Gemisys MapGenerator comments request

[rip]

I was looking at the plug-ins page and saw that the Gemisys random map generator had a lowish rating.

I infer from this that there are people who don't like it.

This is your chance to tell me why you don't like it, what you would like to see to make it better, and what would you like to see 'fixed' if you think something is broken...

Only respond to this post with why you think it is broken....

and thanks!

rip

[Preacherman]

I think it might be more to do with the way the rating system works rip - there is no way of seeing what you rated a map, or even that you have rated it, never mind changing it...you also need to rate it before you download it...I dunno, all seems pretty wierd to me. What I am trying to say in my convoluted way, is that I think I may have rated it 1 without even knowing it. I cannot remove the plugin again, which is the only way I can see if reinstalling it and giving it a new rating...but the generator is very, very cool otherwise - swift piece of coding

[dustin]

It is supposed to display the rating you have given to a plugin when it is selected in the Plugin Manager. Does it not?

[Preacherman]

Nope! Not that I can see at least...looking again now. Am on 10.2.8

[mbauer]

Hey rip, I gather that you're looking for constructive criticism. So here is my .02 cents:

I gave Gemisys a lower rating than normal because the lines that go underneathe the entire board are a little confusing. At first I thought it was just part of the theme or something. Dues to the fact that no other maps share this feature. When the bots suddenly emerged behind my lines I thought the map was broken. It wasn't till studying it further that I gathered that the middles of each contient are connected to their neighbors. Maybe if you clear this up in the description, so people do not assume that it is broken.

Also, it is a very challenging map, which is a good thing, but what makes it very difficult is the extremely low continent values. On the 800X600 version you can have a continent with 15 countries and 6 borders (including the middle) but only be worth 3 extra points. I should talk because my maps suffer from the same affliction, and I typically like lower values but these seem abnormally low. It seems the lux community commonly prefers higher continent values.

Finally, (I'm not sure if this is a problem) the screenshot in the plugin manager is deceptive. It makes it look as if there are "island continents" when it is more of a large mass. "Island continents" as shown in the screenshot, would probably better and easier to understand, as well as easier to see the borders of continets.

Just some thoughts take them or leave them. In the end it doesn't matter what we think, if you like it, then it's perfect.
mbauer

[rip]

I gave Gemisys a lower rating than normal because the lines that go underneathe the entire board are a little confusing. At first I thought it was just part of the theme or something. Dues to the fact that no other maps share this feature. When the bots suddenly emerged behind my lines I thought the map was broken. It wasn't till studying it further that I gathered that the middles of each contient are connected to their neighbors. Maybe if you clear this up in the description, so people do not assume that it is broken.

I can see what you are saying. How is this for a replacement:

"This map generator starts by defining a certain number of polygons, which are defined as the center 'countries' of continents. Each side of the polygon is then extruded to be an additional country (so a four sided central polygon is the center of a five country continent). The central countries are linked via 'wormholes' to neighboring continents, so remember to guard the center!. Finally, when two 'petals' from different continents are close enough, an adjoining country is created between the two. The adjoining country is randomly assigned to one or the other of the two continents. Here are <a href="http://risk.ferkel.co.uk/gemisysss.html">screen shots</a> of random boards.

Each map is different, and different size boards can seriously impact play. Additionally, as the underlying 'engine' is written in perl, you have the ability to adjust things like continent polygon count, number of distinct polygons, bonus awards per continent, etc. to suit your style of play..."

Also, it is a very challenging map, which is a good thing, but what makes it very difficult is the extremely low continent values. On the 800X600 version you can have a continent with 15 countries and 6 borders (including the middle) but only be worth 3 extra points.

Actually, a 15 country continent gets you the 3 for the bonus, plus at least 2 (up to 5) more for the fact that it is 15 countries. It does make it difficult to get (and hold) the first continent, but once you've got it, the rest become that much easier. The problem with making the bonuses higher is that getting a continent first is tantamount to winning the game. Especially on boards approaching triple-digit countries. To make it as long as one of Preacherman's Hex boards, give the continents negative bonuses.

Finally, (I'm not sure if this is a problem) the screenshot in the plugin manager is deceptive.

Ok, I'll see if I can get a better image... in fact, I think I'll add a link to full size screenshots (added to blurb above).

