zztong

Extra Small is 25x25, Small is 42x42, Medium is 60x60, and Large is 100x100. I thought it got mentioned in the stream, but it was also disclosed previously.

I discovered last night the free version of "World Machine" can open the 7D2D raw files, which is what is found in the "Stamps" folder. I've never before used World Machine. It looks neat.

Hmm, not a bad idea for 7D2D merchandise. I wonder what the 20 potential answers would be.

Dev Stream Episode 4 at 16:41 they show some RWG stamps. Here's a Dev Diary post by Kinyajuu that mentioned stamps: There's a semi-related video on YouTube where Tallman Brad Gameplay discusses using Stamps to make a height-map for use with KingGen:

I don't think so, but I could be wrong. Tiles have been demonstrated to be built in the Prefab Editor, like POIs, and have Markers indicating where POIs and other things (Parts) can be placed. Stamps have been demonstrated to be things like Mountains and terrain features that can be applied to otherwise normal terrain to add something like a cliff or a mesa to the world. They are said to be height-map files of some RAW format. There is a "Stamps" folder in your game and it includes files like "Rivers." I think Stamps are what make the ground bumpy, where as a generator like KingGen uses some "noise" function. Or, I could be full of crap. Hence the questions.

A picture would be clearer, but I suspect you and the POIs are okay. Speaking solely from my own experiences with KingGen, it has trouble placing things in rough terrain. What I suspect is happening is that some elevation at the front of the POI is okay and was the location used by KingGen to determine which height to place the POI. Then the rest of the POI either cuts into the terrain or is put on a plateau. Similarly, the slope of roads seems to be based on the elevation of an adjacent intersection and not the corners of the POI, so you don't get a level road running beside the POI. When the slope is gentle it kind of works, but a steep hill leads to awkward placement. That's my guess, anyways. As fast as KG has been developed I'd think problems like this are to be expected. I'm sure they'll make improvements.

Okay, combining everything into one bizarre scenario... Let say a person wants to make a 16k map that represents an archipelago, like say the Florida Keys and Key West. They want water to be 75% of the map. Could stamps be used to make uninhabited islands? Maybe a custom Ocean biome? If Settlement Tiles were defined that any non-road edges were coastline, would I end up with a reasonable looking island city, or would rotations of the Tiles and things end up with little bits of coastline scattered throughout? What would roads between Settlements be like ... earthen causeways? ... okay yeh, I'm going to stop now. So many questions, so little time.

Oh, oh, I forgot about Stamps. I'm really curious how Stamps figure into RWG. Are Stamps entirely related to terrain? Stamps just change the surface/ground, right? You couldn't use a Stamp to place a cave, right? Do Stamps and Tiles ever intermix, or are Stamps how the Wilderness is made? For instance, could a Tile's or POI's ground be made rough through some kind of noise or Stamp integration? Is there a way to target Stamps at the edge of maps? For instance, if you wanted a world with a deep water harbor on one side of the map to support Tiles and POIs that had ships on them, could you do that? Similarly, is there a way to target Custom Cities and/or Districts to land next to a deep water edge of a map? (That is, instead of having ship POIs placed in the middle of an RWG world where they are land-locked, parked on a tiny lake.) Oh, and the Wilderness... Tiles don't apply to POIs being placed in the Wilderness, right? That is, a POI in the Wilderness could be larger than 150x150? Can we somehow specify that a Wilderness POI is to be placed adjacent to a City Tile? If so, I doubt there's a way to make roads match up to the Tiles, unless there were some convention for matching up some standard Wilderness POI size, like a 300x300 Wilderness POI could conceivably match up with two 150x150 Tiles. Yeh, a 300x300 POI could be made into a big bundle of performance problems. I could see why that could be undesirable.

