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[cephalo]

...Uh...Uh oh. I have no idea what you're talking about, so...thanks for trying.


I remember reading that you can make the land into specific forms (smiley face, North America, etc). How do you do that? I can't figure it out. 

First you have to get it the application to run. Have you done that? When you say it doesn't work, what exactly does that mean? Are you getting an error message?

A. I can get it to run on my desktop, just not the netbook.
B. Error message: "The application failed to initialize properly (oxc0000135)."

Ah, ok. That means that the .NET Framework v. 3.5 is not installed on the netbook. I believe you can download that from Windows Update.

To do the smiley face or America thing, you need to import a grayscale bitmap. See the back and forth between Vattic and I just above your first netbook post. Make a bitmap with Windows Paint or whatever, import it to the elevation map, run a filter over it to smooth it out if necessary.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Thanks.

[sadron]

Has the utility been updated to work with 31.25 yet?

[cephalo]

Has the utility been updated to work with 31.25 yet?

I'm working on a scheme that allows for version independence, but it will be a while. I want to stress though that the current version is very useable with 31.25. You just need to visit the advanced parameter screen to check a couple of things.

[cephalo]

Yay! I finally finished my fort. Now I can work on the next version of PWDF without distractions. Here it is!

Praisegems

Please keep the comments regarding the fort in the above thread.

[dree12]

For the next version, can we have a coinflip-ish temperature thing? Basically, PW would automatically assume the north pole is the cold one and apply a user-settable heat gradient to the temperature map. With a warning that only 50% of worlds generated would work as expected, and instructions on how to abort worldgen if the temperature is incorrect.

[cephalo]

For the next version, can we have a coinflip-ish temperature thing? Basically, PW would automatically assume the north pole is the cold one and apply a user-settable heat gradient to the temperature map. With a warning that only 50% of worlds generated would work as expected, and instructions on how to abort worldgen if the temperature is incorrect.

Yeah, I'll do something like that.

[Thundercraft]

For the next version, can we have a coinflip-ish temperature thing? Basically, PW would automatically assume the north pole is the cold one and apply a user-settable heat gradient to the temperature map...

Why assume that the North pole should be the coldest? Are you using the Earth as a model? If so, it's a fact that the Antarctic (South Pole region) is the coldest place on Earth. There are two reasons why the Antarctic is colder than the Arctic: 1) Much of Antarctica is 3 miles above the ocean and temperature decreases with altitude. 2) Antarctica is a landmass, which does not hold the heat as well as solid ice (such as in the Arctic region).

Also, while one pole tends to be covered in more ice than the other, it tends to be colder at both poles on many planets. We know this to be true not only for Earth, but also for Mars and other planets in our solar system. (Mars has both a North polar ice cap and a South polar ice cap. But while many folks are aware that Mars has a North polar ice cap, the South ice cap is not common knowledge because it is much smaller.)

Edit:
That said, while very unlikely, it is theoretically possible to have a planet with either a frozen "North" Pole or a "South" pole. (By the definition endorsed by the International Astronomical Union, the north pole of a planet or satellite is the pole which points above the invariable plane of the Solar System.) There are some planets which has it's axis of rotation tilted very sharply towards the star it orbits. For example, the axial tilt of Uranus is almost 98 degrees, making it nearly parallel with the plane of the Solar System. However, Uranus' rotational axis still revolves around the Sun, meaning it has seasonal changes which take decades to cycle.

However, if one could find a planet with such extreme axis tilt that was tidally locked, so one side always faced the star it orbits, there could (in theory) be a small chance part of it would be habitable (that is, if the composition was compatible with life and the orbit was in the habitable zone). Since one pole is pointed at the star and the other is perpetually dark, one pole is always "hot" while the other is bitterly cold. The hemisphere pointed away from the star would probably be uninhabitable as it would be too cold and receive little, if any, sunlight. And the other hemisphere would have nearly perpetual sunlight. So it would probably be a hot and dry desert near the pole pointed at the star, with constant violent storms near the equator (where the air of the hot and cold, day and night hemispheres meet).

[Rose]

Thundercraft you are entirely missing the point which is that DF randomly gives a temperature gradient with the coldest end either on the north pole or the south, and that this just assumes that DF will make it be the north.

[Thundercraft]

Am I missing the point? 

dree12 suggested that PerfectWorld should "automatically assume the north pole is the cold one". (Are we talking about a "default" setting in PerfectWorld?) I was trying to explain that, based on real world physics, I could not see the logic in assuming the coldest end should always be the North pole... or to assume that it has to be either the North or the South as the coldest (even if DF randomly assigns "the coldest end either on the north pole or the south").

I do endorse the "user-settable heat gradient to the temperature map" suggestion. Since PerfectWorld is all about giving power to the player to customize the world as they see fit, it should (ideally) be customizable however the player wants. But as I was trying to explain, it's more "realistic" to have cold regions on both the North (top) and South (bottom) areas of a world, with the middle equatorial regions being the warmest. (With a user-settable heat gradient on a temperature map, this should be possible.) While having either one pole or the other being the coldest may be the way it works by default in DF, I tried to explain that (by real-world reckoning) finding a habitable world like that would be very unlikely.

[Rose]

You're still missing the point.

whatever PW sends to DF, DF will allways make a temperature gradient on there, with one pole being cold, and one being hot, but PW has no way to know which one it will be.

so PW just has to assume that DF will make the north colder, and adjust for it.

[Thundercraft]

Ah, now I see!
The "With a warning that only 50% of worlds generated would work as expected..." statement now makes sense to me. Now I'm not sure how I misunderstood.

[cephalo]

Ah, now I see!
The "With a warning that only 50% of worlds generated would work as expected..." statement now makes sense to me. Now I'm not sure how I misunderstood.

This issue is why I initially left out the temperature map. There's really no way to control what you get, so what's the point of fooling with it? However, alot of people still want to fool with it so I'm going to let them in the next version. Ideally, there would be a world gen option to shut off that temperature gradient, but as you know, Toady is a busy man.

[cephalo]

Ok, I am thinking about eliminating the functionality that adjusts your world gen parameters when you change the map size. (the green boxes) It works ok when you resize the map once, but rounding errors very quickly accumulate if you resize 4 or 5 times, possibly increasing the chance that unintended values end up on the output. I think it complicates the process for little benefit. If nobody objects, I would like to take that out for the next version.

If you want to change map size then you would want to first copy one of the default param sets that match your desired map size and configuration. That's probably the best way to do that anyway as things are now.

[dree12]

What functionality?