TA Map Generator

SpeedDaemon

Join Date 03/2008

Updated for TA

External Link

2012-10-21: Back up on new web server (oops!)

2010-07-24: Updating for TA:

- Support for Immense maps

- Fixed most crashes when loading generated maps into TA map editor

- Added some extra randomness to star & planet positions within sectors

I finally have a working version of a map generator I've been fiddling with. Instead of randomizing everything, or tediously plopping down every star and planet one by one, it lets you specify various strategic information:
- Map size
- Planet quality distribution
- Star system size distribution (number of planets)
- Percentage of hostile environment planets
- Number of resources
- Starting planet quality
- and, last, but certainly not least, how many star system each sector on the map has (from 0 to 4)

The program does the rest.
This is still very rough around the edges, but it seems to be at least mostly working, so I thought I'd share. Be very careful that you follow the directions exactly, or you may end up with something that will crash the generator or the game.

It's web based, so there's nothing to download or install:
http://theharms.org/cgi-bin/gc2/webmap.rb

You will be provided with a link to download the map. I will clean out old maps occasionally, but in the meantime, feel free to keep the file hosted on my server.

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Looks great... as a temporary asset until we can all get the genuine TA editor, worth to try. Thanks.

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I don't have a clue how this isn't more popular. I've been using this for months, and it's a better tool than any other map editor I've found. Manually plopping down 400+ planets/suns is not fun, nor random.

Andrew, any chance of this becoming compatible with TA's "immense" size maps?

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Ooh, how did I miss this.

I, too, am interested in ToA/Immense compatibility.

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Any way to open these generated maps in the TA map Editor? it crashes every time i try.

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I don't actually have ToA... In fact, I haven't had time to play GC2 at all for the last few months.

I'll see if I have time to look into updating it, but I won't be able to test with ToA right now. How big are the ToA maps, and have they released updated file format information?

--Andrew

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Description	Dimension	Total Sectors
Tiny	3 x 3	9
Small	4 x 4	16
Medium	5 x 5	25
Large	8 x 8	64
Huge	12 x 12	144
Gigantic	18 x 18	324
Immense	21 x 21	441

There's just one more size. Also, your generated maps seem to work in Twilight just fine.

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Bump for (long overdue) TA update

Still somewhat in progress

- Support for Immense maps
- Fixed most crashes when loading generated maps into TA map editor
- Added some extra randomness to star & planet positions within sectors

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Ya, I know this was old, but this is just to good not to bumb up. I been looking for it for months.

But its down, again... Is there anyway possible if this can get back up, or even better be made in a non-web version?

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I replaced my web server, and completely forgot this was there, so forgot to restore it.

It *should* be back up again - let me know if you have problems.

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Nope still down....

Ever think of making this an executable file instead of a web based one?

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It would seem that my web server blew up again mere hours after I posted that. Or managed to suffer a power failure in spite of the attached UPS. Apparently I didn't knock the adjacent wood block hard enough.

Anyway, it's back up (again).

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Thank you for this mod. But most of the time i get an 'Internal Server Error' message when i try to create maps. I did get it to work a couple of times, but forgot to up the resource count. Playing on a huge map, with 10 races, 5 resources isn't enough for me.

Is the settings i'm trying?:

Huge Map, Starting Planet:12, Resources: 20

Planet Quality: 20, 10, 20, 30, 10, 10

System Size: 0, 10, 20, 20, 30, 20

I have a total of 135 systems on 64 of 144 sectors. My Hostile Planets add up to 20%. Ten starting races.

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No, it's not the settings i'm choosing. I even went with your default choices. After i complete the map and click next, i get the server error message.

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Hay I noticed one other thing, since you kind of keep all of the maps any one really generates on the map generator, why not share the rest instead of getting rid of them. Just a suggestion.

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