A mostly non-invasive Random World Gen Mod [mutata/liberari] - MKII

[The Plum Gate]

Updated for Ranching MKII, *see bottom of this post.

Assuming you can read the installation.txt file and know how to copy files, everything should be fine...

There are 6 worlds in this release, These fall into to two groups:
Liberari [x] - 2 worlds, and Mutata [x] - 4 worlds.

Mutata and Liberari maps have a simple modus operandi:

• Pad the surface and edges with cloned, seamless biomes and prevent POIs from spawning at world edge.
• Try to prevent Geyser spawns from doing so at the edge or at great distances from world start. As this is a work in progress, this placement isn't perfect but will improve with further modding. Having said that, the results have been good but not perfect.
• Tweaked a few biome features - hence the sub folders needed the features directory, and additional data needed in the features.yaml file.
• Replaced nutronium in the magma beds with obsidian...Accessibility solved and tweaked a bit.
• ...decided that since there's a giant pool of magma at the bottom of the map, I might as well replace all that nutronium at the top of the map with a POI-free ice biome in some of these variants.

Map descriptions:

1. Mutata S. No Cap - basic worldgen with altered poi placement - ie, padding and more central placement of geysers. Replaced nutronium in magma bed with obsidian.
2. Mutata Sortis - same as above, but with an ice biome that spans the area where nutronium once presided - an Ice Cap.
3. Mutata S. 221 - same as Mutata Sortis, with the ice cap, geyser spawns are 2 natural gas, 2 steam and 1 chlorine geyser.
4. Mutata S. 221 No Cap - same as above, no ice biome at the top.
5. Liberari Mutata - Basic worldgen without ruins - only geysers, oil wells and heat sink POIs persist. Same geyser placement agenda as Mutata Sortis. Heatsinks are random however. Ice biome inhabits the top.
6. Liberari M. 221 - same as above, with geyser spawns: 2 natural gas, 2 steam and 1 chlorine geyser.

I think the best results have been with 2, 5 and 6.

So a special note, this require some knowledge of how to get into debug mode, however, I've included instruction in the installation.txt file regarding this. As well, instructions on workarounds for simply generating the maps, then disabling debug mode since playing these maps doesn't actually require it after it gets generated.

Some screen shots; thermals - easy to spot the geysers and wells. Also, I didn't cherry pick these. Having said that, the scheme itself is about 90% effective on POI placement, 100% effective on edge-avoidance, with only an occasional (~5% chance) really bizarre seed/behaviour - doing exactly the opposite of what is expected of poi central placement ( still maintains edge avoidance however ).

<#6, #3>

<#4, #2>

<#5

An excerpt from the release notes...

RELEASE NOTES:

CHANGES: [ data is appended to the features.yaml file ] [ folders are added to accommodate new world data ]
information: The only file changed, or that has to be changed in
order for This mod to work is the features.yaml file - which needs the mod data's world
features updated. This is done by appending the mod features onto the bottom of the features.yaml file.

OPTION CHANGE: [ Adding an entry to the mobs.yaml file - see installation instructions and description of change there ]

TECHNICAL CHANGES: [ all world data a directory isolated ]
Other than this, no other files are altered, and alterations that are made have no effect of default gameplay.
Thus there are no changes other changes to report, because there are no other changes,
only descriptions of the worlds and their own distinct features.

RELATIVE CHANGES: [ mutata and liberari are based off of but independent from default world generation data ]

...I'll be releasing other map mods in this format. Basically ..add a directory to 'features' folder, add world files and a directory to worlds folder...replace or append data to the features.yaml file. The data itself is independent, so it should remain integral through an update or patch - only the features.yaml file would need repatching.

MK II upgrade:

New animals added to the RWG files for this mod.

It's noteworthy that almost nothing changed about geysers, map generation quirks, etc. the same issue are still present that I may or may not have made notes about in the release files. I suggest seed hunting in debug, if you would like to play outside debug or sandbox, there's notes for how to do that in the mod files - the original modus operandi is still working.

