(Sort of) Random Maps!

[kabill]

I've posted this stuff on the completed maps subforum, but will leave this all here for reference

So, I thought I'd have a go with producing some randomised maps. You can download the results here:

Farm Maps:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dlrk7opf2c7m6d9/RMP%20-%20Farm%20Edition%20%28v1.3%29.zip

- v1.3 (CURRENT): Fixed missing prop images on many submaps.

- v1.2: Further prop density reduction and some more minor bugfixes.

- v1.1: Cover/building density reduced a little, plus some minor bugfixes.

- v1.0: First release

Desert Maps

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k1nan46z0lgsayz/RMP%20-%20Desert%20Style%20%28v0.2%29.zip

- WORK IN PROGRESS: 1.0: Add military base maps to desert map pack.

- CURRENT VERSION: 0.2: Full basic map pack for all UFO sizes; fixed maps to (hopefully) ensure there shouldn't be any issues with spawn points being blocked.

- v0.1: Light Scout maps only

Installation

Extract the files into your Xenonauts folder. All the files should go to the right place. For the Farm map pack, you will be prompted to replace a single file ("StoneWallSE_spectre") which you should allow (I can only assume that file isn't used in the vanilla maps as its broken; all I've done is fix it).

FAQ

"Can this map pack be used with other map packs?"

Yes, these maps will work fine with other people's map packs as well. However, the large volume of maps in this pack has an unfortunate side-effect of drowning out other maps from the pool, so you'll tend to see a lot of these maps and only occasionally see vanilla maps or maps from other packs.

Details

This pack contains a large number (hundreds) of different maps which rely on submap randomisation to populate them with props and buildings. Strictly speaking, they're not entirely random: I have hand crafted a number of basic layouts and iterated them with a number of submap zones to ensure the maps are coherent and to include contiguous elements like roads and hedges. Nevertheless, the variety of different layouts and random submaps means that there should be plenty of variety.

At the moment, this pack contains a full set of Farm and Desert maps. The Desert map pack needs to be finished with military base versions of the maps (for far there's just wilderness desert maps), but there's maps for all classes of UFO. In the long run, enthusiasm and energy permitting, I'm hoping to make a map pack for all of the different tilesets.

Please note that I've not tested the maps thoroughly. As such, there will be some issues which need addressing. I know that there's some cosmetic things which need changing at some point; no doubt as well I'll have fluffed the spawn-locations and blocked them in some instances or something stupid. If you encounter any problems, then, I'd appreciate it if you could post in this thread or PM me details.

Also, bear in mind that these maps are not going to be perfect. There are inevitably going to be rough edges (quite literally, in some cases!) and the design will not possess the same level of finesse as hand-crafted maps. What I hope I've done, though, is produce maps which are varied and random enough to not feel samey and which are also reasonable to play.

What You Can Do:

Making these map packs takes a lot of time. I'd be more than happy, therefore, to take contributions from others to include in the pack.

In particular, I'm looking for building submaps for the Desert, Industrial and Town tilesets. Other kinds of contribution are of course welcome, but these are the things I know are going to take the most work.

Submaps should be plotted in either a 10x10 or 20x20 area, and should *never* have any spectres on the outermost squares of each submap (to avoid clashing/overlap issues and to minimise risk of blocking spawn points). For the Industrial and Town tilesets, I'm thinking about doing some maps with some 30x30 set-pieces as well, so if anyone wants to have a go at something like that, it would almost certainly fit.

If you do make something to go in the map pack, send me a PM with a link or post it in this thread. If you have an idea, or would like some more information before doing something, feel free to contact me by whatever means. All contributors will, obviously, be credited for their work.

Acknowledgements

Quick mention to Skitso for use of the building submaps he made which are now bundled with the game. Saved me a good few hours of work!

Edited July 18, 2014 by kabill

[Skitso]

Nice, can't wait to test these! Hope you have time and enthusiasm to make similar system to other tilesets too!

[kabill]

I hope so as well!

[TacticalDragon]

Men you and Skitso made my day... today I fall in the same map 5 times!! -.-

Thank you soo much.

[Skitso]

Wow, thats a lot of maps!

I didn't have time to play them but just took a quick look in both editors how you've constructed these. Amazing... You must have done dozens or even hundreds of hours of work on these I'm sure. I'm pretty darn impressed!

