Any plans to fix A21 random gen? Suggestions to improve.

[Scyris]

Alright I been experimenting generating worlds and i've noticed a few things. Also have noticed some issues.

 

1: Why do all towns seem to have the same layout? Yes some of the poi's are different but they often always have the same shape.

 

2: There is a severe problem with repeating poi's, I've genned several maps where there was literally 4 of the same farm poi all side by side.

 

3: Its nice that you spawn usually within 500m to a trader, but there is a problem I been noticing, sometimes you spawn by one in the middle of no where that only has 1 poi nearby with no town within 1-2 KM of it, this is a real rough start for a new player. Maybe fix it so the player always starts within 500m of the biggest town in the forest biome if that can be done?

 

4: Why was the trader tags changed? A20 had such nice trader spawns, the ones in A21 kinda suck when they are buried in the town surrounded by poi's, I don't know about others but I usually like to build a base near the trader and this really screws with that when its surrounded by poi's all all sides. It seems to mostly be an issue in large towns, the small ones its always on the outskirts simmlar to A20.

 

5: This is a wish but when/if 7dtd gets a story can we get to kill trader rekt at some point? I am sure many players would love to be able to do this. I hate that guy many players do.

 

You see when I gen a map I look for a few things, I like to start in a big town, with any trader but rekt in the forest, and in A21 I also like to be able to base close to it. This results in me having to sometimes generate 15+ maps before I manage to get this, never had this issue in A20, I blame the new trader tags that changed its position in A21. Currently trying to start a new game and am on map gen number 16 as I still haven't managed to get what I was looking for. Yeah its kinda a "me" problem here, A20 kinda spoiled me how perfect it almost always was.

[theFlu]

16 minutes ago, Scyris said:

I don't know about others but I usually like to build a base near the trader and this really screws with that when its surrounded by poi's all all sides. I

I've seen maybe a dozen or two traders in A21, but I can't think of one that was really surrounded; most had at least 2 sides clear of POIs. Plenty were in the middle of absolute nowhere, or in a tiny town at best.

[Scyris]

1 minute ago, theFlu said:

I've seen maybe a dozen or two traders in A21, but I can't think of one that was really surrounded; most had at least 2 sides clear of POIs. Plenty were in the middle of absolute nowhere, or in a tiny town at best.

 

Its only really a issue in a big town it seems, anything smaller its not a problem.

[Ramethzer0]

You ask this question like were not in experimental alpha.

[Red51]

Nah, the 

18 minutes ago, Ramethzer0 said:

You ask this question like were not in experimental alpha.

True, but the more chatter about it on the official forums, the more of a chance they may notice.

 

I would love to see a whole lot more work done on the Random Map Gen. After the first pass, I found it annoying that so many cities had farms on the very edge of town instead of more in 'the country'. Towns, other than the old west, are usually square.

 

I think it would be a lot to ask, but instead of recontouring the terrain so towns can be placed, it would be really great if the random gen could work with the terrain. Map creation would probably need several more passes to create (leading to longer generation times), but I am betting the result would be worth it.

 

The newer version of the Random Map Gen is better than the previous, but since it is new, I gotta hope that they are going to continue expanding and improving it.

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, Scyris said:

Alright I been experimenting generating worlds and i've noticed a few things. Also have noticed some issues.

 

1: Why do all towns seem to have the same layout? Yes some of the poi's are different but they often always have the same shape.

 

2: There is a severe problem with repeating poi's, I've genned several maps where there was literally 4 of the same farm poi all side by side.

 

3: Its nice that you spawn usually within 500m to a trader, but there is a problem I been noticing, sometimes you spawn by one in the middle of no where that only has 1 poi nearby with no town within 1-2 KM of it, this is a real rough start for a new player. Maybe fix it so the player always starts within 500m of the biggest town in the forest biome if that can be done?

 

4: Why was the trader tags changed? A20 had such nice trader spawns, the ones in A21 kinda suck when they are buried in the town surrounded by poi's, I don't know about others but I usually like to build a base near the trader and this really screws with that when its surrounded by poi's all all sides. It seems to mostly be an issue in large towns, the small ones its always on the outskirts simmlar to A20.

 

5: This is a wish but when/if 7dtd gets a story can we get to kill trader rekt at some point? I am sure many players would love to be able to do this. I hate that guy many players do.

 

You see when I gen a map I look for a few things, I like to start in a big town, with any trader but rekt in the forest, and in A21 I also like to be able to base close to it. This results in me having to sometimes generate 15+ maps before I manage to get this, never had this issue in A20, I blame the new trader tags that changed its position in A21. Currently trying to start a new game and am on map gen number 16 as I still haven't managed to get what I was looking for. Yeah its kinda a "me" problem here, A20 kinda spoiled me how perfect it almost always was.

