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Author Topic: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool  (Read 54044 times)

PatrikLundell

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Thanks Rekov, it's good to hear that some people are using the tool.
The reason I don't like evil rain is that it causes caravans to bolt and litter up the embark with huge piles of junk.
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Rekov

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The only thing I wish were different so far is that once you modify a biome, it stays modified. As it stands, if you abort your embark you have to modify it again.

Something else that might be neat for it to do, is an option to automatically increase the populations of all creatures on an embark site to some number where they are unlikely to ever go extinct. Your mod lets you do this already, but you have to manually do it for each creature.
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Fleeting Frames

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Well, I suppose you could easily make all creatures ubiquitous/innumerable/etc. with either raw modding or a script. However, you'd probably want to modify/perhaps equalize frequencies too, as otherwise you might have trouble getting rarer beasts to show up, who sometimes don't display themselves until you've driven extinct several more common species. (Plus there is also the matter on the taming of sea serpents.)

E: Maybe something like
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To populate and give all creatures currently present equal frequencies (not tested).
« Last Edit: July 17, 2017, 04:30:33 pm by Fleeting Frames »
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PatrikLundell

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I'm not aware of any way to save DF while in pre embark (I've tried quicksave, and it didn't work, as expected). However, if you do the manipulations during world gen it will be saved as the generated world is saved. You can also do the changes during pre embark and embark and retire/abandon at some place you don't actually want to play at to get the changes to stick.

As Fleeting Frames said, you probably want to be selective on what species you actually want to ensure are retained. I've certainly never suspected that I would have run out of thieving monkeys or keas...
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Golbolco

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Is there a way to modify a site's climate, or would that just be controlled by changing the biome?
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PatrikLundell

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A biome defines the "climate", although parameters can change to some extent without changing the biome. The reasons this tool doesn't provide means to change the biome are mainly:
- That functionality is provided by specifying the PSVs for the world for advanced world gen; and
- Changing biome is somewhat messy, as that implies (generally, although not in all cases) moving the world tile from belonging to one region to belonging to another, possibly a completely new one (if not adjacent to a suitable target region), which would then require the setup of plants and animals for it.

Thus, it's not impossible to do, but requires more administrative work that I thought worthwhile given that people who want to control their embark site tend to control the world via PSVs.

Edit:
Updated to version 0.14 2017-07-25.
- Added ability to manipulate geo biomes.
- Restructured the help text into several pages as it no longer fit on one.

Edit 2:
Updated to version 0.15 2017-07-30.
- Reworked internals due to misunderstood API parameters. No visible effects.

Edit 3:
Updated to version 0.16 2017-09-03.
- Fixed displaying issue where the "maps" can get displayed on top of the frame.

Also added reference to github repo where the script can be found.

Edit 4:
Updated to version 0.17 2017-09-08.
- Replaced Cavern Water parameter with Cavern Muddiness as that better matches the current understanding of what the parameter does. Failed to find any parameter through which cavern water can actually be manipulated post world gen.

Edit 5:
Updated to version 0.18 2017-09-10.
- Reverted the 0.17 changes as it was done based on an incorrect understanding of how DF uses the parameter. The help
  text has been updated to reflect the current understanding.

Edit 6:
Updated to version 0.19 2017-09-24.
- Corrected geo manipulation "morph" logic to erase elements from data structures rather than trying to delete the lists. Deletion does nothing on DF 32 bit Windows and crashes on 64 bit Windows.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2017, 03:28:54 am by PatrikLundell »
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #36 on: November 07, 2017, 09:47:00 am »

Updated to version 0.20 2017-11-07.
The new functionality introduces a new page with the following functionality:
- Change the standard world tile parameters (elevation, rainfall, etc.)
- Assign a new biome to a world tile (which causes parameters to be adjusted to match)
- Make a world tile Adopt a neighboring world tiles' parameters and region, causing it to leave the current region and join that of the neighbor, while also taking on the biome of the neighbor (possibly with a tropicality difference).
- Generate a new Region from a world tile (typically prepared by adjusting the biome and other parameters beforehand).
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #37 on: November 09, 2017, 01:18:22 am »

So, basically, with 0.20 one no longer needs to pre-prepare the immediate embark site at all.

With the only difference being lack of historical events in the custom-created new region for engravers to engrave.

Did I get that right?

PatrikLundell

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #38 on: November 09, 2017, 04:28:05 am »

If it works as intended, yes, sort of.

My intended sequence would be:
- Make PSV parameters and start to generated a world.
- Interrupt world generation immediately after the generation of the geography (before caves are placed, to avoid moving those to stupid places such as the bottom of an ocean) to use the new functionality to touch up the world where DF "generated it incorrectly", such as e.g. placing lakes where they shouldn't be.
- In this phase, I'd also "correct" DF when it comes to assignment of evilness to regions. It should be possible to bypass the clunky assignment process to some extent, but it requires a fair bit of work as you have to deal with one tile at a time, so it's better used as a finishing touch thing than as a replacement for PSV planning.
- Some non DF supported things should also be possible: Regions of the same type beside each other with different evilness, for instance. I can e.g. think of using PSV to create a 3*3 region that's then converted into two regions where one is a single tile one in the center, so the outer region might be good while the center is neutral to allow for placement of a human civ there.
- Add/adjust flora/fauna for all the regions modified.
- When all the setup has been performed, resume world gen. If it works as it ought to, the changes should integrate seamlessly.

