My MoM clone map generation WIP

Hey all,
This is my first Unity project, map generation for a Master of Magic clone.

http://www.pittsburghautisticspectrum.org/Test/Map_Creation.html

It currently is using programmer art and textures from Battle of Wesnoth until I make my own or find an artist to make them for me.

Let me know if the maps look 'real' and if you think they would be playable in a MoM / Civ style game.

Thanks,
Sammual

Edit - Now with screenshot



More screenshots http://www.pittsburghautisticspectrum.org/Test

 

Generally a good start

But I think there are especially two things that are a bit anormal at the time:

1. Sand Tile Calculation

Question is what a single sand field represents and if other land types don't have sand shorelines implicitely present if they are next to water for example.
Because in this case it would make sense to distribute sand tiles within dry continental areas to form deserts, swamps and alike instead of force them to be shoreline areas.

2. Rivers
Right now water is "random alocated" within continentals. expanding that to get kind of "water flows" would perhaps be a good idea.

 

Mmm, hexagons, nice...

How do you generate the grid, is it a model pr hex, or is it some sort of one-mesh-wizardry?

Have you played Age of Booty? http://www.certainaffinity.com/ageofbooty/ Great game and has nice hexes too.

In terms of looks of your hexagons, I'd say go for stylized rather than realism. Perhaps incorporate some 3D elements populating each hex, similar to what they do in AoB.

 

Thanks for the response!

Currently Sand tiles are anything with a height of 2. Beach / Low Coastal Area / Desert / Swamp will fight for this spot. I am currently working on the water map that will interact with the height map to determine is a Desert or Swamp tile will replace the Coast / Sand tile. Version 2 of the game will include some texture blending and coastland is the tile that gets overlaped the most.

Great minds think alike. See the above 'Water map' idea. The goal is to simulate rainfall patterns across the map (from west to east and north and south from the equator) and take each tile’s rainfall and move it across the map. This will generate rivers and where water accumulates will be lakes.

Sammual

 

I am a big fan of Hexagons over Squares for Turn Based Strategy games.

I tried just about every different way to make a grid of hexes that you could think of when I was testing different game engines and determined that for what I wanted to do I needed each hex to be it's own object. That was the main reason I dumped Panda3D and moved to Unity. Panda3D could not handle 3,200 hex models with a single texture each on screen at the same time with a fps of greater the 2. Unity runs at the same fps with a blank screen as it does with 3,200 hexes.

If you are interested I can post the code I use to place the hex Models in this pattern for you when I get home from work tonight.

I have not played or even looked at Age of Booty. I will take a look when I get home tonight.

I am most definatly going for a stylized look. Realism is out of reach for my artistic abilities (I have the artistic talent of a rock) and scope for my first Unity Game.

For the first ver of this game I am going to use colored stones with a glyph of the unit type engraved in them for unit markers. At some point I will hire/partner with an artist to get real artwork done but until then it will all be programmer art.

Later,
Sammual

 

Cool, as you might have guessed I like hex grids too something very appealing with them purely visually. I posted a very simple hex grid solution some time ago in my wip thread for the game galactic fleet, but I ended up not using it in the implementation of the game. I am using a hex-grid texture where each hex has its own red value. Then I use raycast to find what sector is clicked.

 

For me the appeal is less visual then percision. In a TBS game hex movement removed the diaginal movement issue. I will admit that hex maps also break up straight lines in the maps so they look better as well.

Yep, I have it saved as 'backup plan' in my project folder.

This is what was suggested to me when I was evaluating Panda3D and OGRE. They didn't deal will with 3,200 hex tile models. Unity didn't even blink at them so I did not have to go this route.

Sammual

 

You could make a monster, online version of Settlers of Catan with this. Settlers is like the gateway drug of board games.

Anyway, cool work. I like it.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm a big Board Game player but not a fan of Settlers of Catan. Granted it was the gateway game for most of my game group but it is just soo random for a euro game.

Sammual

 

I have the same feeling about Settlers. I got my wife hooked on gaming with it and then graduated her up to Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Goa, Citadels etc.... Settlers is a good 3 player game if everyone plays quickly, but if you have one slow player who agonizes over decisions, or four or more players its a drag. Still... when I look at that procedural hex map... I can't help but think about resource production.

 

Settlers is a very easy game to computerize, it is a popular class project in comp sci classes. I'm sure it could be done in a weekend or so in Unity.

Sammual

 

Screenshot and link to more screenshots added.

Sammual