Start New Male' Mod in 2015

Game Talk The Lab
1

I would like to Simulate Male’, a tropical island with the size of 2,5 sq km and about 130.000 people on it in the Cataclysm DDA engine.

It would support 7-10 z-level buildings and boats now, wouldnt it?

Is is possible to work with mapgen.cpp to create a city map surrounded by water first, then add other islands later, that can be travelled to by boat?

For those who have never heard of the place, here is the Link to its wikipedia Article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malé

Any further questions or needed resources to draw a design outline for this mod (I have only recently started reading the code for mapgen and its noise functions, so pointers would be appreciated) I would gladly help to answer.

I can post some pictures of the main places too, if thats ok, so there is more to a feel to the scenario I’m describing.

It also shall be kept in mind that this place does by now means have to be as tropical and idyllic as it is right now.

I always imagine a scenario like ‘The Road’ from Cormac McCarthy for Cataclysm DDA.

So would a mod like this be feasible, and where should I start working on in regards to the source to make it a reality?

Thanks and Regards
RB

2

Ley me say sorry for not answering earlier!
Of course, first is first: welcome to the forums!

Z Levels are completely experimental for now, but I guess you could use them, yeah! Though they have some errors. Are there buildings with more than 2 floors? I don’t know.
Never seen a boat in my life, so can’t answer that!
Looks like all the devs here say that the mapgen code is really bad, tangled and a challenge, and most hiss at it. But I think that with enough patience you can do what you said! It would look kind like Cataclysm 2, that whales was trying to make. To be honest, I like more water.
Of course, totally give it a shot!making the main places would be easy iirc, I don’t know about multi tile places though.
The Road is awesome.
I think it’s feasible, hard work, but completely possible to do, and an awesome idea.

I hope you can do it (:

Sorry for mistakes in my writing, I am in a phone. And I excuse myself for the really unorganized response, just take it as if I was reading your stuff and answering one at a time.

3

[quote=“Robert_Boettcher, post:1, topic:8436”]It would support 7-10 z-level buildings and boats now, wouldnt it?

Is is possible to work with mapgen.cpp to create a city map surrounded by water first, then add other islands later, that can be travelled to by boat?[/quote]

Z-levels are kinda experimental. They do work, but they do have problems - namely falling down, which is implemented as a trap and thus can sometimes not trigger. They’re fine for indoor stuff, though (I think).

Mapgen code is relatively complex, but I think it would be doable. It could be a relatively big thing, though. You could probably get away with generating cities and replacing everything else with water. Then you’d have to ensure this water is salt water.

Mapgen allows setting temperature for places, but I’m not sure if it allows this temperature to vary. Tropical setting may require altering (or copying and editing) some of the calendar functions.

Boats are kinda experimental at the moment, but they also do work. Water/boat combat is bad, diving into water from boat is bugged (annoying, but not game-wrecking), but boats are otherwise functional vehicles that travel on water instead of land. You can’t have an amphibious vehicle - when it’s a boat, it’s not a car.

Overall it sounds rather big. If it’s your first project involving DDA and especially mapgen, it could be quite hard. Try to break it up in a bunch of independent parts. For example, generic tropical-looking setting and tropical weather can be implemented separately, then connected. Drowning the world in water should probably wait after generic tropical setting, though you might be able to implement it independently.
Stuff like tall buildings and boats (only default boat in game is the inflatable one, all others are made in game) is json work and so is trivial compared to code parts.

4

Thank you for the quick response.

From what I understood in reading the source, a giant if-else switch decides which map goes on which tile when reality bubble is over it. Then said terrain is rotated, so it fits on said map.

Apparently the map the player moves in only is added there when he walks there.

So first start would be to get worldgen down to generate smaller map (lets say one town), with water all over instead of fields, lets say.

As for the weather, initially Summer setting can be used. Male’ is unique in terms of temperature (the ocean acts like a huge balancer, so temperatures here normally dont go below 28 or above 32 celsius) and daytime schedule (Sun gets up at about 06:00 and sets at 18:00, give or take 25 minutes over the course of a year).

