don't see why these corrections are not being generated to begin with, they're quite basic. As basic as connecting dirt paths, which the generator ironically does correctly.

The Pictures:

The one to the left is the one from the level generator and the one to the right is one that I have connected.

Important Notes

The water cliffing is also messed up, but you get the general idea by my land cliffing.

The top section of the cliffs had to be pushed down one tile due to the way Graal's up direction cliffs are messed up. The style I use for the up direction (the /\ /\ /\ style) was one presented to me by WanDaMan which eliminates the natural tile errors the cliff tiles present.

Notice how the sides of the cliffs have those annoying little dots (on the generated one, which is solved in my screenshot).

Minor Notes

The shadows sare annoying because they go around the cliffs which is unrealistic. In level gen we should have some kind of "Sun direction" option which corrects this along with shadows on for example houses.

I do realize the screenshots are a bit different in terms of location, the first one was done on a gmap so more was visible. The second one was offline so I hope that explains why they don't look exactly the same.

I never really noticed that stupid shadow around the cliffs until you pointed it out, definately needs to be changed..

Look at the cliff sizes, they are wrong. Look at the way cliffs are connected, also wrong. Look at all those tile errors, all wrong. I hope Stefan replies or something, because this is a big deal.

Yeah it is a big deal, I totally agree.. Graal has been around for enough years now to fix these errors, it's about time to fix them I say.

I hope everyone else around here agrees also.

The level generator uses a grid, can't make it perfect for each possible situation, although there are scripted level generators out there which might work better in that case. The same for the shadow.

But can't you make it atleast use the correct cliff length and corners? I mean the dirt tiles are connected perfectly. I see nothing wrong with fine tuning the current Level Generator. I mean this is a basic developmental tool everyone uses for GMAPs and such. It might as well be correct. :)

Again with a "do it better yourself" approach? =\

What was the name of that guy a year ago or so who was asking for the development of tools to make a server for him?

:confused:

Well it could be possible at some time to convert the level generator to graal script so that servers can use it and improve it

Xcessive54321, if I am correct.

The level generator could do with some improvements; I have previously found it to be quite patchy.

I make my GMAPs from scratch. Sure it may take a little longer, but I can put something together that looks a hell of a lot better then what comes out of the generator, and is exactly what I want.

And how big are they?

I mean it's not like I'm asking for much.

I like this plan. Then Mac and Linux users would have access.

As long as someone does it :\

I can put out a 5x5 GMAP in a little over a week, two weeks if I want it to be really detailed. An overworld may take me a month to create, but I assume it would take almost as long to generate a GMAP and tweak it to perfection.

Not really. If it's for an online server it's better to work with some basic groundwork (since you're working with other people) than to make everything bit by bit without a common reference.

And you gotta remember these aren't little 5 x 5 gmaps I'm talking about. I'm talking about atleast 10 x 10.

food for thought:
there's something like 4096 tiles. A truecolor png goes up to 1667408 or so colors. Would it be better to make a generator that reads in every tile (so you can draw it up pixel-by-tile) or another like the one we got (where it only even Kinda works as if you're using the default tileset lineup)?

If it were set up so it went tile (0,0) = Red0, Green0, Blue0 and tile (5,5) = Red80, Green0, Blue80...you could hypothetically edit your entire overworld as an imagefile in shades of purple...you'd just need a damn good head for "fuchsia = darkwater stone, top left corner"

Methinks the ideal would be a big-dumb-generator that makes an Empty Field GMAP, then an editor where you can zoom out and draw cliffs like the old scripted dirthpaths...

Hell the only problem I have is that the cliffs Stefan wants it to generate aren't properly done to begin with. If he's able to make it generate cliffs, why not make it be able to generate cliffs properly? That's really my only main concern.

Ah yea, that was the guy.

To make the Level Generator better, you'd probably have to slightly improve it's ability to read a PNG, and perhaps add some options for how to have the shadows.

as I understand it, the way it works is:

Green touching red: placecliff(here, direction)
PlaceCliff(location): if (location) is a corner, placecorner (direction); else placenormalcliff (direction). So if he gives us the Graalscript version, we can replace placenormalcliff with a different tiling sequence, etc. Particularly handy for servers where "cliffs" means "skyscrapers" or "space station wall", etc.

then it blends nicely into dungeon generation, as you can say "mine wall" in place of "cliff" and "mine floor" in place of "grass", etc.

-shrugs- whatever it takes to get the generated cliffs to be proper. :(