Note to EGS Alpha 10+ XML terrain generation is outdated! (I still would like to build with it, though Was like a puzzle. Or check it out on the bigger planets we now have. Custom terrain is now heightmap-based, and is generated by biome and stamp placement. ------- Note: How to apply custom terrains to a save game (Tested in EGS 7.4) Spoiler: Click here to show description 1. Get the program 'Notepad++' It's free, and super useful for changing a lot of things in Empyrion. (The windows Notepad wants to break stuff. ) 2. Prepare a game save to modify: Either start a new game session and quit it afterwards. Or, if you want to edit in the planet to an existing game, please copy your save beforehand and tinker with that copy. (This save game will be named here for sake of clarity 'MyCustomSave') 3. Edit that save game for a new planet - Locate the 'sectors.yaml'- file of your save game: Program files/Steam/steamapps/common/Empyrion – Galactic survival/saves/games/('MyCustomSave')/sectors - Open this 'sectors.yaml' with Notepad++ - Find a suitable planet entry to copy: e.g. Akua: (The following is all that is part of a single planet's definition. Important sections are highlighted in colours: ) - Coordinates: [92, 5, 117] Color: 0.04, 0.3, 0.37 Icon: Circle OrbitLine: True Deny: [Oscutune Orbit, Aitis Orbit] Playfields: - ['0, 0, 0', Akua Orbit, SpaceAsteroidFieldRingAkua] - ['0, 0, 0', Akua, NewTemperate, 'Human:1'] <Also possible 'NewTemperateV2' - ['-6500, 5000, 6500', Akua Moon, NewMoon2] <Also possible 'NewMoonV2 # - ['0, 0, 0', Akua, Temperate, 'Human:1'] < These lines are turned 'off' with the '#' symbol. Ignore. # - ['-6500, 5000, 6500', Akua Moon, Moon] The orange part reads: [(location in orbit playfield), (In-game name of object), (folder name of object in '/templates'), (and optional: faction)] > Copy and paste this part right back into the document... (Maybe right at the top, at that empty line under the green text block. That way you find it faster, later.) > ! Careful! Yamls are very sensitive. Don't add even a single extra space! A slight error will prevent the game from loading. It won't break anything permanently, though. ! Make sure that your added entry looks exactly like the other ones regarding structure and position of elements. (Pressing 'return' after a line often leads to an unwanted offset.) - What you have to edit of this duplicate for a custom planet: - Change the sector coordinates to prevent an overlap with the original. - Rename the “Akua Orbit” into something else, e.g. “CustomPlanetOrbit”. - Rename the “Akua” into something else, e.g. “CustomPlanet” - Rename the “NewTemperate” into something else, e.g. “CustomPlanetTemplate” - Rename the “Akua Moon” into something else, e.g. “CustomPlanetMoon” (The 'NewMoon' folder can stay as it is- Unless you want a custom made moon, too.) - Save the modified “sectors.yaml” file - Open the folder in your savegame: Program files/Steam/steamapps/common/Empyrion – Galactic survival/saves/games/('MyCustomSave')/templates - Create in there a new folder called “CustomPlanetTemplate” - Put in that new folder the 'playfield.yaml' of the xml planet that you want to insert. - Open the folder: Program files/Steam/steamapps/common/Empyrion – Galactic survival/content/terrains Drop in there the .xml-terrain file. e.g. 'MoonSekmet.xml'. That should do it! --- If you want to visit that new planet directly: - Open game console (US keyboard layout: Should be '~', in german layout it's the 'ö'. - type in the console: 'teleport CustomPlanet' Original post: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The moons are so boring in this game. So I made a better one. Sekmet (Moon) v1 Spoiler: More pics Terrain features: Dunes / mountains, flat fields, collapsed medium craters, fresh medium craters, huge craters with optional central bulge and inner ring. Usually Pentaxid spawns only in these, turning them into some kind of arena. Very low gravity makes walking fun! 43 modules in the .xml. Spoiler: Module info - Modules: 0-5: Base terrain, 6-10 Large crater main; 12-16 medi craters; 17-27 Large crater deco, 28-42 medi craters collapsed. - Chain ends: Add4 (base terrain), Terrace16 (medi craters), Add23 (crater huge (Add22 crater teeth/crater centre)), scaleBias42 (collapsed medi craters), - Combiners: Select15: (Terrace16&Add4) >Select11: (Select15&Add23) >Add43: (Select11&ScaleBias42) - Const20 is a NULL value and used multiple times, please don't change. Before loading the xml in the Terrain Generator: Turn the resolution of the TG down and turn off auto refresh! I used 6 Voronoi in there. Maybe I create a spreadsheet with the modules, but not now. ----- How to do round medium size to huge craters: Voronoi>ScaleBias>Clamp>Exponent or Terrace. Then Add to overlay (=collapsed) or Selector to flatten everything. Files are below. Playfield is standard, only slightly changed due to higher altitude messing with the crystal spawning and a little less radiation, so that you can have a little moon walk. --- Planning to do more terrains. This is massive fun! - Thanks Eleon for the terrain generator! (I'm working on an improved documentation for that, too) ----- Edit: Tech is outdated for EGS 10+ ! Use stamps and biomes to build your custom world.
