This is a quick update to talk about the major change to the Ultima Ratio Regum worldmap! Originally, it was a mere million squares – 1000 x 1000, and I somehow expected that to hold an entire world. This was, I will admit, a tad naive. The world has now increased rather in size. It is currently 40,000 x 40,000, but this can be increased by just fiddling with a particular variable (and might easily go up to 50k or 60k a side, depending on the eventual density of populations, cities, etc). This makes the world map over 1.5 billion squares in size, and much more fitting for an entire world!
The world generation is still being perfected, but here's a teaser screenshot of what the world map looks like currently:
The central colour is within the 'temperate' biome; above that desert, and below that taiga, then tundra, then arctic (not shown in this pic). There are also tropical biomes, and swamps, and all kinds of other funky stuff. Suddenly, the world is big enough to actually hold a world...
You can read more on my devblog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. The devblog is updated weekly on Mondays, and the Twitter/FB roughly daily. Plus, those who follow will get updates first, and may gain access to the alpha (or particular facets of the alpha) before the general public. Stay tuned!
will this be similar to Dwarf Fortress's world generation?
Not too similar; DF uses rainfall, and elevation, an good/evil axes to determine some of the land. I'm going entirely for physical geography, and much more based on geology than anything else. Plus, since there's no construction in URR, there's less need to allow for a dynamic world once it's actually first generated :). There will be weather effects in the future, though, so I'll have to see how that changes map requirements...
Hey URU!
Followed you here from TIGSource. I'm amazed at the size of your world, how much memory does it use? We're making games in the same genre and I'm struggling to make my game 1000x1000, but I'm working with graphics, layers and iOS memory limitations (<64MB). You must be caching local regions. Does it take long to generate your world? I wish I could see the map, but being in China means that a lot of pages and images don't load for me :P
Anyways, good luck, the world needs more tactical roguelikes. We can talk shop at TIGForums some time.
Thanks for the support! Currently playing a game uses up around 300mb of RAM at any given time, though this may go up or down a little before the first release. The memory it takes up for storing your game depends only on how many areas you've so far visited, but it goes above 64mb pretty quickly, so I see your issue. Worldgen currently takes about 20 seconds on my high-end laptop; it shouldn't be much beyond double that by the time I'm done, but you'll be able to do stuff while it's generating the world in the background.
Can you see the map copy I've posted here? I'll probably upload a copy of the full world map here once it's done, so you should be able to see it here if so. I've been keeping an eye on Mysterious Castle myself - it looks like you're really doing the most possible with the 1000x1000 limitation :)