Mutata_release_05.10.18beta_forranching_mk2.zip This is the first beta build of the mod for The ranching MKII upgrade. There may be issues, but almost nothing changed in the code behind the scenes, so it makes me wonder about things*. Log files are clean ( no errors at least ). *I have not seen any of the newy geysers ( volcano anyone? ) ..not a poi or have they changed the way geysers are born altogether? I'm looking into this as well...

ML_MKIIv2v_m05.d10.y18.zip

OK, maybe I pulled the trigger too fast on the beta above ( as in like 10 minutes too soon ). Here's the updated release with correct random template geysers. Just a note, I don't like how they handled this, so I'm adding this to me to do list: make random geysers inherit the temperature of the biome they spawn in, more like a request.. ( and fix a few other things about POIs in general for future RWG mods ).

I'll be looking into larger maps and trying to correct some issues I was having with larger dimensions very soon. Until then, if you want larger maps and are familiar with debug+yaml, changing the size of generated maps is relatively straightforward ( named files of worlds in worldgen/worlds/[someworldfile].yaml ) dimensions are at the top.

Older Versions:

Original: oni_worldgenmod_mutata_liberari_TPG_m2d17y18v1.zip

Made a correction to semantics in editing of v1b regarding the title headers in 221 map generation. oni_worldgenmod_mutata_liberari_TPG_m2d17y18v1b.zip

[Hanro50]

Awesome work 

[clickrush]

@The Plum Gate hey this is really nice!

I've been tinkering with the idea of creating a web based script and a small GUI which we could use to unobstrusively add new worlds. It then also would handle the installation of the files. The idea is that you can upload a directory as a zip and it then adds the right yaml files in seperate directories, so you can download it as a complete thing after.. The GUI would be typical web stuff that abstracts away some of the intricancies of the worldgen parameters.

The issue I have is that I don't quite see if that would be very useful or not, given the possibilities we have now. I personally haven't played around with worldgen too much yet. Do you think this could be something useful? Maybe we can use your template as a base of what should be available and how the structure of a then created mod would be.

[Winternewt]

Woah, I was just in the middle of fiddling with default worldgen, trying to get something similar to your #6, came to forum to look for tips and here you are, bringing this on a silver platter! Great work and timing ! I wonder, is there a way to prevent POIs spawning in the circle with ~3-4x radius of the starting biome, instead of simply removing them? I don't hate POIs themselves, but the situation when they mess up my construction plans, being indestructible.

[The Plum Gate]

2 hours ago, clickrush said:

The issue I have is that I don't quite see if that would be very useful or not, given the possibilities we have now. I personally haven't played around with worldgen too much yet. Do you think this could be something useful? Maybe we can use your template as a base of what should be available and how the structure of a then created mod would be.

I think it's entirely possible to package it like that, and the method sounds good. There are only two sore spots when it comes to world gen.

That is: feature definition files have to be be in some subdirectory of or in the features folder - and then the features have to referenced or given context in the features.yaml file. Any other method of modding biome features breaks worldgen.

I tried moving my modified features into the main folder structure and this does not work - that folder is apparently a hard coded location ( there are others as well, but they mostly worked with files, such as layers.yaml ) so modding those may be another issue entirely.

Another thing I learned was that I could run my worldgen from the Mods folder! So the ditectory I put in the worlds folder would have been put in the Mods folder. But still had to have the world map file(s) in the worlds directory...

So with those two location options, I settled on having the bulk of all the definitions in a subfolder under 'worlds'... and dealt with features the same way. Though, in hindsight I could have just put it all in folder under features ... but I digress.

If I had not needed to, or had not made any changes to any of the biome features, then all of the issues regarding biome features wouldn't have cause for changes to features.yaml, nor a need for a subfolder in the features folder -- then world map files would have been placed in the worlds directory. And all the rest of it could be placed in a subdirectory there, or in the Mods folder itself.

So anything involving modifying the yaml files directly in the worldgen folder ( not it's subdirectories ), could be other sore spots for having mods that get along well with one another..

I haven't looked at those in detail yet though.

Edit: I think anything that would automate the tedium of repathing links inside those definition files would be useful.

[The Plum Gate]

14 hours ago, Winternewt said:

Woah, I was just in the middle of fiddling with default worldgen, trying to get something similar to your #6, came to forum to look for tips and here you are, bringing this on a silver platter! Great work and timing ! I wonder, is there a way to prevent POIs spawning in the circle with ~3-4x radius of the starting biome, instead of simply removing them? I don't hate POIs themselves, but the situation when they mess up my construction plans, being indestructible.

Yes, If you're looking at my mods, then to do that you would just invert or swap the _main and _atdistance biomes in the world definition file. But like I mentioned, this placement mechanism isn't perfect to begin with. And sorry for the delayed response - I must have been replying when you posted earlier.

[Winternewt]

On 18.02.2018 at 3:48 AM, The Plum Gate said:

Yes, If you're looking at my mods, then to do that you would just invert or swap the _main and _atdistance biomes in the world definition file. But like I mentioned, this placement mechanism isn't perfect to begin with. And sorry for the delayed response - I must have been replying when you posted earlier.

Finally got back to a game after a while and I'm really heated up to check out new radiant-pipes and critters stuff Well, I really enjoyed playing with LM. 221 mod of yours! Found some seeds matching my taste, namely 85170493. Haven't seen any bizarre worldgen results you mentioned though, maybe it’s just RNG being too random ?

Do you plan to update this mod to keep up with the latest worldgen? I wonder if adding new mobs to biome tags is all it needs?

I also have an idea how you may get more attention to this mod if you plan to maintain it - you may double up the map variants by adding larger-sized maps for those who have top-gear rigs or just lots of RAM to handle them. I'm really sure that I'm not the only one missing the vast pre-agriculture asteroids. Of course, this can be done manually in no time (even the devs mentioned it on of the "Rhymes with Play" streams once), but adding this as a mod-option might be a nice option for players who aren't tech-savvy. Another benefit I see is a possibility of seeds sharing for such enlarged worlds if this mod gains some popularity.

PS: my post probably appeared backdating, because it was my first post and it was pre-moderated. Thanks again for your efforts!

[vovik]

Libertati mutata *one love*, no more undestructible ruins!

[The Plum Gate]

Just a quick note on this mod - is incompatible with the current build ( both ranching builds actually ) however I don't know what they changed behind the scenes, if anything - I'll be looking at revamping this mod for the current ranching update soonish - I've been away from ONI again these past couple of upgrade cycles.

However that said; I did verify the integrity of my current installation and only ONE file failed the verification, so it stands to reason that my mod should still work as originally intended - this simply means the creature inclusions and additional POIs would really be the only thing I need to look at as far as making adjustments to the mod.

[The Plum Gate]

On 5/4/2018 at 8:37 AM, Winternewt said:

Do you plan to update this mod to keep up with the latest worldgen? I wonder if adding new mobs to biome tags is all it needs?

I also have an idea how you may get more attention to this mod if you plan to maintain it - you may double up the map variants by adding larger-sized maps for those who have top-gear rigs or just lots of RAM to handle them. I'm really sure that I'm not the only one missing the vast pre-agriculture asteroids. Of course, this can be done manually in no time (even the devs mentioned it on of the "Rhymes with Play" streams once), but adding this as a mod-option might be a nice option for players who aren't tech-savvy. Another benefit I see is a possibility of seeds sharing for such enlarged worlds if this mod gains some popularity.

PS: my post probably appeared backdating, because it was my first post and it was pre-moderated. Thanks again for your efforts!

Yes, thank you, and I do ( see the previous post). But I'm strapped for time lately - perhaps later this week I'll dive back in. The game has gone through some changes recently, So I'll have to reexamine the POIs and there again, just look at RWG in it's vanilla form both as it generates worlds and handles any new POIs, but also how it handles the diversity of POIs.

The problem I ran into with larger maps was that the original intent of the mod was to push relevant geysers in towards the starting biome, and this works 90% of the time when working with maps at the 256x384 tile sized. The much larger maps (448x448, 512x512) started presenting unusual effects regarding the manner in which relativistically placed biomes were being spawned in. I wasn't happy with the consistency such that I felt like players could just jump in blind without seed previewing and the mod would work as intended. There was just to much inconsistency regarding intent vs results and POIs were behaving in non intuitive ( to the RWG coding ) manners. In other words, there were still some things I didn't quite understand about the primary files regarding biome placement.

That's ultimately the goal (understanding that), so I'll have some hammering to do on my own worldgen code to ge that to work. I'd like to maybe be a bit more original in the world map names as well, because '221' might not even be relevant anymore considering that diversity of geysers now in the game. I'll have to look at this with a fresh install and compare it to my existing code. 

I can't wait to get back on this ( but I have to ). I've got some good ideas regarding larger maps, but I want to make sure I understand the nature of Kei's use of the noise libraries (low priority), biome placement ( high priority ), as well as address some issues I was having with code duplicity (somewhat already addressed using shared biome definitions ) - but I took extensive notes while I was working, so it shouldn't be difficult to update.

[Winternewt]

8 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

The problem I ran into with larger maps was that the original intent of the mod was to push relevant geysers in towards the starting biome, and this works 90% of the time when working with maps at the 256x384 tile sized. The much larger maps (448x448, 512x512) started presenting unusual effects regarding the manner in which relativistically placed biomes were being spawned in. I wasn't happy with the consistency such that I felt like players could just jump in blind without seed previewing and the mod would work as intended. There was just to much inconsistency regarding intent vs results and POIs were behaving in non intuitive ( to the RWG coding ) manners. In other words, there were still some things I didn't quite understand about the primary files regarding biome placement.

Yeah, I noticed your comments about changing map size not working as expected in the mod yaml files . Have you tried increasing the map size while keeping its aspect ratio? Do 320x480 and 384x576 produce the same inconsistency? I'm not aware of exact mechanics here, but a relative layout should retain its proportions when scaled like this, unless there are some upper limits on biomes "volume" or numeric anchors for their placement.

9 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

That's ultimately the goal (understanding that), so I'll have some hammering to do on my own worldgen code to ge that to work. I'd like to maybe be a bit more original in the world map names as well, because '221' might not even be relevant anymore considering that diversity of geysers now in the game. I'll have to look at this with a fresh install and compare it to my existing code. 

I agree the 221 configuration might be obsolete with new mechanics in-place. However, I'm interested in building showcase sustainable colonies with at least one dupe of each character, so I design my bases with 36-40 dupes minimum capacity in mind. Simple math shows this sucks one old-style water geyser almost dry for oxygen balance only. On the other hand, 2 pre-occupational NGGs were OP as hell, especially with fertilizer-natgas recuperation cycle mechanics. I ran a sustainable 36-dupe base without a need for coal or petroleum for life-support functions.

But with a newly introduced geyser dormancy mechanics the water shortage for large bases goes from mild to a full-scale drought even with a 4 kgps boiler system in-place. Horrifying visions of the notorious vomiting-slavery asteroids of the past shackle my mind in terror I haven't done the math yet, but I might need to set up 3 water geysers to keep up with the material balance at all in this brave new world. So, can you explain how do you adjust geyser counts? I noticed the 'feature_geyser_generic' part is missing from the jungle yaml of yours, and "geysers a/b/c" templates do not have any obvious quantifiers.

10 hours ago, The Plum Gate said:

I can't wait to get back on this ( but I have to ). I've got some good ideas regarding larger maps, but I want to make sure I understand the nature of Kei's use of the noise libraries (low priority), biome placement ( high priority ), as well as address some issues I was having with code duplicity (somewhat already addressed using shared biome definitions ) - but I took extensive notes while I was working, so it shouldn't be difficult to update.