1. Definitely can use improvement here.

 

2. POI have a new DuplicateRepeatDistance value that will prevent the same POI from being within that distance of one another.  It's possible this isn't added to all POI.  It would be a very easy change if you are seeing some POI next to themselves.  Just add this line with a value of whatever you think is good.  Very easy thing to change.  I don't know if they are purposefully only adding this to certain POI or if it's supposed to be on all POI.  If you were to look at a bunch of POI and they all have that except a few, then it's likely a mistake and if you let them know the POI, they will probably get that property added to those POI.

 

3.  I've brought this up as well.  I think the starter trader should always be attached to a town and not be one of the wilderness traders.

 

4. I like that traders aren't always in the same location every time.  It just got boring to see the same layout on every town's entrance.  You mentioned that towns all look the same and having the traders all at the entrance with the same tile was just more of that.  This gives more variety and I like that.  I haven't noticed traders that aren't on the edge of town.  I would have thought they'd generate only in outskirt areas (the tiles on the edge of town) but that may not be the case.  It may also just seem like they are not on the edge of town because they can be spawned on an inner edge of the tile rather than the outer edge of the tile.  I'm not sure.  I'm not really opposed to them being in the middle of town but I don't think they should be in certain districts like commercial or industrial or downtown.  I don't know if they are or not as I haven't done more than a couple RWG maps so far.  Maybe it just needs a little tweaking.

 

5. Yeah, I can't stand Rekt. 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[Ailin]

4 hours ago, Red51 said:

Nah, the 

True, but the more chatter about it on the official forums, the more of a chance they may notice.

 

I would love to see a whole lot more work done on the Random Map Gen. After the first pass, I found it annoying that so many cities had farms on the very edge of town instead of more in 'the country'. Towns, other than the old west, are usually square.

 

I think it would be a lot to ask, but instead of recontouring the terrain so towns can be placed, it would be really great if the random gen could work with the terrain. Map creation would probably need several more passes to create (leading to longer generation times), but I am betting the result would be worth it.

 

The newer version of the Random Map Gen is better than the previous, but since it is new, I gotta hope that they are going to continue expanding and improving it.

Well to be fair the game is canonically in Arizona and we have crazy @%$# like this in the middle of massive developed sprawls.

 

[Vaeliorin]

On the Rekt front, at least he's the most useless trader.  Does anyone really care about leveling up the inventory of the food and seed trader?

 

Anyway, my biggest complaint about A21 (and A20) RWG is the highways.  They're terrible.  You use to have highways running between cities that would sometimes branch, or cross or have a T-Intersection, and now they all seem to be just between two cities, and never connect to each other, even if two of them are within spitting distance.  On my current map, there's a highway that runs along the western and southern edge of the city I'm in, but it never actually connects to my city.

 

It makes exploring even more terrible than it already is in A21 (it takes so long to get a non-garbage vehicle now) because the roads just twist and wind all over the place, taking forever to actually get anywhere (and sometimes having unnecessary switchbacks on nearly flat terrain.)  Given how bad of an idea cross country travel is in the wasteland now, the state of roads there is even more of an issue.

 

My other complaint is that some of the hills/mountains could really use smoothing.  I keep coming across ridges that are smooth on one side, and are basically terraced on the other, and it makes traversing them just awful.

 

Oh...and despite having my map set for many lakes and rivers (which I always do, I like to live on the water), there are hardly any rivers and only one fairly small lake, and that seems to have been the case on almost every map I've tried to generate in A21.

[dazrozlek]

one big issue i've had with random gen is i made a world and it didn't have a wasteland AT ALL i didn't think that was possible

[Dead Wombat]

I would like more farms if possible i used the 3 level barn as a good funnel for horde knights now since 21 dropped they are no where to be found sigh....

 

[EvilPolygons]

On 7/3/2023 at 5:53 PM, Vaeliorin said:

Oh...and despite having my map set for many lakes and rivers (which I always do, I like to live on the water), there are hardly any rivers and only one fairly small lake, and that seems to have been the case on almost every map I've tried to generate in A21.

 

Rivers are so limited because the stamps used to generate them are...lacking. The stamps are tiny, lack variety, and few in number. The stamp-based system is useful for some terrain features (mesas and canyons, for example), but I don't think stamps are even capable of producing proper rivers -- especially on larger maps. The only way to make correct-looking rivers and streams is via procedural generation. Simple, randomly-placed pregenerated stamps simply cannot produce the same results as procedurally generated rivers that use heightmap topology to determine start/end points, course, width, depth, etc.

As far as A21 roads go, I've had the opposite experience. On 10k maps, I've seen some pretty cool 4-way "country" tile intersections, and multiple highway entry points into cities. In my experience, only small maps under 10k suffer from really bad, inconsistent road systems.