Thanks for your comments!

rip

[rip]

When I was doing the screen shots, I stumbled across a bug in the script. I've not tracked it down yet, but what is happening is that one continent is being given a bonus way out of proportion to all the others. This is magnified if you increase the bonuses across the board by fiddling with the configuration of the script.

For example, if you shoot for bonuses in the range of 5 to 10, you get N-1 continents between 5 and 10, and the Nth has a bonus between 15 and 20. if you look at the first 'tweaked' bonuses screen shot, you see bonus values of 12, 12, 16, 16, 16, and 36! It's worse if you fiddle in order to get negative continent values, for example -5, -5, -5, -5, -7, -7 and +18.

Ouch

So I guess I'll fix that

rip

[mbauer]

Yes rip that description and those screnshots are much better.

Each map is different, and different size boards can seriously impact play. Additionally, as the underlying 'engine' is written in perl, you have the ability to adjust things like continent polygon count, number of distinct polygons, bonus awards per continent, etc. to suit your style of play..."

I didn't know this about the generator. You should play up this fact and tell people in lay man's terms how to accomplish custom settings to your generator. That is really cool.

mbauer

[rip]

Well since this thread is here ...

Once you've installed The Gemisys plug-in, you will find a subfolder to your Lux support folder called MapGenerators (it might even be there beforehand). The support folder in MacOS-Land is /Users/[yourUserName]/Library/Application\ Support/Lux/. In other *nix variants and in Windows it will be where-ever you installed Lux.

In the MapGenerator directory, there is a file called gemisys.pl. Open that in whatever text editor you use for coding and find this line:

Code: Select all

my(@Choices) = (qw(450x360 600x400 680x480 700x500 800x600 900x700));

These are the size tuples that end up in the Lux Map drop-down. Add/modify/remove tuples such that they remain ACROSSxDOWN in format. The smallest you can expect to work is about 300x300 but that is pretty boring. Now that Lux adds scroll bars, you could make a 9000x9000 map. If it breaks, oh well

The next interesting section is the galactic defaults:

Code: Select all

# galactic defaults
my($swid, $shei) = (800, 600);
my($whjCnt) = 100;
my($cmin, $cmax) = (4, 10);
my($pipes) = 12;
my($threads) = int($pipes/2);
my($neighborhood) = 1000;
my($RI) = (16); # internal radius (ie, centerpoint radius) smaller=larger
my($RO) = (38); # external radius (ie, center + petals) larger=larger
my($ROFF) = (60); # Offset radius (exclusion zone) larger=larger
my($bonusmult) = .66;   # (float) change this to adjust continent bonus values
my($bonusForCpToo) = 0; # 0|1 bonus for centerpoint links, too
my($bonusbase) = 3;     # (int) unbalanced if both bonuses for CP and a base

The interesting ones are

whjCnt: This determines the maximum number of continents. Setting this to 1 for example would result in a single continent. The default setting (100) does not mean that you will get 100 continents. It will try a number of times to get that many, but after a certain number of times it will give up and just return the best that it could attain.

cmin/cmax: Polygons of N sides, such that cmin < N <= cmax. cmin absolute minimum is 3. I've had cmax as high as 14 but there is no reason that something higher than that won't work.

neighborhood: This is the distance between petals that will cause them to link up if there is nothing between them. The lower this value, the less likely that petals of an arbitrary distance will link. Setting it to something silly like 1 should result in continents that do not link except across the wormholes (ie, center to center).

RI, RO, ROFF: These are the inside, outside radii and offset between centerpoints. Adjusting RI changes the size of the central country, changing RO adjusts the size of the petal countries, and ROFF forces continents to be closer or further away. Be careful that you don't end up with continents that overlap.

bonusmult: each time a continent petal links across to another continent, both continents' bonuses increase by this amount. The default is .66, which means that at least two petals need to link before the bonus increases by one (ie, 1.32 rounded down) This is the primary cause of having continent values too low.

bonusForCpToo: 0 or 1. If 1, then the continent bonusmult is applied to any centerpoint-link also, instead of just the petal linkages. This causes the central continent on the big maps (which generally links to three or four other continents' centerpoints as well as having as many as eight petal links) to have a bonus twice as high as the other continents.

bonusBase: This is the base bonus for all continents. Setting this to a negative number generally results in continental bonuses in the negative range.

As I said earlier, there is a bug someplace that puts one continent's bonus seriously out of whack. When I track it down, I'll give it to Dustin and he can reissue the plug-in.

rip