@ECubed Thanks a lot! Really appreciated BTW, the documentation is up! http://empyriononline.com/threads/terrain-generator-documentation.12032/
Uh, long post. But pretty pics and a terrain... 1. Piratey Beach Spoiler: More pics If you want to check it out: My Zeyhines 'playfield' test file is below. - The .xml: '_PirateyBeach', Version 0.9 (19 modules) - A much simpler, lightweight version, only with the beach and some standard mountains is in the 'Just_a_Beach' folder (10 modules) - It's also named '_PirateyBeach', for the playfield file. Word of warning: - At sea level 25, the terrain is too rugged and too small to have a lot of POI spawning. In my first test game I only saw the Rados Power Sation and one Rados Defence. Use with caution. This would need the teenie-tiniest drone base ever. - Here's what sea level 23 looks like, and still 2 POIs are missing. Man, this game is picky. (Because of that the .xml is v0.9) -- If you choose to do something with this terrain, I would be really happy - and even more if you show some pictures - I'm a beginner with the playfield.yaml and too squeamish to click the false-positive Antivir warning for the EPD away. -------------------------- 2. Careful with the Voronoi gen So sad. This not only slows down the terrain generator, it has an impact in the game, too. Successive modules based on a Voronoi seem to tax much more than isolated ones. And complex ones like the 'select'-selector seem to have their part in this. - My laptop overheats when flying. - Rule of thumb: If your modded Zeyhines savegame takes close to a minute to load, then you went overboard with your terrain features. If only that module weren't so darned useful. Because of it's closed and regular shape, you can easily control placement of nearly anything. --------------------------- 3. How to do a continent with beach - Create a continental shape base: Voronoi1 Perlin1, Turbulence2. Scale it up with the ScaleBias sliders of the turbulence. - Add mountain peaks on top of base: Ridged3, Add4 (ridged3, turb2, scale ridged up) - Create a continental shelf: Clamp6 (at least the upper) of add4 - Move mountains through the shelf: Max7 (add4, clamp6, move with the right ScaleBias slider) - Build and test your beach in a separate file. Write them down, then apply the modules with a selector: SelectX (input0: max7 input1: ((YourBeachX)), input: clamp6) that catches the shape of the continental shelf. Scale with the selector that your beach fits the given space., apply falloff. Then use the 'HeightBias/HeightScale' sliders in the main window to fit everything to your water level. Scaling options: - Larger continents or islands: Perlin Frequency/ Turbulence sliders - Mountain height / beach size: Max7 ScaleBias sliders of the add4. - Deeper oceans: Scale the Perlin in the turbulence, and scale and move your mountains in Max7. (You might have to re-fit your beach)
1. Ice Frontier Spoiler: More pics Terrain features: + Glacier plain with crevasses, poked by sharp mountains. Difficult to traverse. + Glacier edge: Steep cliffs and deep chasms with hidden water, alternating with hills and iceberg-like blocks. + Low plains: Slightly in the mist, easy to travel, close to sea level. Sea placed at the poles and unreachable, for now. 17 modules in the .xml. >Download in attachment. Slightly altered Ningues as example playfield. --- ...I really wish I could include an iceberg-dotted sea here, too. But our planets are yet too small for this, and I don't know how CPU-intensive this terrain will be. Maybe as a different planet.
@Requiemfang , @Keith Hovey Thanks for the positive feedback! ------ Cradle of life Spoiler: More pics Terrain features: + Volcanic pools with bacteria + Micro meteorite scarred and washed out 'plains', which are extremely hard to traverse + Eroded mountains with active volcanoes A primordial planet shrouded in an atmosphere that still contains the water for it's yet-to-settle oceans; just about ready to get the Great Game started. - The only lifeforms you'll find here are bacteria in the ponds and grass from the chinks of Zirax jackboots. This is a terrain in dire need of an SV. The POI spawn all fine.