I'm looking forward to Wednesday and the RWG session. I've seen previous sessions and the Q&A seems to be a "jump ball" of quick questions that quickly scroll past. Longer questions are likely to get lost in the shuffle. I thought I'd follow khzmusik's lead and ask questions here. Maybe they'll help TFP folks prepare for the session. Some of these just confirm fundamentals (as I understand them) based on what we learned in the Dev Diary forum and other Dev videos. The RWG will create a Settlement (city, small town, etc) with 1 or more Districts (city center, commercial, industrial, residential, etc), right? We can define custom Settlement types, right? If so, how? Perhaps via XML? District Tiles are placed contiguously, right? That is, they're placed next to each other, not scattered in a patchwork manner about the Settlement. Does the RWG ever repeat District types in a Settlement? That is, could it decide to have two City Center districts? We can define custom Districts, right? If so, how? Perhaps via XML? Can we tell the RWG that a custom District should have a minimum size, maximum size? Can we specify dimensions? For instance, can I tell the RWG that my custom district should be 1x3 minimum and 2x6 maximum? (Min X = 1, Max X = 2, Min Z = 1, Max Z = 3) I'm asking because not all potential Districts I can envision would be major parts of a city and I'd hate to see one end up being 1/3 of a City. Another reason is a prefab modder might build out a District over time and during early releases nobody will want to see a sprawling but highly repetitive District. A Tile's filename tells the RWG which District it represents and the expected road support (rwg_tile_CityCenter_corner_XYZ_01), right? Or, is there some other indicator? What does the RWG do if you do not provide all of the expected road geometries? That is, what if you provide cap, corner, straight, and t, but do NOT provide intersection? Is the District considered invalid? Do you get a "missing Tile" error? Do you get some other District's intersection? Does the District just not contain any intersections? A Tile can contain 0 or more Markers, right? (I understand a Tile without Markers is probably not the expected use.) A Marker can represent the placement of a POI or the placement of a Part, right? The RWG chooses a POI to place in a Marker by matching the District name with the value of the POI's XML tag for Zoning and the X,Z dimensions of the POI. Early demonstrations had the X,Z dimensions matching exactly, but there was some talk of matching within some range down to the next standard size, or something like that. Which way did it turn out? Is it perhaps an option when you define the Marker? What does the RWG use any other factor to determine placement of Parts? That is, if a Tile has a 10x10 Part where the creator envisioned something like a Food Truck, what keeps something like a 1x1 mailbox from being placed there? Whatever the RWG mechanism is for picking Parts to place, is it aware of its proximity to the edge of the Tile? If so, could it pick Parts smartly depending on if the part will connect to another Tile of the same type of District, or not? That may be confusing, so here's an example. Assuming I am creating my own District and I want to make sure that all of my District's Tiles have a sidewalk that connects 20 blocks in from each corner. (Kind of like how TFP standardized the location and size of road connections.) This way, the connections to other Tiles in my District will have that sidewalk connectivity between Tiles. Of course, I cannot expect other Tiles in other Districts to meet that interface. So, if a Part defined to hit the edge of a Tile could potentially trigger a test of the neighboring Tile to see if it was from the same District. If not, then pick a non-connecting Part, like grass or air, versus a connecting Part being sidewalk. Without that test, I'll end up with sidewalks that just end, or run into buildings, extend towards the Wilderness, etc. Phew. (This is kind of like khzmusik's last question, but my thinking was coming at it from a different angle.) IIRC, we can only put POI Markers at Ground Level on a Tile. Does that mean that Part Markers have to be at Ground Level too? Can we put Markers for Parts inside a POI, or are Markers/Parts solely a capability of a Tile? Above, khzmusik asked if a Tile could have a Sleeper Volume. If so, what happens if we define a Sleeper Volume on a Tile in a position such that it completely envelopes a Part? What if it completely envelops a POI with its own Sleeper Volumes? What if a Sleeper Volume partially envelops a Part or POI? Will the resulting overlapping Volumes cause problems? Can Parts on a Tile include Quests? For instance, a tier 1 "Find the Bag" quest where the bag is atop a billboard? That's probably too easy, but does the tech support it? How do you keep "Buried Supplies" quests from landing at locations that intermix with Tile features, like sewers and Parts? Or, is that kind of complication part of the charm? (They buried the supplies under the water tower? Gee thanks.) If you're looking for a suggestion for integrating Tiles and new Quests, consider a block that can be placed at a location in a Tile that indicates a "Defend Location" quest is supported at that location. Then traders could send players to that location. Maybe its a Quest that can only be triggered at night. When triggered, a couple of (scaled) waves of Zs attack based on the number of players and their levels within some established distance from the quest trigger. Maybe the Z's triggered have their awareness heightened when they spawn. I think that suggestion involves features already in the game.

Focus on this line... Exception: Cannot find default hubs KingGen 13.1 had a new format to its configuration file. If you're reusing a list of POIs from an earlier version then you probably don't have an @hubs section. If you're making a custom configuration, then you need to start with a current KingGen configuration and paste in any POI definitions that you want to add.

Note this part... "Cannot find default hubs." I believe this is saying it cannot find the "@hubs" part of your configuration file. If so, there are two possibilities: 1. I suspect you're pointing KG at the file I provided with the modlet. That's not how you use it. What my file contains is the text that you have to paste into a KG POI list that includes all of the rest of the world and POI configuration that you want. You see, I cannot know what other POIs you have, so I cannot provide you a complete file ready for KG. I can only provide you the details for my POIs. 2. When you edited your KG file that controls world generation, you somehow have messed up the structure of that file such that it cannot find the "@hubs" part. Since you should have just been pasting the suggestions found in my configuration file onto the end of your own file, you might have instead pasted my suggestions into the wrong place in your file.

I thought one of the Devs said they would add (vertical) double doors to their to-do list.

