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[SimpleSyrup]

I think that's actually a frame from the 2 frame bubbling poison tile Although it works as grass too  .

Ah, doh! Do you have any kind of guide/legend to the environment tiles? I might be missing out on ideas like that, or non-obvious combinations etc.

I'm excited to put them together.. I need to update my procedural terrain generator to handle more than 4 types of terrain

[oryx]

I can make a key if you want later sure np.

[george]

I'll throw in my vote for huge but fewer texts. That text looks great huge. And the sprites do too I guess  .

[cougarten]

4x!

and for common things you could use my 3px font XD
Over the time you will recognise what it means.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8841.msg277925#msg277925

to bad I did not redo the numbers, but they look crappy either way
I could supply other "renderings" like spritecharts for it (format conversion is allowed)

[SimpleSyrup]

I can make a key if you want later sure np.

Oryx... that'd be rad.

[SimpleSyrup]

4x!

and for common things you could use my 3px font XD
Over the time you will recognise what it means.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8841.msg277925#msg277925

to bad I did not redo the numbers, but they look crappy either way
I could supply other "renderings" like spritecharts for it (format conversion is allowed)

cougarten... I love that font... but I'm not sure about the numbers. being an MMORPG and all, the numbers are important. or.... maybe I could do roman numerals, to be truly annoying! hmm!

[oryx]

Sorry this isn't the greatest key in the world but was the easiest way for me to do it quickly
Let me know if anything is confusing

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3236997/oryx_env_key.pdf

[BlueSweatshirt]

Your organizational skills are inspiring. 

[SimpleSyrup]

Sorry this isn't the greatest key in the world but was the easiest way for me to do it quickly
Let me know if anything is confusing

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3236997/oryx_env_key.pdf

Thanks Oryx! I think I need to sit and play with the tiles in Photoshop and get a feel for what I can make by composing everything... err, I guess I better use a tile editing program for this

[SimpleSyrup]

Been generating lots of terrain tonight. It's verrrrry slow. I did it with my laptop unplugged and after generating about 4 worlds the battery was dead. (5000x5000 worlds).

The terrain generator code is dead simple and pretty easy to tweak, but not based on any kind of physical modeling. This is also very coarse world generation. It's not filling in trees, rivers, etc. What I like about it is that it gives very realistic footprints to land masses. Things look curvy, jagged in places, big, and small, pinching and so on. Further details will need to be filled in through other means. I can't deal with tiling the world so I need to generate worlds that mostly don't go off the edge of the map, or ones that do which I can easily fix.

It's written in Java... http://pastie.org/738553

Here are some of my favorite worlds so far. If they look kind of familiar... maybe like Britannia, it's because my seed data is based on it. 


World05


World06


World08


World09


World10


World11


World12


World13



Any thoughts?

[oryx]

cool! Are you trying to find one world or is the world map procedural somehow?

[SimpleSyrup]

oool! Are you trying to find one world or is the world map procedural somehow?

Yep, it's procedural. It's built by a process of slicing the map by a random line and raising one side of the line and lowering the other side. Repeat this thousands of times. Then, decide on certain height intervals to mean various things and color it appropriately.

Given an ocean / beach / grass / forest / hill / peaks designation, I'll be doing things like picking appropriate tiles from your sets, and possibly filling in random details (e.g. trees, brush, etc). That part might be done totally client-side with a fixed random seed, thus no need to spend extra bits encoding it in the map.

It's kind of an issue because with a 5000x5000 map, anyway you slice it, is a lot to stick in a SWF. It compresses nicely but expands to something nasty. Guess I"ll just have to try it and see what happens.

[oryx]

I mean each time you log on, will it be a randomized in this way? Or is this a one time offline generation to develop a world map?

[SimpleSyrup]

One time offline. Running it in Java with a beefy box takes minutes. I can't imagine how long it would take in ActionScript on a lesser box. Besides, it's a shared world. I do intend for it to be persistent... so the world ought to stay the same. Having said that, I do need to think about how I can let multiple people help build the world... I've been tinkering with building rooms tonight just in Photoshop and it's taking forever.

Right now I think I'm going to have let you go into a special mode in game where you can change tile underfoot, by typing in hex codes. Should be an interesting first test of multiplayerness...

Hrmm, yeah, world content is gonna be a bitch. But I want a big world.

[Tokyoma]

Why not generate 250 300x300 map chunks and then just load them as needed instead? I might have the wrong idea at what's going on here, but if you're going to be generating it client side, and there's no need for the parts of the map you can't immediately see or walk to, you could just either silently generate any parts the player is walking towards like preloading the map to come, or even a small load screen, generating the smaller chunks should help either way to split up the time, and after they're made they can just be puzzle-pieced together as needed, or compressed and stored, or something. Again, don't really know what I'm talking about, it's 6 in the am here.

[cougarten]

4x!

and for common things you could use my 3px font XD
Over the time you will recognise what it means.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8841.msg277925#msg277925

to bad I did not redo the numbers, but they look crappy either way
I could supply other "renderings" like spritecharts for it (format conversion is allowed)

cougarten... I love that font... but I'm not sure about the numbers. being an MMORPG and all, the numbers are important. or.... maybe I could do roman numerals, to be truly annoying! hmm!

there is another 3px font made by Cosmic Fool with, well, other numbers:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8780.msg277149#msg277149
I like my letters better (monospaced and true 3x3px), but he definitely made some decent numbers (hard to read anyway, maybe you should combine it with 4x4 numbers for single line text. Bet there is a 4px font arround)

[Melly]

Quite the undertaking you got yourself in sir.

[cougarten]

[...] Hrmm, yeah, world content is gonna be a bitch. But I want a big world.

you should defines zones somehow. every MMORPG has areas you discover over time. A huge map with the same stuff spawned at random places would make it hard for noobs and pros to find the right monsters and was quite booring.
Maby something like: "up the hill = bigger enemys" will be enough

[SimpleSyrup]

[...] Hrmm, yeah, world content is gonna be a bitch. But I want a big world.

you should defines zones somehow. every MMORPG has areas you discover over time. A huge map with the same stuff spawned at random places would make it hard for noobs and pros to find the right monsters and was quite booring.
Maby something like: "up the hill = bigger enemys" will be enough

That's an interesting idea! I'm definitely aware of the empty world newbie problem. Hopefully I can make it to the stage of tackling it. Of course, I've always kinda like the idea of monsters coming to you, monsters invading towns, etc.

[SimpleSyrup]

Hrmm. So a 5000x5000 map with one byte per tile compresses down to about a 600k SWF. Is that too large? It seems like brute force might work out just fine here.