stample

Um, honestly I'm not really good at tutorials, and its very dependent on what editing software you are using. Also, I'm not set up to do recording for YouTube. Personally, I use Photoshop 7.0, which is like 15 yrs old at this point, because its the last version I bought that I can still "own". Most of the features of NitroGen are explained pretty well in either the first post or the readme file included, and I recommend you read that for those. Main post also has links to several tutorials, many of which I used when I started out, so I highly recommend them. But here a few quick things: 1) mask.png is what controls what POIs can/can't be where. Clear is not masked, I use black for masked (nothing spawns in that area), and a single pixel of red is a city seed, while green is a town seed. Yellow is same as clear, but lets you mark your seeds easily. For example, looking at an 8k map, a single red pixel is not visible, so I put a large square around towns, and a large circle around cities. This lets me see what is what quickly when fully zoomed out. 2) To create your mask.png quickly, I copy my import_HM.png, use a magic selection to select all water, and fill it with black, then invert selection and delete to unmask the rest of the world. 3) Biomes are controlled by biomes.png and can only use a few very specific colors. Be sure if you are editing that that you are using a pencil-type tool with no transparency (or I think its called pixel art mode in Kriento). If you get any shading at all, any single pixel outside the 5 predefined colors, it will error on map gen within 7d2d. 4) You don't need a biomes.png when running in NitroGen. It's only used by 7d2d, using the NitroGen output to create the world. In fact, if you have it, NitroGen will overwrite it with its own. So you can do this step last. I recommend you set biomes in NitroGen to "Natural", which will just give you green everywhere. You're going to overwrite it later anyway, but it'll create the base biomes.png that you can then edit. 5) import_HM.png is your main thing here. It needs to be greyscale, and the RGB values will equal the in-game height. You need to use global contrast and brightness so that your lowest point is below sea-level (I use about 40 25 so my seas are kind of deep [Edit: wow, big mistake here, Sea level is 33, oops] ) and you don't have any huge spikes between adjacent pixels, which are what create those huge vertical cliff faces or spires. The blur and smudge tools are your friend here. Photoshop also has a filter called Gaussian Blur, which does a great job of smoothing stuff out quickly. For removing words/roads/labels, I rely heavily on cloning stamp at around 50-70% flow. The trick to removing them effectively is to sample from several areas around it and overlapping those samples, so you're randomizing pixel changes over recognizable things like letters without drastically altering the overall height in that area. This is best when words overlap terrain features like hills/ravines that would be recognizably edited if you weren't careful. Blur afterwards to smooth them out further, and smudge to repair canyons/crevices. Look at pictures below around Mt. Kosciuszo to see what I mean. 6) Remember that unless you have extremely recognizable features, no one is going to know the difference, so feel free to take liberties with terrain features. Trying to preserve, for example, the actual peaks of a given mountain range would be all but impossible, and no one would notice or appreciate it even if you did. You might make sure the tallest mountain is where Everest lies, but no one would make sure that the 2nd and 3rd highest are proportionally accurate in comparison. So have fun, and don't sweat altering terrain to get done. 7) When testing your terrain gen, use all desert for biome, and turn off all POIs. This will make map gen very fast, and desert is the easiest biome to see the terrain in, since it has only small scrubby trees to get in the way. Load it up in 7d2d, turn on god mode, and fly around to see how its looking. Also, in cheat mode (dm in console) you can shift-right-click on the map to teleport straight there (i used to type in coordinates before I figured this out, ugh!), and the lightswitch in the upper right of the map will toggle through things like "see entire map" and "see biomes" etc. Helps you orient quickly if you're trying to find a specific area of your map to critique. Ex. Below is a small corner of my last map, which was Australia. The first is part of my source image, and the 2nd is from the final import_HM.png in the same area. In-game, these are all rolling hills, since the scale is obviously way off of real world. Also, I put a massive bomb crater just north of Melbourne. Third is from the mask. You (might) see that I seed 3 cities and 3 towns around the crater, which itself is masked out so there are no POIs in it. The yellow squares and circles are a little hard to differentiate at this scale. End result is that you get a massive single-city-like area with a bomb crater in the center. Finally, the last is a screenshot that shows what it looks like in-game, from the top of a Dishong Tower.

