Crazy idea about adding various USA states

[kevin.granade]

The land usage codes are pretty specific, so it ends up theres stuff like hospitals, junkyards, town halls that are going to spawn st yhe same locations, but then again things like labs will always be random.

[Zhilkin]

No, you won’t get the same shlock.

[TheZoneWizard]

No way around those static buildings? Kind of what concerned me was knowing where key things are making the game stale. If the hospitals spawn in the same locations. I’ll eventually know where they are enough to just go there for certain items. If they were random as it is now, I would look for one but may not always find one. I may choose a direction and never find one in fact.

My other question based on what you provided is this. Why? Also, is it possible to code them as not being static building locales earlier on than to try to ham fist it later when people get tired of it…which will be a probable outcome when everyone playing notices they don’t change.

[bostltch]

I know its been said before but if you don’t want to have the “static” map just don’t use it. It’s not like random gen maps will just stop being an option, nor will it suddenly start decreasing in quality. Also if you are truly a savant and can actually memorize the ENTIRE map of Massachusetts, that is very impressive but otherwise it wouldn’t be a problem.

Also I’ve never actually played DayZ because multiplayer survival games aren’t my cup of tea but I’m pretty sure it’s about 15km by 15km so 225 km2 and even though cata map scale isn’t 1:1 to real life (as far as I know) Massachusetts is 17003 km2 which is which is ~75x bigger so it’s like comparing a city to an entire state, well that’s exactly what it is.

[Trigon]

Another question I thought of. Since there’s obviously a coast on that map does that mean there’s work being done to support ocean tiles? I know we already have salt water and deep water but that seems like it would be insufficient. I also wonder how current fishing mechanics would work in an ocean “biome.”

Now the major problem would be dealing with Jawed Terrors and Kevin Costner.

[Mantar]

Are you really worried that you’re going to memorize the location of every hospital in every town in the entire state of Massachusetts?

[Zhilkin]

General map knowledge won’t help you too much in knowing where things are as MA map is just too huge - 1337 overmap tiles with 180x180 terrain tiles each.

Also there are no plans to drop random mapgen - overmaps besides MA would use same ol’ way. Players would be free not to use MA overmaps at all.

[dissociativity]

A big part of this being important is having a coast, ocean, expansion of water environments, and perhaps coherent random events, including political npc-based ones throughout the world that could be broadcasted from the radio and the player could travel to the location by looking at the real life map.

Part of the endgame could be the map changing, dangerous phenomenon appearing at locations and knowing about them if you listen to the radio.

[TheZoneWizard]

On/off options eh? Hmm…ok. If you say so.

I don’t find the comments to my ability to memorize locations of certain buildings rude as it may or may not have been intended. I will retort by saying. Yes. You are too, fully capable of knowing where most(not all) of such buildings would be. This taken into consideration that my memory is damage irl. If you live in a rural area I understand you would doubt it. But truly, if you think about how many hospitals for example are near you and then you think of each near to that and so on. It really isn’t that difficult. I don’t believe I’m special in this regard lol

Not by a long shot.

[Zhilkin]

It is not about memory. The thing is hospitals won’t be in the same location each game.

See yellow tiles in the center of the image below? It could be a hospital, or a police station, or a firefighter station, or even a megastore - anything that fits in “yellow” land use code.

[Mantar]

You are too, fully capable of knowing where most(not all) of such buildings would be.

Maybe in one town, but again, we’re talking about the entire state of Massachussets here. I’m not trying to be rude or say your memory’s not good, I’m saying nobody’s memory is that good.
A quick search says there are 39 cities and 312 towns spread over 14 counties in MA. I don’t know how many hospitals that adds up to, but it’s more than I’d expect anyone to remember.

[bostltch]

Another quick search said there are about 100 hospitals in Mass, and that was only including the major ones. So at the least, 100 spread out over 17000 km2. Not that it would be impossible, but you’d have to specifically try to memorize them, and the simple solution to that is just not to.

[TheZoneWizard]

When you consider it is only 190 miles wide and would take 3-4 hours in a straight line to traverse. The state isn’t as big as you folks who don’t live near it seem to think.

The average person could think of quite a few primary buildings. I wasn’t suggesting all of them. This is ignoring the corporate booboo money grab buildings. Nobody actually uses those. Thankfully >_>

[StopSignal]

this is some incredible work guys
it’s beautiful
i’m totally getting into the game again when this goes live!
question: if the light green dots are houses, will green dots that aren’t touching a road still spawn a house? That’d be weird.

Anyways, this is great.

[bostltch]

Well personally half of my family is from Mass (a small town called Holyoke) but that’s still 10,555 square miles and no that’s not as big as Texas or California but that’s still huge! You underestimate how big that is, there’s a lot of room there!

[kevin.granade]

if the light green dots are houses, will green dots that aren’t touching a road still spawn a house? That’d be weird.

That’s a major issue, there are a couple of fixes.
One is to take areas like that, throw out the existing roads and replace them with a grid of roads that fits how we do mapgen.
Another (and better one IMO) is to make house areas elastic, like by pushing the house away from the road and connecting it with a driveway, and or tacking on a “back yard” area.

[StopSignal]

hmm, that’s quite a good idea indeed, could end up quite organic looking!
will keep an eye on this, it all sounds neat.

[TheZoneWizard]

Seriously? Holyoke is considered rather large. The mall is 3 freakin stories lol

[TheZoneWizard]

The city areas have a sidewalk normally in residential parts anyway. The rural areas would normally have a small front yard with a medium back yard.

[Sanehatter]

The game could also make “residential areas” and freely dispose houses and roads on them, instead of marking each individual green dot.