Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

[Iovan]

First, in the new patch form I'm currently working on, the interface changes will be optional.

1) Year: 2300 - this was impossible to implement at the time. I spent several hours on that alone. Now it's simple, it'll be corrected.

2) and 2a) Black window and purple font was my personal choice, I find the screen colours are blending in the original, too much brown and beige. But I understand people are accustomed to it. Des couleur et des gouts, il ne faut pas disputer. So I will revert any purely esthetic changes.

3) The game will autosave every 40 (or 50?) years for replay value.

I personally like the asthetic changes and would be sad to see them go completely. Can't you fulfill everyone's desires whether they be resonable or unreasonable?


Something that I was wondering about. Can you make it so that if someone chooses to put production into upgrading missile bases that once they are upgraded it takes the production back out? It's irritated me to come across a planet I've neglected for a few turns and find out it has hundreds of extra bases on it that I didn't want to build (usually happens to me when I am campaigning against an AI). When you build a shield on a planet the production put into defense is taken out soon as the shield is done (you are also informed) however when upgrading missile bases that isn't true.

[Doomk]

seems this thread is kind of locked/hidden

and kyrub is missing...

[Catwalk]

kyrub is on break from game stuff, super busy with family and work. He's not gone, though.

[Zeraan]

I read the whole thread, and I didn't see anything about how the galaxy for the game is created. Have you located the algorithm for that? I was wondering how it always ensure that stars are put within reasonable distance from each other.

[Raiddinn]

If I were going to write the code for that functionality (and I may really attempt it in the future) I would randomly generate the starting locations of the players and the AI.

Then I would randomly generate another planet for each one of those originals and ensure that it is between 2 and 4 parsecs from the main, so that each starting colony has at least one expansion within 4 of it.

As an aside, I probably wouldn't screw with people like the MOO designers did, I would probably say between 2 and 3 instead of 2 and 4, because it is just stupid to have to research to get your first expansion.

After that, I would generate planets randomly one at a time, and after every single one ensure that it is no closer than 2 and from any already generated planet and no farther than 6 from at least one already generated planet.

Doing that with as many planets correspond to each map, it would be ultra rare for a scenario where one empire was more than, say, 5 from connecting to the 3rd planet, rare that it would be more than 4, and the vast majority of the time there would be a 3rd planet within 3 of at least one of the first two.

Raid

[RefSteel]

If I were going to write the code for that functionality (and I may really attempt it in the future) I would...

Hmmm. It might be necessary to either take a more holistic approach or use a slightly different set of rules. The rules you described, for instance, could (though probably rarely) create two (or more!) different "galaxies" on the same map that are nowhere less than 7 (again, or more!) parsecs apart, each containing at least one homeworld. (Which would actually be pretty cool, except that you could even have a homeworld and second star isolated from everything else in the galaxy!)

You could fix this for instance by starting with one star in a random location and building the galaxy out from there, then adding (or switching existing stars to) the homeworlds last. It should also be noted that Orion does sometimes place stars within 1 parsec of one another, though this is very rare.

[Iovan]

The easiest way to set it up would be to establish a parsec grid and generate a star randomly (or not at all) on each point of the grid. Start by assigning player systems within the grid. Then start from the top of the grid and generate stars on each row sequentially. Weight the generation of stars based on how nearby they are to the player systems. This would be the easiest way to handle it in a precise and efficient manner. In my opinion.



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[Raiddinn]

Hmmm. It might be necessary to either take a more holistic approach or use a slightly different set of rules. The rules you described, for instance, could (though probably rarely) create two (or more!) different "galaxies" on the same map that are nowhere less than 7 (again, or more!) parsecs apart, each containing at least one homeworld. (Which would actually be pretty cool, except that you could even have a homeworld and second star isolated from everything else in the galaxy!)

You could fix this for instance by starting with one star in a random location and building the galaxy out from there, then adding (or switching existing stars to) the homeworlds last. It should also be noted that Orion does sometimes place stars within 1 parsec of one another, though this is very rare.

If we were talking about 15 stars on a huge map, sure, there would be a large possibility that there would be stars that were nowhere close to any other stars, but there are generally enough stars on each map type that the randomness would all sort itself out.

I would hazard a guess that the rules that I laid out would result in playable maps at least as often if not more often than Orion 1 currently does.

In any event, its entirely possible to do a final check and if the map isn't "playable" then generate a new one.

That would add maybe 5 or 10 seconds to the setup time if it were triggered, at the most.

Raid

[RefSteel]

I read the whole thread, and I didn't see anything about how the galaxy for the game is created. Have you located the algorithm for that? I was wondering how it always ensure that stars are put within reasonable distance from each other.

I just noticed that in all our theorizing about this, none of us actually answered the original question. I would guess that kyrub has in fact located the algorithm(s) the game uses for star placement, but will of course let him speak for himself when he has time.

In the meantime, I'm speculating on how it's probably done ... and testing my theory right now. If anything comes of the experiment, I'll let you know.

[kyrub]

No, I have never studied the map creation in MoO (unlike in MoM, where the process contains several bugs). It is situated in another exe file, so no hints either.

I guess I leave the initiative to RefSteel for now (good luck!), maybe later I will try to use his findings to locate the process. The analytic potential of RBO users is immense, thumbs up.