It is a Cartesian plot with the x-y plane parallel to the plane of the galaxy. This map is intended for SF authors plotting out their SF universes. The first is a map of all known stars within 30 light-years of the Sun. The largest are 23" x 35", the smallest will probably be 11" x 17". By popular demand I am using the power of Cafe Press to make available reasonably priced poster sized versions of my star maps.
It should look interesting, with a lot of variety, no large homogenous areas.I am working on a series of commercial poster-sized starmaps. In this tutorial series we're going for earth-like terrain. You could end up spending a lot of time creating an algorithm that generates beautiful maps that are also useless for the game you're trying to make. This isn't limited to map generation, but it's something that you have to be very aware of when developing a procedural map generator. Sometimes, these trade-offs go unnoticed, seem perfectly normal, or are arbitrary, inconsistent, or jarring, depending on the choices and priorities of whoever made the game.
Games are full with trade-offs between believability, playability, and feasibility. So while simulation can be a powerful tool, it has a cost. Also, generating such a planet might take a while, and players won't appreciate having to wait minutes before they can start a new game. But that will take a long time to develop. Besides that, there's also feasibility.įor example, you could produce a very realistic-looking earth-like planet by simulating plate tectonics, erosion, rainfall, volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts, lunar influence, and so on. Alternatively, you could keep mountains but lessen their impact on gameplay, which might also lower believability. If that's not desired, you have to make do without mountains, which might lower believability and limits the expressiveness of your game. For example, while mountain ranges might look great, they also logically severely limit the movement and vision of units. Playability concerns whether maps support the gameplay experience that you're going for.
But if it's supposed to represent earthen terrain, it should at least somewhat look the part. They could be for another planet or a completely different reality. This doesn't mean that maps have to appear like they're part of our planet. Believability is about the player of a game accepting that a map is possible and real. There isn't a single best approach for this, but there will always be a trade-off between believability and playability. What kind of map-generating algorithm you need depends on the kind of maps that your app requires. To make all this possible, we have to create an algorithm for generating maps. Not knowing the layout of the map you'll play on beforehand is essential when exploration is a big part of a game that's meant to be played more than once. That would make it possible to play a game with a new map every time, ensuring that each new game session will be different.
A step further is to do away with manual design entirely, fully relying on the app itself to generate a finished map for us. It would be convenient if our app could help a designer get started by generating a map for them, which they could them modify as desired. While we can manually create any map we like, this can take a lot of time.
It is the first of a few tutorials that will cover how to generate maps procedurally. When all marked on the mat I get 13 hexes by 18 hexes on my 6x4 foot table.This is part 23 of a tutorial series about hexagon maps. This allows my 2x2 inch square bases to fit quite comfortably in the hex. I chose a hex which is about 4 inches wide. By doing this the inaccuracies, which do occur, are not obvious or are easily disguised. The one trick I found was to draw the line but don't worry about jointing the lines at the points of the hex. I started from one edge to draw the hexes slowly working around the existing drawn hexes. Then using a brown permanent marker pen which helps the lines to blend in with the mat colour. Two bits of cardboard stuck together in fact, to make it sturdier when used. I started by creating a hexagonal template using an old cardboard box.
The models on their 2x2 inch bases fit nicely into a 4 inch hex. While a square grid would have been relatively straight forward to apply, I wanted a hex grid for this project, which are not so easy to do. After making the battle mat yesterday, and pretty much getting colour tones and coverage to my liking, the next step was apply a grid.