New Map Types

Neptune's Pride
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Hey All,

There is a new build of the game up today that includes two exciting new features you can use when creating your own games.

Firstly you can specify a “non-random” placement of stars around each player home star. This means you can create symmetrical maps where every player has the same access to the same stars. At the moment this is in the shape of two rings of stars. 1/3 in the inner ring and 2/3 of stars on the outer ring. You can make a map that looks like this.

The second exciting feature is that you can provide coordinates for each players home star in the “custom” galaxy type. This can be used to create all kinds of crazy galaxy shapes. Spirals, Boxes, perhaps even a crazy map where all player starts are in a line.

Here is a 24 player spiral I made quickly this morning

And here are the coordinates I used to make this map.

[[72,12], [60,24], [60,36], [48,48], [48,60], [60,72], [0,72], [12,84], [24,84], [36,96], [48,96], [60,84], [72,72], [84,60], [96,60], [108,72], [120,72], [132,84], [72,84], [84,96], [84,108], [72,120], [72,132], [60,144] ]

Anyhow, as always I expect there will be a few bugs. Let me know if you see any.

Jay.

5 Likes
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Created a 4x4 cross game based off of one of the designs Dysp made.

Looks great! Join up, premium players.

And did I miss when star names were changed? Seeing something like “Ice” or “Free Chara” is making me laugh.

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Oh yeah, I forgot I was messing around with the star names as well. I experimented with using actual capital cities from around the world so you would have things like “New Tokio” or “Neo Angeles”

I didn’t work out.

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Fantastic! I was going to create a game today and saw that.

I have some suggestions:

When using the two rings, circular galaxies with 6 or more players became donuts, with an empty middle. It would be nice to have an option to fill the middle.

About the custom galaxy, it would be nice to be able to set places that are not homeworlds, but grow like they were. For example, you could create the spiral galaxy with only 4 empires in the middle, so each could explore his galaxy arm.

Keep the awesome job you are doing!

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Can you explain more on how to do map generation? You mention 2 ways to make maps but you didn’t explain how to do the symmetrical way with specific stars laid out in a pattern. Is there someway to preview map generation?

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i figured it out after playing with it. I just made a bunch of junk games to try out various coordinates and galaxy sizes.

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I am wondering if you are adding some or of randomness when doing these maps. i made a game Neptune's Pride (password 12345) using this [[0,5], [20,10], [40,5] ,[60,0], [80,-5], [100,-10], [120,-5], [140,0] ]. I expected a line with a bit of a wave to it. It ended up looking a little weird. It looks like its flipped?

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There should not be randomness, but things could be flipped or inverted.

When I was doing the map above I found it really hard to do in my head. Was making lots of mistakes.

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I like that spiral map. I attempted to make a map with dots that was a spiral but I failed. I would like to see an 8 player game with 8 skinny but longer spirals where each player starts at the arm and they all meet in the center. That should be an interesting game because all the players will be developed pretty good before any battles happen. It will be an expansion race to start with and some big battles in the middle. The middle would be the key area because it will provide access to all the other areas and it can block other players from advancing farther.

Another key concept of the game would be getting allies together to take out someone in the middle. If you occupy the middle you will also become a bigger target. It should make an interesting battle if the 8 arms are made so they meet in the middle and they have enough distance from other players to prevent them from jumping to another arm.

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Doesn’t really work like that at this stage @jason3609 but I have some extensions planned that could do what you are after.

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Jay, great addition. As you are thinking about extending this, what about coordinates that give shape to the galaxy, but are not based on a player home star? Such as generating your spiral example but without players starting in the core?

What about two coordinate entries, the first for home worlds, the second for filler star points. Then take the Stars/Player and divide between those points. Would that be feasible?

Actually, that would be a solution for Jason’s idea.

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Yes, now that the core of this new tech it in it should be fairly simple to extend.

There are just so many competing priorities and so little time!

1 Like
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Have you considered the possibility of opening parts of the code to community-contributions?

Or opening a highly experimental server for volunteer premium players to do very early Alpha tests, to cut testing time?

Or maybe doing an “internal kickstarter” of features, like: “To be able to implement this new feature soon, I will have to hire some freelancer at the total cost of $$$” and then opening for donations. Donators could have early access to this new feature.

Or maybe I am a little too anxious to see some suggested new features coming! :wink: Do you have job openings? :wink:

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I think a donator badge might be good. If someone donates a certain amount, they can have access to alpha or beta testing. In order to have a job, you must win a certain amount of games and be active on the forums. This way they show knowledge about the game and share it with other players. A topic for job applications where people can tell about their skills would be good too. The donations should be a priority first so Jay can hire people to work for him.

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It would be great to be able to place a cluster of stars which does not belong to anyone.
This would allow for some nice “gold rush” scenarios, where each player has same chances at the beginning and the empty cluster in the middle (for example) is something to fight for.

It would even allow a new victory condition like holding the center star for longer then X days/ticks.

What do you guys think about that idea?

1 Like
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Yes, folks have been doing good things with the custom map stuff so I think I will expand it to allow the placement of stars, and even set their resources.

Just need to find the time!

2 Likes
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Great stuff.

I have played a bit with the custom map placement myself and I have created a Map I call “Clock”. The Idea is to have a gold rush map with equal chances for all players, so it is symmetric (with some scatter due to RNG).
There is one spot in the center which should ideally be taken by AI (but I found no way to do this at the moment, especially in dark galaxy).

Like I mentioned in previous post I could imagine a win condition like time/ticks of the central star possession.

And here the screenshot of the generated map: