'Wet' versions of maps.

[Neddie]

There is a simple solution that will satisfy everybody, but I was working so I couldn't mention it earlier.

Upon creation of a work an individual, barring earlier contract constraints, obtains immediate and complete rights to that work. An explicit licensing, however, clarifies and records rights to better protect a creator or articulate her intentions. So, in a position without a stated license, a map built from images generated by the author is hers to do with as she wills.

That is the default position of all unlicensed maps circulating in the community. We assume a distribution permission upon circulation and public upload, but we cannot assume more.

We simply establish a licensing standard coupled with a tag to allow or refuse heightmap, waterlevel and texturemap alteration. Unspecified and licenses which prevent modification default to the assumption of Rights Reserved, the tag is either not present or null. When licensed in a manner which permits modification the tag is set to 1 and a game-side gadget can interact with the map in editting heights and water level.

This allows mappers to protect their works and also permits game-side manipulation of aesthetic elements when mappers have given their blessing. In addition it clarifies the legality of our maps for distribution with installs and packages.

This does mean, barring re-release, that all maps generated to this point default to an unmodifiable state. We could, however, allow checking of a master list file, some sort of registry, if mappers wished to release their maps to ingame modification without repackaging the archives.

[Neddie]

Practical examples, of course.

Take my map, Imperfection. It's a re-release of Imperfect with some slight, poorly received modifications to make it suitable for competitive one on one play. It was released pre-license implementation, it defaults to a no-modify (In reference to height, texture, water) and you're stuck playing it with some awkward design decisions on my part and visual jags.

Now, imagine my unreleased map, Det's Dike. It's unreleased because I wasn't satisfied with it, it was part of a project set where I tried to make maps based on people in the community, don't ask. It has the tag, and I've released my rights to it under Public Domain as mentioned in an included text file. You can do whatever you bloody well want, with my blessing. Don't like the shallow waters? Hell, you can change that!

[ralphie]

As a mapper, i'd like to chime in my valuable opinion...

who the hell cares if someone alters your water level

[Otherside]

i would not be offended. Infact it would be cool if someone thought your map was worthy of a wet version

Only if sumone else took credit for the map itself or change some values to turn it into a speed water map would i be annoyed

[Forboding Angel]

I'm honestly not sure where I stand on this issue.

Here are the facts.

If you take an existing map and simply make it "Wet", that map will look crappy no two ways you slice it.

It isn't much to ask us if we mappers would be willing to make wet versions of our maps on our behalves. If we say no then that is that. If we say yes then you get a much better looking wet map that has textures to match and so on.

What you are doing here effectively turns maps into man made swamps (If you don't understand what I'm talking about, visit one sometime).

In many ways I have advantages here, because even though I release my climates freely, I don't give away all my secrets (just experience really) and so as a general rule, besides the line in the smd saying I made it, if someone were to steal one of my maps and release it as his own (anyone remember the guy that used canyons as his first heightmap? I caught that and it didn't even look like canyons anymore), I and many other people would immediately know it (remember kids, we can look at compiled heightmaps, and some of us spend a really long time working on them... Some of us also stencil our names into the heightmaps using colors you can't see and don't show up in game. Correct color + color range selection == win ).

Now all that crap said, just changing the water levels of the map is a very bad solution when you could simply ask. It isn't that hard, and everyone ends up being happy with the result.

I reserve the right to pass judgement when I have had adequate time to think about all the angles of it. Trying to address this directly off the cuff isn't going to work for me.

[Hoi]

i agree, but this still has uses, as i said earlier 1'th step to random map generator

[Forboding Angel]

hardly hoi

For random map generation you would need a heightmap generator
a texture splatter

changing heights and water levels is trivial

[Hoi]

a small step then

[Neddie]

As a mapper, i'd like to chime in my valuable opinion...

who the hell cares if someone alters your water level

Well, it completely changes any well-designed map. It's an ugly hackjob, and it overrides what the mapper intended. You understand this...

It'd be pretty bland as a dry map - the height map is basically flat expect for the middle and side hills. Also that sand texture is extremely ugly without water over it... I guess I could re-render it as grass and see how it turns out

- viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11785

That's an objection to a hack dry job, now isn't it? It's your objection.

If you're going to dry or flood a map, then you have the map maker do it, or approve it. It's simple.

