Tool KingGen - A Random World Generator for 7 Days to Die

[paulj_3]

Wow!   I'm speechless.   The ability to take the contents of two - or more - large - prefab folders from completely different overhaul mods, copy those prefabs into the game's Prefab folder, and then produce a seamless, user-named, prefabs.txt that the engine can use to make the new map from those prefabs - without errors - in almost no time at all - has given us "would-be" modders  perhaps the most significant tool this game has seen since day one. Adding a preview and a color legend  to identify the building type is gravy on top!

KingSlayer - you deserve the enormous gratitude of everyone who has suffered through the pains of trying to get away from the g-awful RWG system that has existed in this game since day one.  The "greats" -  Damocles and Magoli paved to way, and you have conquered the Beast. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!! 

Edited May 20, 2021 by paulj_3 (see edit history)

[KingSlayerGM]

Thanks, you are too kind

[Alwaysthedms]

On 5/17/2021 at 12:53 AM, KhaineGB said:

So far...

40 maps generated (10 of each of the following - 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k).

ALL maps have at least 1 DF POI, and all in the correct biomes from what I can see.

So I think it should work fine.

 

This question might have been answer but also included the veins for the special minerals (Uranium, Titanium, Plutonium) in the select biomes? 

[KhaineGB]

Yup

[WickesGuru]

On 5/18/2021 at 9:36 AM, paulj_3 said:

Wow!   I'm speechless.   The ability to take the contents of two - or more - large - prefab folders from completely different overhaul mods, copy those prefabs into the game's Prefab folder, and then produce a seamless, user-named, prefabs.txt that the engine can use to make the new map from those prefabs - without errors - in almost no time at all - has given us "would-be" modders  perhaps the most significant tool this game has seen since day one. Adding a preview and a color legend  to identify the building type is gravy on top!

KingSlayer - you deserve the enormous gratitude of everyone who has suffered through the pains of trying to get away from the g-awful RWG system that has existed in this game since day one.  The great Magoli paved to way, and you have conquered the Beast. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!! 

 

It is quite amazing. I love it! KingSlayer definitely deserves some serious gratitude!

 

On 5/17/2021 at 12:53 AM, KhaineGB said:

So far...

40 maps generated (10 of each of the following - 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k).

ALL maps have at least 1 DF POI, and all in the correct biomes from what I can see.

So I think it should work fine.

 

This is great news!! This will breathe all new life into DarknessFalls for me!! I mean, I wasn't tired of it but this is icing on the demon infested cake!

[scallipus]

So far its working great under Win 10 will test it under linux desktop on the weeken@KingSlayerGM

[KingSlayerGM]

1 hour ago, scallipus said:

So far its working great under Win 10 will test it under linux desktop on the weeken@KingSlayerGM

Now that both 8 and 16 bit png heightmaps are supported, which one will you use?

[smokingpaper]

On 5/7/2021 at 4:38 PM, unlike them said:

Hello KingSlayerGM. I wonder is it possible to implement generated caves, like in the glory days? Since the devs refuse to bring them back, maybe modders can give us that option?

You could still have caves but not generated like in the old days. 
I know it is not the same but you could create a cave Prefab or multiple prefabs and have them spawn in the wilderness.

[KingSlayerGM]

@scallipus I am considering the idea of having a small group of handmade heightmaps bundled with KingGen. So that people can choose with a drop down list if they want to use any of them for the generation. It would be a nice little feature for people that don't know how to make their own custom heightmaps.

 

I am thinking of asking a few expert map makers if they would like to share one or two heightmaps for this purpose. Their names would be included with the maps. Would you be interested?

25 minutes ago, smokingpaper said:

You could still have caves but not generated like in the old days. 
I know it is not the same but you could create a cave Prefab or multiple prefabs and have them spawn in the wilderness.

I thought about it, it could be nice. Also some vanilla pois are caves.
 

I also thought about having a bunch of sewage pois and subway pois and placing them underneath cities to create intricate underground grids. I could be nice...

