Generating maps in OpenRA

[tmsbrg]

Hey all,

I recently starting working on procedurally generated maps in OpenRA. I made a blog post about it:
http://thomasvanderberg.nl/blog/generat ... in-openra/

You can reply to this thread and I'll try to answer any questions or feedback.

Here's a screenshot of it to make this post a bit more interesting:


Hope you like it!

[klaas]

Very cool.

How do you think people can test generated maps? Maybe you can use you blog to provide an online tool for map generation, where people can download a newly generated map?

Best would of course be your own dedicated server, where people can only play a newly generated map. I can see how this can have some great advantages, where players need to explore to find all kinds of capturable buildings etc.

[tmsbrg]

Very cool.

How do you think people can test generated maps? Maybe you can use you blog to provide an online tool for map generation, where people can download a newly generated map?

Best would of course be your own dedicated server, where people can only play a newly generated map. I can see how this can have some great advantages, where players need to explore to find all kinds of capturable buildings etc.

Hey Klaas. Not completely sure yet. The map generation will eventually be built into OpenRA. One thing I could do is create a special OpenRA build to let people play which has these randomly generated maps. The problem with that is making people install a special version of OpenRA is probably too much work for them. Another possibility is if I generate some locally and upload them. Then people can test those. But of course there you'd prefer if people can generate them themselves.

Online tool may be complicated, since I have the generation integrated with OpenRA. Not sure how it'd work.

You also suggest making a server for it. Maybe that's an idea. It'd have to automatically generate maps and upload them resource.openra.net, so players can download and play them. Might be a bit complex. But if it works it'd be nice. Though I hope it wouldn't spam resource.openra.net too much.

So yeah quite some ideas but none that stands out as perfect. I'll ask other developers on IRC too, maybe they have good ideas.

[JOo]

im wondering how many people gonna start bitching about those maps not being symetric and not having equally amount of gem/ore mines/tiles on every playerspot

and dont expect them to get used in tournys ... cause seems like "tourny maps" need to contain "atleast" 1 oil derrick ... and a minimum amount of space between players



anway , you allready have my thumbs up on github once its finished and i playtested some of those

[klaas]

I can't see why anyone would bitch about having the option to play a random map.

You also suggest making a server for it. Maybe that's an idea. It'd have to automatically generate maps and upload them resource.openra.net, so players can download and play them. Might be a bit complex. But if it works it'd be nice. Though I hope it wouldn't spam resource.openra.net too much.

I don't think the maps have to be uploaded to the resource center. As long as the server has the map, the players should be able to download and install it directly from the server. Indeed contacting devs at the IRC would be best though...

[Nolt]

Good job.

I think it is going to depend more on how the maps turn out, aoe uses this system from the beginning of time and only a few maps end very imbalanced. It would be awesome if you could add an option to define what kind of random map you want (islands, continents, etc).

If you need a tester then give me a shout, im used to work with ora bleed.

[noobmapmaker]

I love mapgenerators!! It would be awesome if users can set some variables: amount of water, Islands, ore, buildings. trees/debris/buildings.

[tmsbrg]

and dont expect them to get used in tournys ... cause seems like "tourny maps" need to contain "atleast" 1 oil derrick ... and a minimum amount of space between players

Yeah I think this is more for casual players than tournaments. But who knows. Age of Empires II also has tournaments with only random maps, like this one. I'd love if the maps ended up being balanced and fun enough that people would do tournaments on them.

I think if the balance is good then random maps do add something. That is, the need to explore your surroundings, instead of already knowing the map. You have to be more flexible because you don't know exactly how the map will be constructed from the start. That's exciting.

As long as the server has the map, the players should be able to download and install it directly from the server.

At the moment, OpenRA doesn't support transferring your map to other peers in the server. You have to put it on the resource center so others can download it. At least that's what I heard when speaking with devs about it. Though one said you could work around it by sharing a seed, and having the same map be generated for every player based on the seed. But that would require updating the client.

It would be awesome if you could add an option to define what kind of random map you want (islands, continents, etc).

Yeah! In fact, I did some research into how AoE2 does it, and it has a sort of mini scripting language that allows you to define your own rules for generating a map. People still use it to generate new map types for AoE2, as you can see here. That would be cool, but first priority is having it work at all! I'd also like that players can change parameters of the script like you could do in Tiberian Sun when generating maps.

If you need a tester then give me a shout, im used to work with ora bleed.

Great! It's nice to find people enthusiastic about this. I think in a few weeks I'll have something worth testing with players. I'll let everyone know when I have a demo or such.

It would be awesome if users can set some variables

Yes! This isn't even that hard to do. I already have editable variables for the amount and size of resource fields, amount of players and minimal distances. It would only require adding a UI for changing these values instead of hardcoding them. So this is certainly planned.

[anjew]

This is something that I will be really looking forward too.
Best of luck and keep at it :p

[AoAGeneral1]

To be honest this would be amazing to have! I used to enjoy having the seperate ORA map editor program and I can tinker with stuff all I want.

The map generator has pros that can be done in various ways including:

- Generates maps instantly for play.
- Complete randomization.
- Allow generated maps to be altered in the map editor.
- Unit testing.

While the cons would be something along the lines as "This isn't tourny quality" It still can! If generated maps allowed users to open them up after into the ORA editor and make changes? It can do a lot. I used to spend a lot of time in TS generating maps and finding a good one only to wish I could edit them specifically.

[tmsbrg]

Thanks anjew and AoAGeneral!

AoA, I noted your ideas. That's some good input!

I'm probably going to make a demo build where you can do single player skirmishes on random maps(multiplayer later when I figure out the best way to send to map to other players). I hope people can give me some more input on improvements after playing those. I think it'll be exciting to play maps you haven't seen yet, even in a preview.

[tmsbrg]

Here's a little progress update. Not much to show but better than nothing: http://thomasvanderberg.nl/blog/progress-1/

Screenshot with debris placement in RA1:

[PizzaAtomica]

Nice stuff! Does it only use debris pieces with a size of 1 tile or is that just a coincidence on the screenshot?

[tmsbrg]

Oh yeah. I actually forgot about mentioning that. I can place bigger templates, but decided to only use single tile ones for now so that I wouldn't need to check that they don't overlap right now. Bigger ones will be supported later.

[anjew]

Liking it so far. I also really like how basic it is now, sure it doesn't look aesthetic but its actually really nice.

I would use these maps for FFA matches with diplomacy.
Would be interesting (depending on who is playing).