Yeah you can eliminate that by seeding the cities/towns directly. That's what I normally do. I made myself a lil chart of how many cities/towns you get for a given size map for each setting, and then seed exactly that many. So for instance, I did the Big Island of Hawaii, and put a city on each of the major RL cities. Alternatively, you can use the mask to mask out the water, and prevent it from seeding towns/cities out there while still allowing for random placement on the land. Those massive hills you're seeing are why you'd reduce contrast, gives a flatter overall map, and no death-drops off the sides of mountains.

@Chrnosdark Some warning on what you are trying to do. The map you have there will do bad things, because of the light shading applied to the rougher areas. What you really need is a true topological map that doesn't put those obnoxious shadows in for human readability. It can be difficult to find. Otherwise, you'll need to heavily edit the picture for it to be right, which can take a lot of time. Ideally, you want a grayscale image where dark is lower elevation and white is higher. Expect to have to hand-edit to get that, though. Once you're there, you'll need to adjust global contrast and brightness so that most of your elevations are between 50 and 120 (meaning RGB value of 50,50,50 and 120,120,120) with emphasis on the lower end. so that cities can spawn in the most places possible. Somewhere early in this thread is a note about the max height a city will spawn in, due to height of skyscrapers needing to be below the top of the world. I've done a few of these now, and happy to help you out, but I don't recognize that country from the image. Is it El Salvador?

Can't comment on whether you can get two. I suspect that's from the bonuses of Motherload, and see no reason it couldn't give it to you. But I doubt its 5% per hit, else you'd get one nearly every time cut down a tree with a stone ax or chainsaw. Might even resort to punching! Its not entirely relatable, but I had the same question about getting radiators and engines and batteries from cars after an extremely unlucky run of 20+ cars with no engines using a T6 impact driver. So I went to creative, spawned in 40 cars, and pulled them apart with a modded super-driver that 1-shot each level of the car, then repeated with a Q1 wrench. It's not a statistically significant test, but I did get with 1-2 results from each run, out of all three types: batteries engines, radiators. In fact, it was so close, it was almost suspicious. In any case, I determined (to my own satisfaction) that I got the appropriate number of special items regardless of how many hits it took to get through each layer of the car. That tells me they determine it at some point, but I'm not sure when. Last hit? First hit? What if someone else hits the car first, then I do? Does it even matter? Does the game store that decision in case I don't tear it down, and then log out, and the server restarts? Why do I even care, since I normally have more than I need of each of them? Because, I just do!!

Since you mentioned watercooling, thought I'd share this. I just saw it a few days ago, and was surprised at how well good airflow works, and can even be better than watercooling (and certainly lasts longer). I'm starting to really like Linus Tech Tips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23vjWtUpItk

Releasing Today: StamplesDefenseQuests This adds 5 Defend quests (one of each tier) that send you to a random T1 or T2 POI, where you defend White River assets against 3-4 waves of zombies, and dispatch a leader zombie at the end. T1 all normal zombies at a T1 POI T2 all normal zombies, with a few of the harder (fat, military) ones, at a T1 POI T3 mix of normal and feral at a T2 POI, a few special zombies (cop, spiders, bikers, etc.) will show up occasionally T4 mostly feral at a T2 POI, special ferals will show up near the end T5 mix of feral and glowies at a T2 POI, radioactive ferals and demolishers can show up near the end. The quest will reset the POI at the beginning, which means local inhabitants may join the fight, and you cannot build fortifications ahead of time. Dispatching the leader zombie advances both the Trader-given quest, and the sub-quest that send you to the POI, and both can be turned in at the trader upon return. It is possible to just craft the radio receivers and do the waves at a POI without visiting the trader, but that's where the majority of the rewards come from. Special thanks go to @geengaween who provided the initial idea in this thread: All my mods are available here https://github.com/stamplesmods/7d2dmodlets

You are absolutely correct. Thanks for catching that. Fix uploaded.