My first main concern is to create said map, which is basically a city enclosed with water instead of fields.

Now gotta go back to reading source…

The compiler instructions in the wiki are kind of weird.
I’m running the game on a HP Mini 110 (which has laughable RAM and processor), yet I read feedback from others who say that with 4 GB Ram they still experience lag.
However compiling in Code::Blocks on this machine wouldnt yield results over the course of maybe 2 hours.

What is the average compilation time for the code at the moment?

When I tried to compile today on the Windows Machine of a friend, I followed the instructions but it asked me to download MinGW. I did, but its a 32 kb file which I dont know how to use on Windows.

Once I get this running I will be a big step further. And should Visual Studio be required to compile it that way, no prob we have a VS 2010 Version running on this Windows machine.

Will try compiling on Windows tomorrow again. How it would actually be fastest to compile the source?
On a Linux Machine or on a Windows machine?

Thanks and regards
RB

5

However in the technical thing I can’t help you, I have an idea. What about making the normal dirt map tile generation to be water? That way it would look like a bunch of islands surrounded by water. Roads would need to be taken down because they’d be generated as bridges.

However I may have got it all wrong, haha. I just know incredibly basic code.

6

[quote=“Robert_Boettcher, post:4, topic:8436”]The compiler instructions in the wiki are kind of weird.
I’m running the game on a HP Mini 110 (which has laughable RAM and processor), yet I read feedback from others who say that with 4 GB Ram they still experience lag.
However compiling in Code::Blocks on this machine wouldnt yield results over the course of maybe 2 hours.

What is the average compilation time for the code at the moment?

When I tried to compile today on the Windows Machine of a friend, I followed the instructions but it asked me to download MinGW. I did, but its a 32 kb file which I dont know how to use on Windows.

Once I get this running I will be a big step further. And should Visual Studio be required to compile it that way, no prob we have a VS 2010 Version running on this Windows machine.[/quote]

Windows compilation requires MinGW and MinGW64. The “updated guide” on wiki works.
Won’t work with VS 2010 or 2012 (not sure about 2014), because they don’t support C++x11. The project files for them exist, but are useless and probably should be removed to avoid confusion.
That 32kb file looks like your connection broke or something. The installer is small, but still around 100kb. Try redownloading or getting a different file from sites linked in guides.

Compilation times are quite long. Recompilation times are long if you change headers, but quite short if you only change .cpp files.
My relatively old computer (2x2 ghz cpu, 4 gb ram) takes about an hour to compile the game.

Fastest way to compile would probably be using LLVM. It is generally considered faster than GCC (default GNU/Linux compiler and the one in MinGW). I think automatic compilation bot on DDA’s github uses it. I never used LLVM, though.

7

everyone thank you so much for your input. I will try to get the first step, a map with saltwater. then place one rubber boat there. that should be challenge number one.

I also have to find where to add and edit boats. rubber boat is fine, and sounds like its been very well implemented.
I plan to add a cargo ship, with shipping containers.

then speedboats, roving boats. thats gonna be awesome. will keep this thread updated to map the progress of this mod.

8

[quote=“Robert_Boettcher, post:7, topic:8436”]everyone thank you so much for your input. I will try to get the first step, a map with saltwater. then place one rubber boat there. that should be challenge number one.

I also have to find where to add and edit boats. rubber boat is fine, and sounds like its been very well implemented.
I plan to add a cargo ship, with shipping containers.

then speedboats, roving boats. thats gonna be awesome. will keep this thread updated to map the progress of this mod.[/quote]

Boats are currently in a mod pack because we don’t have support for letting 'em go under bridges, etc.

9

If you just want the buildings placed in the right spots, and are ok with them being randomly generated, then the layout is going to be pretty easy, what you’ll probably want to do is read it in from a data file, which shouldn’t be too hard to set up.