Talk:Mapping/Terrain Types

• Is there need for more terrain types? --Tecturon 21:49, 21 August 2007 (CEST)
  • jungle?
  • farmland?
• I don't believe urban or village should count as terrain types. I believe these should be part of a different layer. The Campaign proposal mentions the use of different layers to determine what maps and missions are suitable for a given spawned event, and I consider the following three layers to be relevant so far:
  • Terrain. This only deals with climatological features (deserts, ice, jungles, mountains).
  • Culture. This deals with things like building styles and languages used on signs.
  • Population density. This mask would influence how likely it is that a city or village map is used as opposed to a rural or unpopulated one.

To illustrate, both the "drug" tropic assembly and the "village" assembly would count as a village map, but the former is set in a jungle region while the latter is set in a temperate region. In other words, they would be in a different type of area on the first layer yet be chosen because they are both in a reasonably populated area on the third layer.
A rough idea of how I imagine the population density layer is this image.
--BTAxis 22:23, 21 August 2007 (CEST)

• Theoretically I share your point of view. But practically, this implies a highly flexible and dynamic map generation algorithm. As far as I understood, the map tiles being connected to each other when building a random map are completely predefined. Three different layers inadvertably lead to a multiplication of the amount of tiles needed. Where you needed 8 tile sets in my first draft, you will need 16 tile sets if you subdivide each terrain type into only two culture types. Imagine you have 4 culture types, 4 types of population density and 8 terrain types. This results in an amount of 128 different tile sets. For each tile set, you will have to set buildings, ufos, trees, streets... --Tecturon 12:25, 22 August 2007 (CEST)
  • Ah, no. The layers don't generate a mission, they eliminate the ones that are unsuitable. To take your example of the 8-tile mapset, this mapset will have a descriptor file that describes what terrain types it can appear on, what cultural regions it can appear on and what the population threshhold is. If one or more of these factors are incompatible with the location that the mission takes place at, the map can not be used. --BTAxis 12:44, 22 August 2007 (CEST)
    • ok, that is an idea. It implies that all map tiles have a ufo descriptor defining the inclusion criteria. "I can only be used in urban regions, with high population and an north-american culture. Terrain types might be grass, jungle, desert. (That's because of the big Planet-Hollywood I represent)". But how would you ensure that all tiles have the same ground? The ufo descriptors would have to be very restrictive to ensure that, possibly negating the positive effect. Otherwise, the system could generate a map with snow on the eastern end and desert on the western end, because that Planet Hollywood was defined to be suitable for cold and warm regions. Nonetheless I'm eager to build a prototype-patch. --Tecturon 13:14, 22 August 2007 (CEST)
      • Again, the map layers nor the map descriptors don't determine what the map looks like, they only determine if the map is suitable. The maps are fixed - the ground does not change depending on what terrain it's on (PHALANX bases are an exception to this). Example: map industrial06. This is a snowy map with heavy machinery on it. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that the parameters for this map are: terrain: arctic only. culture: any. population density: any. Now supposing a mission was generated in northern Russia, then the conditions for this map would be met. Note that terrain is the ONLY requirement for this map. It could technically spawn on the south pole. However, it could NOT spawn in any non-arctic region. Another example: map village07. This is a suburban map with grass and trees. Suppose for the sake of the argument that the parameters for this map are: terrain: grass. culture: western, eastern. population density: 30% or higher. This map could spawn anywhere in Europe, North America or Asia as long as the terrain type is right, but NOT in the Middle-East or Africa because the culture isn't right. It also couldn't spawn in areas that had too little population. --BTAxis 13:44, 22 August 2007 (CEST)