Hi All! Update: January 19th 2017: Added a "Random Names" checkbox, that will use a list of the names of Minor Planets (List acquired from here: http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPNames.html) So that you can have some unique names in your system (TLDR at bottom) With 5.1 dropping soon, my server is planning on doing a wipe, and I'm sure many others will be wiping servers or starting new singleplayer games. In preparation for that, I've been working on a little web based tool to create us a random system, tailored to our specific wants and needs. Early on though, I decided it would be good to create it so that anyone can create themselves a system using this tool. Sample webpage: Sample in Game Basically you open the page, you fill out the form with whatever values you want, you click generate, and it'll spit out a system for you. After creating the map, you can spam the "Regenerate" button above the map until you get one you like. Then you go over to the YAML tab, highlight, copy and paste into your sectors.yaml (may want to back up the original first) then start a new game. If all went properly you'll be in your new system. After a couple weeks of working on it, it's ready in it's most basic form with the following features: Define the number of nodes (each location on the system map is a node) Define the size of the system (distance from Sun to an edge. If you enter "200" overall map will be 400x400, which equates to 40AUx40AU) Define the chances of a node having a moon (Entering a "2" makes it 1/2 or 50% chance a node will have a moon) Add/remove starters - Name, Playfields, and Origin Add/remove playfield templates Add/remove names This can be found here: http://map.exilednation.com/ When using this I recommend at minimum 5 planets (3 are going to be the Asteroid Field, Trading Post, and Alien outpost), so 5 planets would give you 2 playable nodes The bigger you select for map size, the longer generation will take Next Steps: Allowing users to define colors for the different playfields (in game maps are boring currently cause most everything is the same color) Make the Yaml easier to copy/paste Data Validation Clean up the web pages more (I enjoy backend then frontend sorry) Notes: As of now, there is NO (none, zip, zilch, nada) data validation, which means you can easily enter bad data that won't work If you want a starter to have no moon, simply leave it blank If you want no moons (besides any defined for the starters) simply enter "0" into the moon odds On the Map view, the Cyan nodes are the starters On the Map view, the numbers correspond to their location in Yaml For example: 0 = 1st entry AFTER the sun It's easier to link node numbers by going to the "Data" tab If you encounter any errors on the webpage, please send an email to "[email protected]" detailing the problem, and including a c/p of the "Data" and "Yaml" tab if possible, as well as any information you entered If you encounter any errors when starting a game/sever with this please send me the yaml and your server/game logs TLDR: Create custom galaxies here: http://map.exilednation.com/ Has some bugs, see notes above. Warned you Open to any tips/suggestions/features/comments edit: removing "galaxy" - thanks andargor!
great idea we need more tools like this! maybe you could team up with with rexXxus from the hws server he is making a similar tool? http://empyriononline.com/threads/emp-playfield-generator-epg-v1-03-0.7029/
Same here. Add in some custom planets to the mix, for the moment we have a quick and dirty way to "leave the solar system".
Great work! Minor nitpick: it's a solar system it's generating, unless you have found out a way to have several solar systems linked?
I wanted to make a standalone web tool. I personally am very OCD about the programs I install on my computers, so this was the primary motivator for creating this I appreciate it! Let me know what you think! If you have the custom playfields already (Vexray has some very nice ones) this has provisions to add them into the mix. Under the "Playfields" section, simply add a row, and type in the playfield name and it will get placed into the mix Haha I will make that change! To be completely honest, I only did it cause it irks the hell outa the buddy that was testing for me! Forgot to remove it before posting it here With these new warp types being added into 5.1 it's getting closer to having multiple systems! Last I heard though, was that having multiple stars in the sectors file would break the map. I haven't had a chance to test that yet though, but I'm hoping it works!
I'm definitely going to be spreading the news about this project. Are you planning on adding a playfield creation tool? If you are, feel free to use all the data I've already collected http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=832036944 There is a link to my spreadsheet there too If there is anything I can help with, just let me know.
Thank you kindly for this tool! I'm creating a larger galaxy for my server and it's handy not to have to hand place/code each entity! While I've had the tool work a few times, I find that the majority of the time it never finishes generating the system. Even with only 10 planets and the default settings listed it doesn't return a map. The few times I've had it work it was almost instant, then when regenerating the layout it failed to return anything at all. (Connecting....) Again, thank you very much for this tool. I greatly appreciate it!
Thanks for the link! This will save me tons of time! It's on my list of things to do, probably fairly soon. I wanna clean up the code for the sectors piece a bit, and add in some data validation first, then I wanna get this part cranked out soon as possible That's strange.. Can you shoot me exactly what you enter into the fields? I'll take a look and see what could be causing this
Node Count: 24 Moon: 1/3 System Size: 800 Default starter planets used. Playfields Added: Coldlands Desolate LavaPlains Marsh MoonLush MoonLush2 Oceanland Plateau Savannah Space Playfields Added: SpacePVE SpacePVP Random Names selected.
Do you enter "1/3" in the box, or "3"? Please enter "3" for results that reflect 1/3 or 33.33% I need to find a nice way to clarify that on the page Edit: I'm getting it taking a while for me as well. I will look into this. Thanks for posting your inputs!
Awesome haha So to make the galaxy as random as possible, I left the pathing check (to make sure everything connects) to the very last step Which means if this fails, it must do the entire process over again With 24 nodes and size of 800, its failing the pathing check multiple times and it's trying over and over 24 nodes and size of 600 finishes in under 3 seconds - Consistently not having fails 24 nodes and size of 650 finishes in under 5 seconds - Consistently not having fails 24 nodes and size of 700 shows lots of variance - Usually fails a couple times, sometimes not failing 24 nodes and size of 800 is taking ages - Almost always failing repeatedly 70 nodes and size of 800 is under 3 seconds So I'm thinking this is one of those math things, that, at a certain point there's not enough nodes to fill the space. I'm going to try and think of ways to counteract this without losing all of the randomness of the map
That makes sense. As you said, since it's random placement the odds of having 24 nodes in an 800 sized system all pass the pathing check is pretty slim. In the end I went with a smaller size of 600 that your sectors.yaml generator had previously output. I used EPG to visualize the position of the planets and move them around (on both the x-y and z axis) so I could control the jump links and segment clusters of planets by difficulty. It's worked so far, so thank you kindly for your time!
That sounds like it worked out quite nicely! I was thinking about trying to find a way to add that functionality next, but that's not a small task, and while its not convenient, it exists in EPG. Sooo I think I'm gonna start doing playfields next. Especially with the information Xango2000 linked me. He did quite a nice job documenting all of that! Saves me tons of time
I look forward to seeing what you come up with! I think, if I may be so forward as to suggest such, that a dropdown system similar to your current sector tool to customize existing biomes with regard to difficulty would be incredibly handy. Something where you can increase/reduce resources, drone chance, drone spawn count, POI type/count, etc. I find that with my custom game I'm creating, for example, a "DesertHard" biome where I just increase the aforementioned settings. Eventually, a tool to just select a difficulty setting from a dropdown and receive and upgraded version of a biome for users who don't care to bother with individual settings would be oustanding! Of course, all of this is easy for me to say as I'm not the one doing the work . I imagine this is a lot of regexp magic. Thank you again for your time and effort!