[Vaeliorin]

14 hours ago, EvilPolygons said:

 

Rivers are so limited because the stamps used to generate them are...lacking. The stamps are tiny, lack variety, and few in number. The stamp-based system is useful for some terrain features (mesas and canyons, for example), but I don't think stamps are even capable of producing proper rivers -- especially on larger maps. The only way to make correct-looking rivers and streams is via procedural generation. Simple, randomly-placed pregenerated stamps simply cannot produce the same results as procedurally generated rivers that use heightmap topology to determine start/end points, course, width, depth, etc.

As far as A21 roads go, I've had the opposite experience. On 10k maps, I've seen some pretty cool 4-way "country" tile intersections, and multiple highway entry points into cities. In my experience, only small maps under 10k suffer from really bad, inconsistent road systems.

10k is the max size for random gen, is it not?  I'm almost positive it was in A20.  I'm playing single player, so a 10k map would be kind of pointless, since that's way more area than I would ever get to explore (particularly with how slow getting decent vehicles is unless you hardcore spec for it.)

[Scyris]

1 hour ago, Vaeliorin said:

10k is the max size for random gen, is it not?  I'm almost positive it was in A20.  I'm playing single player, so a 10k map would be kind of pointless, since that's way more area than I would ever get to explore (particularly with how slow getting decent vehicles is unless you hardcore spec for it.)

 

its kinda stupid how rare the vehicle book is in pass n gas boxes, its the same for the workstation books, you'd think you'd find them commonly inside working stiff boxes, but they are stupidly rare from what should be a primary souce just like the vehicle in pass n gas boxes.

[EvilPolygons]

13 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

10k is the max size for random gen, is it not?  I'm almost positive it was in A20.  I'm playing single player, so a 10k map would be kind of pointless, since that's way more area than I would ever get to explore (particularly with how slow getting decent vehicles is unless you hardcore spec for it.)

 

Unmodded, sure. I believe the absolute max modded size is upwards of 14k? 16k? I guess I just like big maps in singleplayer. 🤷‍♂️

Regardless, you're probably not going to get a nice, complex road system on anything less than an 8k or 10k map. Road systems gain complexity through the number of large cities and country tiles on a map. The smaller the map --> the fewer (and smaller) the cities --> the simpler the roads. A 4k map barely has room for more than a single BIG city plus country tiles, let alone 6, 7, or 8 large cities. 2k maps aren't even worth mentioning.

None of that matters in regard to rivers, though. River generation sucks no matter what map size you try, because of the reasons I mentioned previously (stamps). If you want a map with somewhat quasi-realistic rivers, you'll have to generate your maps with a 3rd-party map utility like Teragon.

 

[Vaeliorin]

9 hours ago, EvilPolygons said:

None of that matters in regard to rivers, though. River generation sucks no matter what map size you try, because of the reasons I mentioned previously (stamps). If you want a map with somewhat quasi-realistic rivers, you'll have to generate your maps with a 3rd-party map utility like Teragon.

Yeah, I used to use...I can't recall the name, but it was one of, if not the first, third party map generation tool, but it's obviously out of date and doesn't work any longer.  I haven't looked into Teragon simply because the in-game RWG has gotten so much better in terms of cities and what not, but it's still terrible with lakes and rivers.

 

I may have to look into Teragon (though I was under the impression it was till in beta?) if I want a decent map again.

[Riamus]

3 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

I may have to look into Teragon (though I was under the impression it was till in beta?) if I want a decent map again.

Yes, it is still in development.  However, it is still great at making very interesting maps.  It does take effort to learn as there are a lot of parameters that you can use but once you get the hang of it, it is easy to use.  There is a new crevice system being added in the release that is almost out that even allowed for ambient light and smoke in your crevices.  They look amazing! 😁

[Rotor]

2 hours ago, Riamus said:

...allowed for ambient light and smoke in your crevices.  

 

There is something wrong there, I just cant quite put my finger in it.

[Stranded_Napkin]

I haven't had any of these issues with random gen. I haven't played Navezgane since I switched from console to pc, so I have had plenty of randomly generated worlds to explore. Random gen has not placed the same farm next to another in any of maps I've generated. It's placed a different farm, but that's to be expected. I'm out in South Dakota and that sh*t's standard. When there's many farmers, their properties often border each other.

 

The traders being surrounded I don't even see as an issue. Are you looking to live immediately next to the trader or something? Being 100m to 200m from the trader isn't that far and beyond easy to do as it is. My base is literally around the corner and down a ways, but it's only around 125-150 meters from the trader. Quick and easy trip.

 

I will say that I have had issues with the initial spawn though. The game has spawned me 2k from the nearest trader to start. That was in a randomly generated world. In Navezgane, brief time when my friend switched to pc though it lasted 30 min, we were 2.5k from the starting trader. We switched back to a randomly generated world. That sh*t was annoying. Had that issue with an earlier alpha and it was just as annoying then. At least this time though it does find you a trader instead of going blank like that alpha did.