Cliffs of Akub Spoiler: More pics Bored with your starter planet being all same-y again? Wanna have a little bit of fun? To enjoy nice beach strolls while being hunted by a raptor? Then this is for you! - Yes, YOU! Terrain features: + Oceans- You will need your starter HV. + Cliffs alternating with beaches + Flat plains + High mountains in the centre of the continent xml: 16 mods used (plus one unused, but the game seems to ignore these) All POIs spawn fine. Had even a drone base in the high mountains. Slightly altered playfield is in the zip. Spoiler: How to apply custom terrain Note: Info is outdated! Please see first post for the current method Create a new savegame. (When starting on Akua, land with your escape pod on low ground and loot it.) Exit the game session, and... >Add the terrain: Drop the '_CliffsOfAkub.xml' into the folder: (steam)/Empyrion – Galactic survival/Content /terrains/xml. >Point the savegame to new terrain: Locate your save game's folder '(yourSave)/templates/temperate' and overwrite the playfield.yaml with the one provided here. >Reset planetary map & POIs: Locate your savegame's folder '(yourSave)/playfields', find the folder 'Akua' and delete it. (Removes all player built bases and ships, too. If you want to keep your ship, fly to orbit beforehand.) ... Reload your save and hope you don't have to swim to the shore ) ---- - Scratching at the edge of the terrain level of detail here. I'm not too happy with it. The cliffs have some glaring pop up, especially at noon. The shadows get applied a little bit too harshly. Could turn up Selector4's edge falloff to soften this, but then your cliffs are mostly gone... ---- Edit: 07.01.'18: Changed warning of outdated method
The Oven Spoiler: More pics A freshly formed planet, even younger than the Cradle. Continents get churned by the intense heat. Terrain features: + Lava flows with bubbles, holes and some big chunks of rock floating above + Half-solid continents drifting on tectonic plates with cooled lava fields and peaking mountains + Meteorite impact 'craters', mostly hidden by fluid 35 mods & one unused (Abs11). POI spawn fine. ...Wasn't sure how much features I can stack here. My poor laptop behaves as if it is right at home on this planet. But loading time suggest this is still a kind of 'slim' design; don't know yet how much effect the atmospheric scattering has on gpu heat. Spoiler: How to apply custom terrain Note: Info is outdated! Please see first post for the current method Really not recommended as a starter planet. Use Aestus instead. Create a new savegame. Then exit the game session, and... Add the terrain: Drop the '_TheOven.xml' into the folder: (steam)/Empyrion – Galactic survival/Content /terrains/xml. Choose a planet to overwrite. Example: Aestus >Point the savegame to new terrain: Create a folder in your save game: '(yourSave)/templates/Lava' and and drop the playfield.yaml there. If you have this folder already in your save game, overwrite the playfield.yaml there. (You could also edit the sectors.yaml file of your savegame to add another planet, but that is too complicated to explain here) Reset planetary map & POIs: Locate your savegame's folder '(yourSave)/playfields', find the folder 'Aestus' and delete it. You'll lose all bases and ships on that planet, so be careful. ---- Based on Aestus. Slightly modified playfield in the .zip. (Height adjustment, removed out of place standing rocks.) ---- Edit: 07.01.'18: Inserted warning of outdated method
Im loving this thread guys, added pretty much all of these to the scenario for 7.0, some very cool new base terrains coming out of here, keep em coming, and if anyone wants to attempt it, I have tried and tried and cant get it to work without an error, a landscape that's dead flat with just one very unique mountain in the middle of the map, surrounded by a level of flat ground then a drop into water, which needs to surround the mountain Island. No other Islands at all. Or a map with caves ! Though that might not be possible without the devs adding some hard coded code for it.
Hi all! @Kaeser : .... yet. ---- @piddlefoot The game uses a terrain height map. Caves need major changes to the code... ---- Island: You'll have to use a fixed seed for the playfield, maybe '0', since that's the default one of creative mode- good for testing. Most of the problem is to tinker until you get only one peak. The view that you have in the terrain generator 3D window does NOT show the actual planet. It just gives you a hint about pattern distribution. Rule of thumb: Half of the main view is equal to the planet surface. - Create a basic pattern (voronoi, perlin...) and build your desired feature out of that. Then scale to the correct size in TG. - Check which of the 99 possible pattern seeds available is the one you seek. So load save game, check map, exit session, delete folder with map data (omicron: (YourSavegame)/playfields/omicron) Then try another seed in the editor for the basic pattern you are using as your continent/island (voronoi/perlin...), load up save, check map, exit session, delete folder, rinse and repeat... I did this for the Sekmet moon, to check if enough of the big craters show up. -- To prevent error/crashes: Clamp: Up bound not lower than -0.99 The black line is the lowest possible level. The highest level is somewhere hidden in the red parts that follow white. Undercutting /overdoing this will result in map height errors. --- Slow computing version, but better to control: Voronoi1 (really low freq, Disp has to be zero) >Clamp2>ScaleBias3>invert4>Terrace5>Turbulence6 (>Exponent maybe? Don't know, how you want your mountain) This can get very slow if you build lots of features on this base. Or, a faster version, but probably multiple peaks: Const0, Perlin1 or Billow1 (really low freq, )>ScaleBias2>Clamp3 Max4(Clamp3 / Const0 or Clamp3 / Perlin1 or Billow1) With Clamp & Max you can get your beach, if you scale in Max the island/continent through it's own base. See examples.