[trepan]

I've got much larger steps towards procedural maps
lying around in my local sources. The big problem is in
deciding the base format, and implementing it. LuaArrays
and all of its associated functions were fairly easy to code
(noise, smooth, gaussian, sinusoids, masks, raw access,
etc...)

[Neddie]

I've got much larger steps towards procedural maps
lying around in my local sources. The big problem is in
deciding the base format, and implementing it. LuaArrays
and all of its associated functions were fairly easy to code
(noise, smooth, gaussian, sinusoids, masks, raw access,
etc...)

I think it is a great idea. Procedurally generated maps can never replace the care and precision of an artist, but they would raise the bar for released maps and provide us with a variety of play fields when necessary.

[ralphie]

That's an objection to a hack dry job, now isn't it? It's your objection.

Sure it is. It doesn't mean i'd care if someone went ahead and did it though, just stating why it wouldn't be a good idea

Although having said that, I would be annoyed it if was simply named as a next iteration, like the hack tabula 1.3 or whatever it is.

[hunterw]

if you're going to make a wet version of a map don't call it tabula-v3 call it tabula-wet

thas my only suggestion

[SirArtturi]

if you're going to make a wet version of a map don't call it tabula-v3 call it tabula-wet

thas my only suggestion

lol ? there is already tabula-v3 and its wet ?

[hunterw]

if you're going to make a wet version of a map don't call it tabula-v3 call it tabula-wet

thas my only suggestion

lol ? there is already tabula-v3 and its wet ?

yuea thats my hint towards that person

the hint is: what they did was dumb

[trepan]

neddie:

"Procedurally generated maps can never replace..."

But the map format can definitely replace the current
format in a backwards compatible fashion if you allow
for loading data from textures

[BaNa]

if you're going to make a wet version of a map don't call it tabula-v3 call it tabula-wet

thas my only suggestion

yes that pissed me off. some people who didnt know better started only hosting that because "why host v2 when v3 is out" and anyway, it makes for failgames.

[Sabutai]

New Map - Diana Beach V2 - Pics and thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=15728

Dl at:
http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=1279

Its a water map. Best suited for NOTA.


And Tabula dry is waaaaay better than the wet one.

[Argh]

Um... basically, my belief about this is that map manipulation by game designers is going to happen, but nobody should really worry about it. Since I'm sort've on the "cutting edge" of this, and I have done more experiments with this than anybody that I know of... my basic feeling is that there's nothing worth getting worked up over.

Map manipulation can be very powerful and useful, but it's almost certainly going to get channeled in positive directions, simply because people will like it better, imo.

Stuff like lame "wet" remakes by kids who just used SMFED to lower the water level, etc., will always fail to gain players- they look incredibly ugly and unprofessional, and there's no appeal to them. My guess is that for every such "remake", the number of people who seriously play it is very small.

Any monkey can now write code that turns any map into a maze, for example. Nobody's going to bother, though, because that maze will look really horrible, compared to doing the maze properly as a map, using the processes you're all familiar with.

I think that's the reality here, folks. There's no real chance that radical map-manipulation will become a standard part of anybody's game-design toolkit, because nobody will play it. And you needn't worry about players messing up your designs at all, since this is strictly Gadget-side code we're talking about here.

The only real exceptions to this is in terms of maps that are very Feature-heavy, that mappers will want to re-evaluate, once better tools are available to them, and maps with very poorly-designed metal distribution, where if Lua could access the metalmap, they could be fixed with code, which would be great with maps that are well-designed physically, but have terrible layouts.

One of the cool things World Builder can do is to blow away all of the Features on a map (including Geos), leaving the map a clean slate, and allowing mappers to re-do their maps with World Builder, without having to re-compile them. However, that's more an issue of a feature of World Builder code being able to give people the power to do a nice remake than a real threat to mappers. I suspect very strongly that after World Builder's released, Feature-heavy maps will get relegated to the dustbin anyhow, if they don't get reworked- the performance increases are simply too large to ignore, imo.

And once again, I really can't see game designers bothering- what's the point of blowing away the Features on a map like BlackLake Swamp? There's nothing left, if you do... so it's incredibly pointless.

In short... relax. About the only thing game designers are going to want to do is to mess with the light settings, and implement day / night cycles, I suspect. The other things aren't really worth doing in the first place.

[Neddie]

neddie:

"Procedurally generated maps can never replace..."

But the map format can definitely replace the current
format in a backwards compatible fashion if you allow
for loading data from textures

Agreed in full.