Publishing a few changes today. Frobscottle, Dr. Prepper, and Naked Gator had some weirdness in the xpath append statements of ui_display.xml that made them not very friendly with other mods coming behind them. Resolved that. If you got errors for duplicate entries with other mods, and that didn't seem to make sense, it should no longer happen. Naked Gator has also had 2 additional changes. It was intended to be an early-game booster, but requiring a Chem Station was a dumb decision on my part. I've moved it to a campfire with a cooking pot. It can also now be found in the world in the Beverage loot group with the same frequency as Beer. That means beverage coolers, traders, and vending machines to name a few. Base value is 150 dukes.

Just put in a fix to the capitalization of /Config/ in the Mutations path structure, which prevented it from loading correctly on Linux based systems. If it wasn't loading for you, grab the latest.

I really have no idea. I've never used Sorcery. Darkness Falls has such a massive rework of perks, I couldn't say without testing it. I don't know any reason that it definitely wouldn't though.

Just realized my replies were private, so I'll post here, too. There is an item called a Pyrofocus, the recipe for which should be unlocked when you acquire the Int mutation. For someone with the perk, use this like a melee weapon. For anyone else, its just a rock. Mutations v2.1 release Just uploaded Mutations v2.1. This adds a line of custom mutant creatures to go along with the Bounty quests. One caveat, the bounties are not shareable, and the spawns in the final quest of each line are the only way to access those mutants. This means if you fail to get the kill, either through despawn or another player getting the kill credit, you'll have to cancel the quest and start over. Make sure you're prepared for Grace-level boss fights before triggering the 3rd stage. Due to quest-line changes, this version is NOT backwards compatible with previous deployments. If anyone on the server has any of the quests active when you update the mod, it will corrupt their player file and restart them at level 1. Special thanks to @Snufkin, who's custom zombies inspired me to go back and create custom animals, and @DerPopo for his work on UABE, without which this wouldn't have been possible.

Naked Gator Don't crush your enemies, shred them instead! In a Campfire with a Cooking Pot: 1 Mega Crush 1 Beer 1 Crushed Glass 3 Plant Fibers Yields 1 Naked Gator Grants: 10 water 20% runspeed 15% efficient digestion 50% chance to cause a small bleed with melee hits (1/sec, same as barbed wire) Lasts 20 minutes Also found in Beverage loot, with the same frequency as Beer. (coolers, traders, vending machines, etc.) https://github.com/stamplesmods/7d2dmodlets/tree/master/NakedGator

Stample's Modlets Dr. Prepper Frobscottle Emperor Dye GhillieSuit as cosmetics Mutations Perks Naked Gator StamplesDefenseQuests (waves of zombies)

Mutations, phase 1 Mutations mod adds a new perk line of mutations, which add end-game capstone abilities for those survivors who max out an attribute, as well as a money sink for those players who have too many dukes and not enough needs to fulfill with them. One mutation exists for each attribute, and requires rank 10 in that attribute, as well as a two quest chains to get all the parts needed to create the granting item. But beware, each mutation you add makes you little less human, and causes other NPCs to be a little less happy to give you a fair deal when trading with you. A new Tier 5 quest chain starter will be available when you attain Tier 5 quests, and the Traders' Secret Stashes may contain Bounties for hunting down mutated wildlife.