I've skipped the first ranching upgrade too, so I'll wait for your release then. Thanks again for your great work!

[The Plum Gate]

On 5/7/2018 at 9:00 AM, Winternewt said:

So, can you explain how do you adjust geyser counts? I noticed the 'feature_geyser_generic' part is missing from the jungle yaml of yours, and "geysers a/b/c" templates do not have any obvious quantifiers

Eww, sounds like new material. Previously you would just duplicate their entry in the abc fields..  but now it sounds like they're moving geyser balance into rwg AI and out of yaml.

@Winternewt, I've updated the the mod, and thanks for pointing that line out, it's how the random geysers spawn, and I don't like it, it's not at all targetable. So it looks like it was hacked into the RWG code. Looking back it's a sort of revisit of how geysers spawned to begin with, except they're using the POI system.  There are geysers everywhere again..

[KrownKlown]

I'm loving this so much!  

[Winternewt]

@The Plum Gate , hey, how's it going? The new stellar update once again comes with a new worldgen, no more neutronium cap out of the box, but Space? SPAAACE! Space space wanna go to space, oh, boy I believe this mod is too underappreciated! Just saw a "Geode Biome" mod on Steam, it has 12k views! Do you play via Steam? A workshop page would probably give your mod the momenum it deserves

On 18.02.2018 at 3:48 AM, The Plum Gate said:

Yes, If you're looking at my mods, then to do that you would just invert or swap the _main and _atdistance biomes in the world definition file.

It seems I have mentioned that yet - this method indeed works perfectly for LM_221 but doing the same for LM now gives me no geysers at all somehow. I don't mind introducing these changes by hand, but may you consider adding "At distance LM221" to the roster? ^^ It adds a fine grain of difficuty plus vast uninterrupted space for pretty much any base layout.

[The Plum Gate]

10 hours ago, Winternewt said:

@The Plum Gate , hey, how's it going? The new stellar update once again comes with a new worldgen, no more neutronium cap out of the box, but Space? SPAAACE! Space space wanna go to space, oh, boy I believe this mod is too underappreciated! Just saw a "Geode Biome" mod on Steam, it has 12k views! Do you play via Steam? A workshop page would probably give your mod the momenum it deserves

It seems I have mentioned that yet - this method indeed works perfectly for LM_221 but doing the same for LM now gives me no geysers at all somehow. I don't mind introducing these changes by hand, but may you consider adding "At distance LM221" to the roster? ^^ It adds a fine grain of difficuty plus vast uninterrupted space for pretty much any base layout.

Time flies - I haven't actually played one of my own maps yet because of, honestly, a bit of burn out and I play at slow pace so, the ( let me stop myself there). In fact, I didn't even realize that there was an impending update because of work related things.

I'm not sure I understand the quoted reference - are you still trying to push standard POI's away from the starting biome? If so there might be some avoid radius parameters that might be more effective. I'll have to take a look at new RWG files - this is always interesting to pick back up; this time they've added a new biome all together - which means they may have changed the way RWG worked.

I VI'd the game files, and once again, only 2 came back as needing replacement. I will have to check the integrity of the mod against these new changes and diff the old files with the ones I have in my own archive.

Could you send my a link to that mod you mentioned, I can't seem to find it on Steam.

[Winternewt]

@The Plum Gate I understand this oh too well, I sometimes catch myself thinking "hey, they're updating too fast" these days .

On 16.06.2018 at 2:54 AM, The Plum Gate said:

I'm not sure I understand the quoted reference - are you still trying to push standard POI's away from the starting biome?

Well, yes, that is correct. The metod you proposed earlier with biomes swapping worked well for Liberari M. 221 (both original and ranch.mk2), if not too well - I once got a seed with all the geysers sitting in the corners of the map.

On 16.06.2018 at 2:54 AM, The Plum Gate said:

Could you send my a link to that mod you mentioned, I can't seem to find it on Steam

Here it is, drowning in translations: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1405857986