I felt the maps were way too crowded though. I'd take at least two thirds of the buildings away and tone down the amount of props significantly. Farm maps are supposed to be pretty sparse and empty with lots of long range fire fights. There are also small problems with the edges of the maps as multi tile props are not cut cleanly when part of it is out of map. I'm sure you can find a way to fix that. Try to get the item saturation to match the original maps and you'll have a true gem here. Great work!

[kabill]

Yes, there was a lot of work. Basically spent the entire Easter weekend putting it together. I was dreaming map making last night, no joke!

On prop density: one of my chief worries was to avoid creating maps with too much open space and - if anything - I've been concerned that there's still too much! So it's interesting to know you think there might be too much prop; perhaps I've over-compensated.

That said, it's worth noting that the submaps have a lot of variation in the prop density overall. Roughly speaking, 20% should be entirely or mostly open, 20% should be quite thick, and the remaining 60% should be somewhere in the middle. So in practice it might not be as extreme as it appears from looking at the submaps.

Nevertheless, it should be relatively easy to fix just by adding more low-density submaps into the pool. I might have a look back at the field submaps in particular: I was really struggling to find stuff to put on the plowed/cabbage/carrot fields and I forced a few things onto them which don't look great. I certainly wouldn't be sorry to see them go.

Regarding buildings: again I threw a lot of buildings in to make sure there was good cover (I also quite like buildings and it's sad that the vanilla maps don't tend to facilitate much in-building fighting). Reducing their density will be more tricky (I'd have to redo the maps to fix it properly, and as you've seen there's a lot of them!). I could try adding in some low-density building submaps to the pools, but this might create other problems. Will have a think after some more testing, anyway, and thanks again for comments.

@ Tactical Dragon: hope you like them!

[Skitso]

On prop density: one of my chief worries was to avoid creating maps with too much open space and - if anything - I've been concerned that there's still too much!

I like dense maps too, but we need to remember that there should be clear differences between tilesets. Desert and arctic should be very open, farm and middle east mostly open and only industrial with little to no open space.

I might have a look back at the field submaps in particular: I was really struggling to find stuff to put on the plowed/cabbage/carrot fields and I forced a few things onto them which don't look great.

Yeah, I noticed the problem particularly in field submaps too. You might want to leave most of them almost empty. They look nice as they are and not having that much cover is the name of the game when in farm tileset maps.

Regarding buildings: again I threw a lot of buildings in to make sure there was good cover (I also quite like buildings and it's sad that the vanilla maps don't tend to facilitate much in-building fighting). Reducing their density will be more tricky (I'd have to redo the maps to fix it properly, and as you've seen there's a lot of them!). I could try adding in some low-density building submaps to the pools, but this might create other problems.

It would give maps even more random feel if only maybe 50% of building submaps would have an actual building. Others could have some props / trees etc.

Will have a think after some more testing, anyway, and thanks again for comments.

No no, thank you!

Edited April 22, 2014 by Skitso

[Gauddlike]

Skitso beat me to it.

I was going to suggest just adding some different submaps to the building and prop folders so you have a random chance of not having a building there at all.

For example in a 10x10 barn submap folder just have 10% of the submaps be empty apart from a few rocks or other bits of cover.

It would be quicker and easier than rebuilding all of your maps and also fits nicely with the random theme you are going for.

It might however cause problems with some of the official maps if the chance of a missing building is too high.

[kabill]

The main issue with 'empty' building submaps is where I've put spawn points: in some instances, I've put alien spawns quite close to the dropship but within or behind building submaps such that they should be concealed at mission-start. So it might be necessary to remove/thin out the spawn point in those locations. (Although, thinking about it, that's probably not too much work. It won't apply to all the maps and would probably be quite quick on the ones I would need to change).

It might however cause problems with some of the official maps if the chance of a missing building is too high.

Compatability with existing submap folders isn't an issue: all the submaps for this map pack are contained in their own folders.

[Gauddlike]

Remember that the AI should technically try and find cover so if there is no building then they should run for whatever props or cover you have replaced it with.

It would give a very different feel to the map as well if you are more vulnerable on one playthrough because the alien is behind a rock with a good field of view compared to another time when they are behind a building.

I personally have no objection to an enemy being able to shoot me when I exit the dropship as they tend to have multiple exits.

Others may feel differently though

Keep up the good work.

[kabill]

Ok, I've just uploaded v1.1. which contains some additional low-density submaps for all submap groups. Low density submaps have been doubled and now make up ~50% of regular submaps and about 20% of building submaps (depending on what exactly you define as 'low density').