Updated for A19 experimental. StamplesDefenseQuests This adds 5 Defend quests (one of each tier) that send you to a random T1 or T2 POI, where you defend White River assets against 3-4 waves of zombies, and dispatch a leader zombie at the end. T1 all normal zombies at a T1 POI T2 all normal zombies, with a few of the harder (fat, military) ones, at a T1 POI T3 mix of normal and feral at a T2 POI, a few special zombies (cop, spiders, bikers, etc.) will show up occasionally T4 mostly feral at a T2 POI, special ferals will show up near the end T5 mix of feral and glowies at a T2 POI, radioactive ferals and demolishers can show up near the end. The quest will reset the POI at the beginning, which means local inhabitants may join the fight, and you cannot build fortifications ahead of time. Dispatching the leader zombie advances both the Trader-given quest, and the sub-quest that send you to the POI, and both can be turned in at the trader upon return. It is possible to just craft the radio receivers and do the waves at a POI without visiting the trader, but that's where the majority of the rewards come from. Dr. Prepper** Fallout had its Nukacola, now 7D2D has Dr. Prepper! Make it there faster, and bring a bigger load with Dr. Prepper! Designed to help in early game stages, Dr. Prepper boosts your runspeed by 10% and carry capacity by 3 slots. It also provides the standard Hydrated buff, and a modest 10 hydration. Lasts for hours* or maybe just 6 minutes. *Hours claim is based on a "day" being 60 minutes, and customer's ability to chug an entire 6-pack at once. Actual availability of Dr. Prepper, and length of a day in your reality will vary. Dr. Prepper is added to all Beverage loot with the same frequency as Beer, and may show up Traders and Vending Machines in quantities of 1-5. ** Custom icon available for local play, but commented for MP server friendliness Frobscottle, the fizzy green drink that bubbles downward! Pulled straight out of Roald Dahl's "The BFG", Frobscottle will allow the drinker to propel themselves to fantastic heights by means of 'whizzpoppers' for 1 minute. Adds 4.2 to jump height (about 11 blocks), breakleg protection on jump (not continuous, don't drop off a ledge), and fun sounds to go along. Craftable in a Chem Station using 1 pumpkin, 2 aloe leaves, 5 nitrate, and 1 murky water Emperor Dye *Renamed from Clear Dye Turns clear/invisible whatever piece of clothing or armor it is installed in. Let's you show off your favorite coveralls or ZU t-shirt without that pesky heavy armor getting in the way. This does NOT turn the wearer invisible, merely the piece of clothing, revealing whatever you would look like if you weren't wearing it. The dye must be made using a recipe that requires Blue, Red, and Green dyes. It will not show up on random loot. Mutations Adds 5 new mutation perks in a Mutation perk line, and provides some cash sink for late-game. See post below. Naked Gator Turn those Megacrush into a longer duration runspeed buff, and chance to cause minor bleeds on melee hits. See post below. ** Custom icon available for local play, but commented for MP server friendliness Ghillie Suit as Mods Turns the Ghillie Suit into a cosmetic mod, similar to the Cowboy/Ballcap mods. This set doesn't seem to be utilized because of the huge amount of hypo/hyperthermal resist that you have to give up in Jacket/Pant slots and Armor loss for the headpiece. By the time you find all the Sniper books, you're too far in gamestage to give that up. Now, you can install it as a mod, and rock that yeti look. This mod adds a "jacket" tag to all existing jackets, but won't work with modded jackets unless they extend existing ones. Github link: https://github.com/stamplesmods/7d2dmodlets Zips: https://github.com/stamplesmods/7d2dmodlets/archive/master.zip

Towns don't seem to have this check. They're more than happy to overlap, which is great for me. Also City vs Town don't seem to either. So I'm able to fill in the gaps with towns, and get closer to what I want. I think my central crater needs to be larger, though. Its smaller than a single Large city, which means surrounding it with cities make it look tiny by comparison. In any case, this can get me there. Just going to be a bear to do it on 8k for the final one. Trial and error is easy on 10 sec gen, but tedious on 4-5 min gen.

I have my cities about 1k apart, almost to the pixel. Detected city spawn at 2499.0 1500.0 Detected city spawn at 1501.0 1501.0 Detected city spawn at 1499.0 2500.0 Detected city spawn at 2500.0 2500.0 Now, I only get 3 cities because its a 4k on Many, but I would expect it to be the top two, and one of the bottom ones. Instead I get top right, bottom left, and a randomly placed. I have everything else turned off so nothing interferes. My height map, for testing purposes, is basically entirely flat with a few craters and reference points. It wont let me attach multiple images, but here's the Preview it produces, scaled down to fit size constraints of the board. So it looks like there isn't an easy answer, and its based on what POIs get placed where and if they have enough buffer space at that point. I'll try inching them apart 30 pixels at a time until it takes it.

