# I did some mapgen changes you might find cool

**URL:** https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087
**Category:** The Bunker
**Created:** [December 3, 2023, 6:22am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087 "2023-12-03T06:22:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Erk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/erk/32/3871_2.png) [@Erk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Erk)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2023, 6:22am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/1 "2023-12-03T06:22:56Z")

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Thought I’d just call your attention to them, since you’ve got to travel a lot to see them and they’re subtle at first.

> <https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/69912>
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> \#### Summary
> Features "The map changes as you travel east-west and north-south, revealing either rural areas or oceans and megacities"
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> 
> \#### Purpose of change
> Our current mapgen creates a sort of weird suburban zone. It's fine but it's bland. There's very little reason to explore outside one overmap. There are no real cities. No ocean. No mountains. No vast forests.
> 
> \#### Describe the solution
> Adds these things.
> 
> 1. As you travel West, the cities don't get smaller but they start to space out more.
> 2. As you travel East, the cities get bigger and more crowded until you're basically in a constant megacity.
> 3. As you travel West and North, the forests get denser and thicker until you're soon in a rural forest interspersed by roads and campgrounds
> 4. In the eastern megacity as you travel north, the cities remain big but get less dense again.
> 
> \#### Describe alternatives you've considered
> The massachussets mod would be another way to do this but I've wanted to boost the mapgen abilities for a while, and it turned out to be easier than I thought.
> 
> I wanted to add oceans in this PR (see screenshot below) but they were causing things to hang on generation and I don't want to introduce too many points of failure in one go.
> 
> \#### Testing
> here's a large image showing just the change to cities:
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/38f93c18-9593-4c72-b04e-c2087bfc29ba)
> 
> This shows forest density increasing as you head West from the starting map
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/d39aa15f-9e46-4c9f-8195-1608d942c0ad)
> 
> 
> This is a city at overmap 10,10, which is getting into the outskirts of boston.
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/fcaf53a1-4ee5-4ded-bfa6-467a439bcfb6)
> 
> When you get into the really rural areas approaching what would be vermont, you get... rural areas.
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/06072178-dabf-4bae-9a3f-6113b9f32664)
> 
> But zooming in, those areas still have roads and points of interest:
> !\[image-1\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/3dcf4620-57a0-430f-aa2c-393df8902037)
> 
> This is just a cool shot around the 5,-2 area:
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/ea664ae6-c340-4c5c-8e6c-b4c41f53e969)
> I can't get over how much cooler this is because here's a shot from in the same worldgen, a bit more to the west and north:
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/5f03b4a5-a816-4593-86e7-3922e75ab3bd)
> 
> \#### Additional context
> this one shows the later ocean change. It's super cool but I have moved it to a later PR so I can push the stuff that's working right... the ocean stuff causes worldgen to hang and crash, and the fix is not super simple.
> !\[image\](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/assets/45136638/4ee6257d-0ae8-406d-96e8-e9b88b29ed1f)
> 
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### Author: ![PALU](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e56c9b/32.png) [@PALU](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/PALU)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2023, 8:35am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/2 "2023-12-03T08:35:43Z")

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Saw it, but didn’t comment there as it would be slightly outside the scope of that effort. Here, though…

Would that open up for other geographically based changes, such as the introduction of new kinds of terrain and biomes as you get further in some directions?

There’s also the other issue of why you’d want to plunge deeper into mega city hell by going east. It just makes one direction decidedly less desirable than the others (unless your flavor of fun is to kill endless numbers of zombies for no other reward than random junk you’ve already acquired to over abundance from the hordes of zombies you’ve already killed), and that’s in a situation where route availability is already limited by water and limited presence of roads and usable bridges.

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### Author: ![Erk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/erk/32/3871_2.png) [@Erk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Erk)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2023, 3:58pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/3 "2023-12-03T15:58:55Z")

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For now, going to the megacity is just a thing you can do for fun. Later, though, I’d like to change how things spawn so that some resources are much easier to find in the city.

This itself doesn’t add anything to make biome changes easier to add but it does offer a proof of concept for them. I’m going to try to add a new biome to fit with all this.

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### Author: ![Unn\_Ben](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/unn_ben/32/12730_2.png) [@Unn\_Ben](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Unn_Ben)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2023, 2:54am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/4 "2023-12-04T02:54:30Z")

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In the city, most items are repetitive, perhaps the basement has some interesting things. However, this reduces the desire to search for resources in the late game. We can add some interesting elements, such as storybooks (that can be read), or memorable items to enhance the experience.

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### Author: ![Pupker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@Pupker](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Pupker)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2023, 11:37am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/5 "2023-12-04T11:37:31Z")

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Would be cool if the big bad factions density also changed with some factions being prevalent in certain directions.

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### Author: ![Erk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/erk/32/3871_2.png) [@Erk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Erk)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2023, 6:58am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/6 "2023-12-05T06:58:29Z")

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This definitely opens up for things like triffids spawning more in forest, stuff like that. I’m looking now at adding actual biome changes that would allow different specials to generate in different regions, which would dovetail with that pretty nicely. For now though, it’s just a flavour difference that can get pretty significant.

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### Author: ![Pupker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@Pupker](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Pupker)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2023, 8:04am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/7 "2023-12-05T08:04:26Z")

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I didnt mean triffids spawned in Forests, I meant “fungus took over Quebec” kind of things where the more north-west you go the more certain faction spawns until its all spore covered ground.

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### Author: ![Wojtek94](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/wojtek94/32/6857_2.png) [@Wojtek94](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Wojtek94)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2023, 8:27am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/8 "2023-12-07T08:27:57Z")

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Incredible. I have been playing Cataclysm since 2015, and this is one of the biggest changes I have experienced. Thank you Erk, one more time

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### Author: ![Erk](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/erk/32/3871_2.png) [@Erk](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Erk)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2023, 1:08am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/i-did-some-mapgen-changes-you-might-find-cool/29087/9 "2023-12-08T01:08:26Z")

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[Discussion/planning: Moving towards a vaguely defined "official" map. · Issue #70056 · CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA · GitHub](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/70056) here’s some more info on where I would like to go with it. I hope if you like step one this will be really exciting, but if not, I’d really value your thoughts.