Edited May 21, 2021 by KingSlayerGM (see edit history)

[Starr]

We (as in a friend) ran the generator and there was no snow. And all the major cities were only in the desert, not in the forest biome.

When we created a custom map, it ONLY generated snow.
 

Anyone have luck with either? I'm going to try my hand at it this weekend with a custom map.

[KingSlayerGM]

13 minutes ago, Starr said:

We (as in a friend) ran the generator and there was no snow. And all the major cities were only in the desert, not in the forest biome.

When we created a custom map, it ONLY generated snow.
 

Anyone have luck with either? I'm going to try my hand at it this weekend with a custom map.

Did you use special settings? Can you share the config file that creates this problem?

[scallipus]

On 5/21/2021 at 5:43 PM, KingSlayerGM said:

@scallipus I am considering the idea of having a small group of handmade heightmaps bundled with KingGen. So that people can choose with a drop down list if they want to use any of them for the generation. It would be a nice little feature for people that don't know how to make their own custom heightmaps.

 

I am thinking of asking a few expert map makers if they would like to share one or two heightmaps for this purpose. Their names would be included with the maps. Would you be interested?

I thought about it, it could be nice. Also some vanilla pois are caves.
 

I also thought about having a bunch of sewage pois and subway pois and placing them underneath cities to create intricate underground grids. I could be nice...

 

I sure would be fine with making a custom height map or two for this project which you can then distribute as you like Is there a particular size map you were looking for?

[scallipus]

On 5/21/2021 at 1:11 PM, KingSlayerGM said:

Now that both 8 and 16 bit png heightmaps are supported, which one will you use?

 

I am currently using 16 bit height maps in my test worlds I am using kinggen for generating, I was working with 8 bit heightmaps in nitrogen because that was what it was seeming to work the best with (reduced image anomolies)

Ultimately I think I would use 16 bit height maps as a preference to 8 bit

I have done a number of tests with KingGen and it appears to NOT introduce the water anomolies that were bugging me with nitrogen which is a really good thing.
For the last week and a half I have been tooling around behind the scenes working on a custom world editor of sorts that hopefully will complement your great tool by allowing me to further tweak the worlds generated by kinggen. 
 

 

[Nirtguy]

Hi I have this problem, the map I generated with KingGen only spawn ground blocks when player is close, like 100 meters close, beyond that it's just empty, only water.  Far away trees and buildings however spawn correctly, it's like they're floating.

[KingSlayerGM]

4 hours ago, Nirtguy said:

Hi I have this problem, the map I generated with KingGen only spawn ground blocks when player is close, like 100 meters close, beyond that it's just empty, only water.  Far away trees and buildings however spawn correctly, it's like they're floating.

Are you sure it is not a problem with the game being slow to load the world?
 

Can you share the config file of KingGen?

5 hours ago, scallipus said:

I am currently using 16 bit height maps in my test worlds I am using kinggen for generating, I was working with 8 bit heightmaps in nitrogen because that was what it was seeming to work the best with (reduced image anomolies)

Ultimately I think I would use 16 bit height maps as a preference to 8 bit

I have done a number of tests with KingGen and it appears to NOT introduce the water anomolies that were bugging me with nitrogen which is a really good thing.
For the last week and a half I have been tooling around behind the scenes working on a custom world editor of sorts that hopefully will complement your great tool by allowing me to further tweak the worlds generated by kinggen. 

 

Good, I asked you because I want to know my userbase and understand their needs. At the beginning I didn't even think about 8 bit, but you, and a few others mentioned it, so I had to add it. Anyway, if you have tools that work with 16 bit, I recommend 16 bit.

[KingSlayerGM]

5 hours ago, scallipus said:

I sure would be fine with making a custom height map or two for this project which you can then distribute as you like Is there a particular size map you were looking for?

Thanks, that's great  Any standard size is good, like 4K, 8K, 10K, 16K, but you can do anything you want really.