1. Lil' stove (Moon) Edit: Improved version of Stove >Page 3 The last planet was lacking it's companion. So here it is. - It's always faster to modify an existing design. Spoiler: More pics Flat as a stove plate. There's nothing down here. Please move along. ----- Plan ---- Step1 : Build station on thin lava crust Step2 : ????? Step 3 : Profit! This terrain is just intended as some orbit decoration... - Until someone manages to make some crystals spawn here? Collecting those things in 200°C ambient temperature would surely be fun! Terrain features: + Lava flows with bubbles. + Young, round impact craters + Old craters deformed by currents + Splattered micro craters 31 mods +1 (Abs11 unused) I changed the internal seeds of the terrain pattern generators, so trenches and craters on planet and moon will appear differently. This is a heavy weight in computation time. Your map buildup could lag. At the shown lava level, POIs spawn rarely, if at all. No ores spawn. 2. Sun experiment Spoiler: More (underwhelming) pics No emissive textures for the playfield map 15 mods+1 (Abs11 unused) Tried to experiment with it, but the results are somewhat disappointing. Still, it's also in the zip. ---- Edit: 07.01.'18: Inserted warning of outdated method
*I really should work on my on my job applications. Instead I'm doing this. - Procrastination, ftw. Also: Hi @piddlefoot. Hermit's kingdom An isolated spot to put down your alien palaces or temples. Spoiler: More pics Doesn't look as much, but there was quite some tinkering involved for this to happen. Terrain features: + Only one island on the whole planet (If playfield seed is zero, or 123456) + low, mostly flat island base as CV 'parking lot' + high-peaked mountain with flat top + Reef around most of the island 14 mods. At least one POI could spawn down on the island base. About 2-3 resource nodes pop up, and some few mobs spawn, too. If the Akua playfield is used, for seed 0 you'll have to swim about 5 minutes to reach the island, where you'll find everything you need to get to space- But no seaweed or Pentaxid crystals. You'll have to tweak the playfield for that, or be really resource efficient. Since this depends on fixed planetary seed, you might want to change some stuff. Spoiler: How to change this island's shape Turbulence 4: Sliders for overall island shape Max6, upper sliders: Control the height of the central mountain Min5, upper sliders: Control height of island base level. Perlin13: Base level hill shapes Ridged12: Base level and reef depressions Selector10: Lower right vertical sliders, and horizontal sliders: Reef width; lower left vertical sliders: Reef height. Stack end: Clamp7. Activate this before saving. (Playfield.yaml - -seed: 0 (zero), or 123456. Others might work, too, but you must find them first. Creative uses seed 0 as a standard.) ! Please leave the sliders from Clamp7 alone. It's your only safeguard against map errors due to excessive terrain height. If you want the highest peak not to be flat, move the whole mountain a little bit down with Max6. Random seed warning: Due to the rarity of the terrain features you may end up with more islands, or none at all. Spoiler: How to apply custom terrain Note: Part of this info is outdated. Please check the first post on this thread. Create a new savegame. (When starting on Akua, land with your escape pod on low ground and loot it.) Exit the game session, and... >Add the terrain: Drop the '_HermitKingdom.xml' into the folder: (steam)/Empyrion – Galactic survival/Content /terrains/xml. >Point the savegame to new terrain: Locate your save game's folder '(yourSave)/templates/temperate' and overwrite the playfield.yaml with the one provided here. >Reset planetary map & POIs: Locate your savegame's folder '(yourSave)/playfields', find the folder 'Akua' and delete it. ... Reload your save and swim to the island. Will take about 5 minutes, with sprint/jump-combo.) The zip contains the terrain, playfield and development steps, in case you want to build your own version. ---- Edit: 07.01.'18: Inserted warning of outdated method