Correct. Only the built-in RWG uses the rwgmixer.xml file. Correct. The build-in RWG is willing and able to read POI XML files and binary files to collect information about each POI related to placement such as zoning, size, rotation, offset, and more. Generators like KingGen and NitroGen prefer to have all of that pre-processed into one data file. You use a tool to build that file, assemble that file manually, or edit a file produced by their tool. Not that I'm aware of, but POI lists only appear to be about 1/3 of that file. I suppose it is possible some part of a running game needed info about biomes, stamper nodes, and whatever else is down there.

Version 19.6-ZZ005 has been released. There are now 60 POIs and 9 Decorations (minor content, like POIs). New in this release: Cave_01, KZTV_01, Skyscraper_01, Skyscraper_01_destroyed, Store_09, Store_10, Warehouse_01. The contents of this modlet will also be in the next CompoPack expected to be released with A20. I do plan to support and expand on this modlet in A20. (I'd start now if I could.) I don't envision any new content for A19 after this.

Okay, yeh, you're right. Shame on us pesky humans and our ego. But, until bandits and zombies start buying their own copies of the game, I'm also okay with a double-standard.

You can generate a world on your desktop and copy it's directory/folder to the server. Does that help? That's current functionality. I doubt A20 changes it. Or, do I misunderstand?

I'm curious what design conventions/rules TFP have regarding POI design, especially any related to integrating with the new Tile approach. For instance, since POIs can abut each other on the new Tiles, do you develop POIs with structures that go right to the edge of the POI's area? If so, then two POI structures walls could touch each other. That can be desirable (common in big cities) but also undesirable (a tall building next to fortress walls). Another "for instance", do you always assume the Tile provides parking spaces and thus leave parking spaces out of your POIs? I'm curious about the development of Parts and the interface with Tiles. Do you have a way to signal what "type" of part it is that might affect placement on a Tile? For instance, if the Tile is looking to place a Part where the marker is 6x14 and the Tile designer is thinking "any billboard", do you as a POI designer have some way of indicating the type of Part you built is a billboard? (Perhaps via the filename, XML, or some other mechanism?) Are Parts developed like POIs in the Prefab Editor? If so, can Parts have Zombie Volumes and Quests? Example: A billboard with a quest satchel and a vulture.

Release 19.6-ZZ004 fixes a problem with zztong_TFP_Cemetary_01.

I'm speculating here as I have no direct knowledge of how textures work, how their runtime environment works, etc. ... I suspect it is desirable to load up all textures into memory (perhaps a "texture cache") on the video card. There would be a finite amount of space for that which depends on the video card in question. If that cache were exhausted I'm not sure what would happen, perhaps the runtime environment would have to juggle textures in/out of the cache. and perhaps affect performance. Paint textures would be some of the game's textures. Mods adding more paint textures would compete for space at some point. ... And again, that's speculation. Certainly we would all enjoy more paintable textures.

I see a Prefab called aaa_theater_plays in A19.x that doesn't look complete and isn't part of world generation. It has a really good start. I'd love to see how TFP finish it.

Version 19.6-ZZ003 has been released. There are 9 new original POIs. There are 4 classic TFP POIs that have been recovered from A17 and brought up to date. This modlet now contains a total of 57 POIs. The contents of this modlet will also be in the next CompoPack expected to be released with A20.

Related to Tiles and POIs... If we create a non-square POI Marker on a Tile, say with a width of 24 blocks and a depth (heading away from the front) of 50 blocks, will the RWG be able to correctly select POIs of the appropriate dimension _and_ orientation? Are there various TFP POI design considerations that you can share? For instance, is it common practice not to fill the outer ring of blocks on a standard size POI for fear of some Tile becoming a long solid wall? Or, are you leaving that entirely up to the Tile designer?

Update: Nevermind. I can clearly see a 42x42 next to a 25x25 filling from Tile edge to City Road. 150 - 2 x ( 42 + 25 ) = 16, so each half of the road/sidewalk is 8. Cars are 2, which by comparison seems to fit. Thus, allow 8 blocks in the center of each side for a road, or allow 16 for a road and sidewalk on each side.

Q: If we use A19.6's Prefab Editor to make a 150x150 POI, would we be able to bring that into a future A20-Experimental and convert it into a Tile? (Assuming we also pay attention to the blocks that will be available in A20.) Q: If so, could you tell us the width of roads/sidewalks and their relative placement along the sides on the Tile? (I can try to spot/count it via the video, I guess, but I'd probably run afoul of "tricks of the eye." Is a city street 27 blocks ... 7 sidewalk/6 lane/1 divider/6 lane/7 sidewalk? Hmm, smaller sidewalks in the later Tiles. Maybe a street is 15 blocks? An odd number when the Tile is 150x150? Maybe 16 or 14 blocks? Hehe.)

Yes, hehe. My ignorance knows no limits. Thanks again for the responses.