 

After some brainstorming I have realized that heightmap files can be very large and packaging them with KingGen would increase the executable size considerably and that would be undesirable. So I came up with a new idea. I will create a google drive folder where we can upload as many heightmaps as we want. Then KingGen will seamlessly integrate with google drive to automatically download any heightmap that the user wants to use. Users will not even know about drive, they will just see a heightmap list inside KingGen and they will just click on what they want.

This is the idea. It will require some time to be implemented. So no rush in making heightmaps at the moment. I will let you know when I start working on it. At the moment I am working on KingGen 8, which has a lot of other good stuff... Returning to heightmaps, as of now, I got positive responses from you and @Cpt Krunch. But once the system is up and running we can accept submissions from the community. After the files have been carefully vetter ofc.

So thank you for your support and I will let you know when the system starts shaping up

Edited May 23, 2021 by KingSlayerGM (see edit history)

[Cpt Krunch]

Would be great to have a lot of different people, or at least a few of us submitting height maps.

[KingSlayerGM]

5 minutes ago, Cpt Krunch said:

Would be great to have a lot of different people, or at least a few of us submitting height maps.

Yes, if you know more people, you are welcome to suggest names.

Also, I can advertize the thing inside KingGen: "do you have an awesome heightmap that you would like to see in this list? Contact us at ..."

Edited May 23, 2021 by KingSlayerGM (see edit history)

[KhaineGB]

Might be better to use git for your heightmaps as long as they aren't more than 100mb in size (for github, gitlab doesn't care but can be.... iffy on connections at times)

[Cpt Krunch]

PNGs are fairly small,and King has converters to both and 8 and 16, which is awesome

[KingSlayerGM]

1 minute ago, KhaineGB said:

Might be better to use git for your heightmaps as long as they aren't more than 100mb in size (for github, gitlab doesn't care but can be.... iffy on connections at times)

Yeah, I thought about it... but what's the advantage of git?  the versioning? And git is not really designed for binaries. Yes it can to them, but it is designed for source code, that's where it shines

Also github recommends repo sizes of less than 1GB, but with G Drive you get 15 GB free.

[Nirtguy]

5 hours ago, Nirtguy said:

Hi I have this problem, the map I generated with KingGen only spawn ground blocks when player is close, like 100 meters close, beyond that it's just empty, only water.  Far away trees and buildings however spawn correctly, it's like they're floating.

 

1 hour ago, KingSlayerGM said:

Are you sure it is not a problem with the game being slow to load the world?
 

Can you share the config file of KingGen?

 

 

It seems to be a problem with 5K world. I generated several, with vanilla and Compo Pack, all the same issue. Then I tried 8K, things worked just fine. Don't know it's something wrong with me or what, maybe somebody else should give it a try.

[KingSlayerGM]

1 minute ago, Nirtguy said:

It seems to be a problem with 5K world. I generated several, with vanilla and Compo Pack, all the same issue. Then I tried 8K, things worked just fine. Don't know it's something wrong with me or what, maybe somebody else should give it a try.

Thank you for reporting this. I will check 5K. It might be that the game doesn't like this size...

[Pra3t0r 0f R0m3]

Hey Khaine, would we just copy/paste the specific DF POI's into the a prefab folder we create for this?

Or, your total prefab folder contents?

 

Edit: I've selected to not copy same name files.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Pra3t0r 0f R0m3 (see edit history)

[KhaineGB]

57 minutes ago, KingSlayerGM said:

Yeah, I thought about it... but what's the advantage of git?  the versioning? And git is not really designed for binaries. Yes it can to them, but it is designed for source code, that's where it shines

Also github recommends repo sizes of less than 1GB, but with G Drive you get 15 GB free.

 

Gitlab doesn't care on size. I've got 3GB uploaded.

But it's also a more permanent link that GDrive, which can be better for content distribution.

 

25 minutes ago, Pra3t0r 0f R0m3 said:

Hey Khaine, would we just copy/paste the specific DF POI's into the a prefab folder we create for this?

Or, your total prefab folder contents?

 

Edit: I've selected to not copy same name files.

You be patient. I only just released the POI lists to patreons for testing and feedback today. If they're happy, i'll be looking at releasing them when 19.5 goes stable.