Bigger maps

[Dauphin]

I read in the FAQ thread about resizing maps. A point not on there is if there are any stability problems with map sizes.

How big can I set the gigantic map without the game going tits-up? Is it dependent on your comp specs?

I don't know the answer, thats why I'm asking.

[Maquiladora]

The limit is 210*210 i think, thats the size of the World map made by OmniGod (and most of his other quality maps), and he might have said that was the limit.

I see you made a map of GB some time ago, are you making another?

[Dauphin]

I made that one when the game came out 2 years ago. My interest in the game waned so I didn't make anymore. I could do another, but I'd need to be inspired or have a specific type of map requested to get the focus.

[ahenobarb]

Funny you should ask, I was playing around with the settings a few days ago. I think the maps can be almost limitless in size, but it will kill your processing speed and eat your RAM.

One of my computers freaked out at 1000 x 1000 map. However, it could handle a 750 x 750 map -- but it took just under five mintues to load the game and five minutes to "quit" the game (probably clearing out RAM). 750 should be more than enough map anyway unless your Magellan.

Another problem is that if you have a map of a very large size (the values are controlled in const.txt) you have to fiddle with the setting in map.txt to make sure the values make sense in terms of the total map size. What does that mean? It means that if you have a 750x750 map and told CTP2 to make only 25 continents with a max width and height of 15x22 and told it that you still want to end up with 50% land the game will fill in the blank spaces with random water and land tiles to get that number.

See the attached photo -- I made it big so you can see what the water/land looks like up close. Notice how small the viewing window is. Neat huh?

[Maquiladora]

Wow I think 210*210 is plenty for my comp.

The minimap looks like a virus under microscope.

[HuangShang]

it does

and ii dont like huge maps, the game lasts 4 ever, esp. the no-combat part

[Adriano]

...................

[Locutus]

Hey, SD, good to see you back here! It's been a long time since you last posted here, I think you were still going by the name Big Crunch back then...

As others have stated, there is no real limit to the max size, it just depends on what your PC can handle. Well, there is a limit but without Crays or similar we'll never reach it (something like 2^28 I think). However, there seems to be an issue with the AI if you use maps larger than 210x210 (see here and here), although I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were ways around this that we don't know about (e.g. I'm not sure if a larger map with a 1:2 ratio was ever tested, something like e.g. 210x420 - it's known that 1:2 maps are less problematic than any other size). But 210x210 is big enough for me, it would take forever to play a game on a map that big...

[Dale]

Locutus:

The AI has no problems with the 150*300 maps in Ages of Man. Even with the large maps in the first Apolyton pack and Cradle, we didn't see any AI problems. Though Dave and I played around for ages with the map.txt settings to get it right.

In my first few runs of AOM I had a map 300*600, but it took 10 mins per turn. But the AI had no probs. I ran something like 100 turns overnight on auto-turn.

[Locutus]

Wow, so they built roads alright? That's great news then I knew it, I always knew it - I was just too damn lazy to test it myself

BTW, what kind of PC were you testing on? If it was much slower than 2100 MHz I think I may try such a huge map myself one day

[Dale]

Yeah, roads are fine, other tile imps built fine, I've even seen one AI travel about 200 squares just to wage a war.

My PC is a P3-666 (Satan's PC) with 384mg RAM. I think it was more XP that slowed it though, you know what THAT OS is like.

[Locutus]

Ah, good, then it might just run in under 5 min/turn on my Athlon 2100 (512mb)

Of course, I ordinarily run XP too (slow but surprisingly stable and with my clock speed the slowness is hardly an issue ) but in this case the dual-boot with Win98 (and after the holidays hopefully RedHat too) might come in handy

[Locutus]

BTW, 384 milligram RAM? Is that ultra-light material or just 1 chip or something?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by ahenobarb
It means that if you have a 750x750 map and told CTP2 to make only 25 continents with a max width and height of 15x22 and told it that you still want to end up with 50% land the game will fill in the blank spaces with random water and land tiles to get that number.

Played a couple of games with 150*300. The archipeligo stuff is really annoying to play on. What constants do I mess around with to solve the problem? How can you change the continents size?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
Played a couple of games with 150*300. The archipeligo stuff is really annoying to play on. What constants do I mess around with to solve the problem? How can you change the continents size?

You have to mess around with the map.txt, a file that I did not understand so far. So just play with these variables, unfortunatly you have myriads of these field in the map.txt:

    {
		MAP_NUM_CONTINENTS      20
		MAP_MIN_WIDTH           20
		MAP_MIN_HEIGHT          32
		MAP_MAX_WIDTH           52
		MAP_MAX_HEIGHT          100
		MAP_BUMP_SIZE           16
		MAP_MIN_SUBCONTINENTS   4
		MAP_MAX_SUBCONTINENTS   10
		MAP_SUBCONTINENT_SIZE   0.8
		MAP_SUBCONTINENT_HEIGHT 0.6
		MAP_BORDER_SIZE         15
		MAP_FAULT_LINES         0
		MAP_FAULT_LENGTH        1.0
		MAP_NS_BORDER_SIZE      5
    }

So just try to increase the numbers of continents in the according map size part. Just noticed that the two fault lines are also worth a look in combination with the last last thing I added to the FAQ (Q59).

-Martin

[Dauphin]

Thanx, I'll check it out.

[ahenobarb]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin


Played a couple of games with 150*300. The archipeligo stuff is really annoying to play on. What constants do I mess around with to solve the problem? How can you change the continents size?

Martin has shown you the right variables. I concentrated on getting the continents right first and then went to the subcontinents before I started getting maps that looked really good. The trick is to avoid maps that churn out continent globs or "clumps" as they are called in the CTP2 program.

The most tiresome thing though is that the values have to be set for each change in the continent/island ratio the avoid the archipeligo effect. Of course, you can just change the value for the 50/50 ratio and leave it at that (the half-a$$ed approach to map modding, but if you only need it for a scenario it works).

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by ahenobarb
The most tiresome thing though is that the values have to be set for each change in the continent/island ratio the avoid the archipeligo effect.

Yeah that is the reason why it is very improtant to have map.txt support in John's CTPEd. That would make things a lot easier.

-Martin

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Yeah that is the reason why it is very improtant to have map.txt support in John's CTPEd. That would make things a lot easier.

Thanks for the hint