Probably won't make any more changes in that direction at the moment: shall see how it is at the moment and adjust accordingly if it's still too dense.

Remember that the AI should technically try and find cover so if there is no building then they should run for whatever props or cover you have replaced it with.

In principle they should, but the AI has never seemed especially apt at taking cover, hence why I wanted to give it a helping hand.

It would give a very different feel to the map as well if you are more vulnerable on one playthrough because the alien is behind a rock with a good field of view compared to another time when they are behind a building.

Yes, that's a fair point. Indeed, to presence and location of buildings I think it the main thing that adds variety to a map (cover props being in different positions doesn't really matter a huge amount; there being or not being a great big building matters a lot more), so having that be more variable will probably affect the amount of map variation more than any other randomisation.

EDIT: Having done a little bit more testing last night, I might take another look at prop density. I might go through the submaps and strip a few bits out of each each, especially the more dense ones. Not sure if this is a priority, though; I think I want to move onto a new tileset as well. Desert looks like it might be easy to do by comparison.

Edited April 23, 2014 by kabill

[kabill]

OP has been updated with link to new version. Contains some minor bugfixes and further prop density reduction.

Am currently working on maps for the desert tileset. Looks like it's going to be a lot easier than the Farm maps, as I thought would be the case. Already have most of the submaps done; just need to work out what I'm doing with military bases.

[bongo0310]

Thanks for your hard work, these maps are awesome! it makes the game more fun then it already is haha.

[TacticalDragon]

Thabk you kabillll I been waiting for the update, I really want to test it

I hope take time until the next update... refixing mod is hardwork...

[kabill]

@bongo0310 and TacticalDragon: Thanks for your thanks! Glad to know they're being enjoyed.

UPDATE: I've updated the OP to include a link to an initial version of my Desert map pack. It only has maps for Light Scouts in at the moment, but I wanted to post it as I'm not sure when I will next be working on this project (it might happen over the weekend; depends on what else I'm doing). As with the Farm maps, I'd appreciate any feedback and bug reports. I don't anticipate there being any bugs, however, since the tiles are much more simple than the Farm maps in terms of their design.

[TacticalDragon]

@bongo0310 and TacticalDragon: Thanks for your thanks! Glad to know they're being enjoyed.

UPDATE: I've updated the OP to include a link to an initial version of my Desert map pack. It only has maps for Light Scouts in at the moment, but I wanted to post it as I'm not sure when I will next be working on this project (it might happen over the weekend; depends on what else I'm doing). As with the Farm maps, I'd appreciate any feedback and bug reports. I don't anticipate there being any bugs, however, since the tiles are much more simple than the Farm maps in terms of their design.

Actually I give a Thabk !

About the mod I need to say, your a master, this mod is a MUST install!

No map conflicts, all maps looks different and well balanced.

I can't wait for you to build tiles for other areas.

[kabill]

UPDATE: Desert map pack expanded to all UFO sizes. It's still not complete - I need to add in another block of maps which have military base tiles on them, but there's plenty of maps there for the time being.

[TacticalDragon]

Ready to test the desert pack. Farm pack is awesome, the game is completly different with this.

[TacticalDragon]

Kabill your desert pack is ingenius and balanced, We take a video capture of amaizing Beta test of XNT/ITD with a desert random map.

Great job!

[kabill]

Not an update, but some information: I'm currently still working on Desert base submaps. Hoping to have this completed and the maps live by the end of next weekend at the latest.

I've also updated the OP with some information for people who might like to contribute to the project.

[Skitso]

My industrial map pack has several building submaps that aren't included in the game (yet). You can use them if you find them good enough. Also, I'm updating my desert map pack soon. It'll also have couple new buildings you can use too.

[kabill]

That's great, thanks!

[TacticalDragon]

Kabill can you build a random pack for artic maps?

Your packs works for me perfect.

[kabill]

Probably going to look at Arctic after I've finished with the Desert base maps. Middle East's my favourite tileset, so I've been wanting to do that last. (And Industrial/Town is going to happen dead last, because of all the buildings I'll need to submap. And then there's Alien Bases, but I need to work out how exactly I want to do those.)

[TacticalDragon]

Probably going to look at Arctic after I've finished with the Desert base maps. Middle East's my favourite tileset, so I've been wanting to do that last. (And Industrial/Town is going to happen dead last, because of all the buildings I'll need to submap. And then there's Alien Bases, but I need to work out how exactly I want to do those.)

Awesome!