Damocles, Is there a specific distance that Towns/Cities have to be from each other? I'm trying to do something pretty specific and not getting quite what I want. My server wants a single, large wasteland crater in the center of the map, surrounded by (all the) cities. Merged up together so they appear to be a single massive city with a nuked-out center. I'm using a custom height map and mask with City and Town seeds. My problem is that when cities' seeds get close enough, it ignores them and places some of them elsewhere on the map. It looks like if they are closer than approx 1k or 1100 pixels on both x and y coordinates. I'm using a 4k map with Many, Large cities and Large Towns. I can get pretty close by intermixing City and Town spawns, but its still not quite right. If you could tell me the actual distance required, I can map it out to the pixel and get what I need, I think. In the meantime, keep up the awesome work!

Explanation of the above. If you take a 4k map, and set Lots of Large Cities, and Lots of Large Towns, you'll get somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.6 million sq meters of City and 3 mil sq m of Towns, which is about 39.5% of the 16.7 million sq meters of total space on the map. Whereas if you select minimum sizes and quantities, you'll only have ~250k sq m in 1 City and 62k sq m in 1 Town. That only results in about 1.8% of available space.

I built a quick chart to expose City / Town / Trader counts for the 4k and 8k maps and approximate sizes of those features. It has been really useful when trying to fine tune custom maps with mask seeds. This doesn't seem to be perfect, which I think has a lot to do with available space. If your map doesn't have a lot of space below the 65 height, you'll get less cities (or maybe they'll overlap each other, so you can't tell). In any case, this should help you get an idea of what % of your land space will end up devoted to town and city features, so you can get a good balance of open wilderness vs high-density POI area. This data comes from v0.30 alpha

Damocles, Another request for you for an upcoming version. Bear with me, last time I did Java, 32-bit 5.x was the new hotness, so I'm making some assumptions about your code. It appears there is no "weighting" for the chances any given POI will spawn in your given zones. The cities I get generated usually have several of the rare/valuable POIs like hospitals, shotgun factories, shamway factories, pharma towers, etc right next to each other. So I'm making an assumption that when generating POIs, you just dump all the POIs for a given zone into an array or tree map, and use a rand from 1 to arraysize to pick one each time. So, what if you added a column to prefablist.txt that allows the user to add a weight, which translates directly to the number of times that prefab is added to the array, increasing (or decreasing) the chances it would be picked? Like an old D&D treasure table. Treat anything null, or less than 1 as 1, so it stays compatible with the existing file. This could let you do some interesting things, like make cities with fewer of the good POIs, and lots of the burned out buildings. Or lots of Victorian/Tudor houses, and very few New/Under Construction houses. Or lots of the good POIs, and less of the burned up buildings, to represent an area that survived the bombings and just got overrun with zombies. Maybe you just want more of the under construction houses, or the old-style Shotgun Messiah, PopNPills or Working Stiffs. You could do this to an extent now, by adjusting what buildings can appear in what zones, and tagging some as unique, but its pretty limited when you start talking about a map vs 1 city. Edit: Haha, figures. Exactly the same minute I post this, you post something implying that you DO have control over how much a given POI spawns, e.g. parking lots.

Awesome, works great! Thanks Damocles

Nevermind on the 2nd item. It took me forever, but I finally realized I had some transparency. Once I flatted my image, it got all better.

Damocles, incredible work. Love this thing. Two things: 1: Any way to make the # of connecting roads user-input, instead of always 3? I've been making some twisty-canyon type maps, and my canyons end up having 3-4 parallel roads running down them to get between cities. 2: Is there a minimum land-mass, or maximum water, that it scales up if you don't meet? I made a custom HM of Hawaii's Big Island, but it's acting funky. My surrounding ocean is set to 15-20 height, but when it renders it pushes the entire map up until that area is 85, and the island shore starts at 100ish instead of 37. I've tried adding a couple 255 pixels, thinking it might block it from raising the map, but no luck.