It should also be possible to use it to generate an embark region (or, for that matter, an embark plus 8 surrounding regions). Again, flora/fauna has to be added, but you should be able to tweak the embark to your biome liking that way, possibly skipping the PSV stage completely.
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #39 on: November 09, 2017, 06:20:20 am »

Heh, yeah, lakes are unpredictable. Good point; not an use I thought of.

I've seen regions of same type besides each other, but obviously one can't control it.

And yeah, I was thinking about the psv stage. Though still would have to do it if one wants to corral civs.

All in all, very significant upgrade. (Don't have a worldgen I'm aiming for to test atm. Should get on that.)

PatrikLundell

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #40 on: November 09, 2017, 07:36:55 am »

Personally I hold off all actual game play until the next release. When the release arrives I'll start the actual preparation of planning and setting up a PSV world, with the intention to do things slowly enough that DFHack gets its first release before "real" world gen, so I can use my tools to set up an embark that I hope will be interesting. I also suspect that plan will be blown apart with me ending up with a first play without DFHack support.

I've considered editing of rivers, but that's a major pain to do in any organized fashion as they're a tangled ball of spaghetti where you typically can't change the course of any river without diverting a dozen others (which then requires further diversion). Just changing the river parameters is reasonably easy, though, but that might not be sufficiently useful.

Edit: Hm, I've seen biomes of the same type in neighboring regions, but only when one region has been Hills and the other Plains. It would be interesting to take a look at a natural same region type case to see if there's something obvious that can explain it. I don't consider diagonal neighbors to be neighbors from this perspective.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2017, 08:28:13 am by PatrikLundell »
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #41 on: November 09, 2017, 10:41:37 am »

Heh, yeah, I imagine. Probably one of the first thing worth a check is whether geography is equal, though the release probs means a worldgen cookbook thread.

Rivers, yeah, I can see some problems just from how regionmanipulator functions.

The case I was thinking of was two conifer forests, but might have been diagonal indeed. I certainly can find numerous cases of diagonally touching(ex). Can't refind the forests in my too-large pile of worldgens, though. I guess I learned something about worldgen today, then!

PatrikLundell

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #42 on: November 09, 2017, 11:49:37 am »

I expect the geography rules to be the same, given that I don't see any reason to mess with them for the upcoming release (Kobold caves should be a game play level change, not a world map one). Obviously, seeds wouldn't result in the same world (although the geography ones may or may not). The next arc, however, is going to toss a whole worm can's worth of spanners though the workshop (magical land forms, circus replacement, good/evil replacement).

Funny enough, the regionmanipulator's river handling has very little in common with the world level one (I made a "pull request" for DF Structures a couple of months ago containing the identification of a number of river fields and a fairly wordy description of how it works).

I think regions expand the same way as miasma does: only in the cardinal directions.
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EPM

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #43 on: November 10, 2017, 12:45:37 pm »

Ah, the conflicting joy of an update to such a useful tool.

On the one hand, combining all your manipulators is really fun. On the other hand, the imminent release will likely be incompatible with them all for a while, and most if not all of the new features will probably require a fresh worldgen anyway.

So cruel!
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Biome Manipulator, a world gen/pre embark biome region manipulation tool
« Reply #44 on: November 10, 2017, 01:37:12 pm »

Nice to hear someone outside of the single hand digit known user base is actually using it!
I don't foresee any major problems stemming from the next release (apart from the "minor" issue of DFHack catching up) as the DF release focus lies elsewhere, but you never know. I think it's actually a greater "threat" that DFHack names the unnamed fields the scripts use...
The next arc, however, will probably cause some upheaval, but that's probably 1½-3 years off.

I too think most of the new features will require a new world gen, although things like raids might work. Artifact hunts may be hobbled by the lack of suitably tracked artifact in the old upgraded world. Ah, well, we'll probably see the new release before Christmas, with decent chances for November.

And anyway, I'd rather take the cruelty of an update breaking things than the monotony of nothing new happening.

Edit:

Updated to 0.21 2017-11-13:
- Introduced manipulation of rivers.
- Introduced resizing of "maps" when the DF window is resized.
- Fixed bug in the grid widget causing the viewport width to be controlled by height.
- Introduced fast movement keys, i.e. SHIFT-<movement key> to move 10 steps rather than 1.
- Caused the movement keys to move the DF focus as well.
- Changed the start of the script during world gen to start with the focus where the DF focus is, rather than at (0, 0).

Edit: Fixed error in the third point above.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2017, 01:55:06 pm by PatrikLundell »
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