Unvanquished Forum

Tom wrote:

I remember that in 2007 a ​​group of French students and their professor devised a random map generator for Tremulous, here are some links but most are in French:

• http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=4268.msg64102#msg64102 ;
  http://professeurs.esiea.fr/wassner/?2007/10/18/93-une ;
  http://professeurs.esiea.fr/wassner/?2007/05/12/70-derniere-video-du-projet-de-creation-de-map-pour-tremulous ;
  http://professeurs.esiea.fr/wassner/?2007/04/01/55-le-projet-de-creation-de-map-progresse ;
  http://professeurs.esiea.fr/wassner/?2007/02/13/42-renouveau-du-fps-first-person-shooter ;

• (en, fr) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiqX1YRxJ1A.

Hey @Tom, I know I come more than four years after your post, but I recovered the original subversion repository to make a git one , and I fixed some code to make it build on modern toolchains, so code TremGen code is now uploaded there: github.com/illwieckz/TremGen.

If I find time I will probably update the build process to use Urcheon to build the map, but I don't know yet if one day I will try to improve it. I just touched it because I was nostalgic of that era.

By the way we have a 0.51 release to publish so that TremGen stuff is really not on my priority list.

Hey @illwieckz,

No problem, I still wander 4 years after!

illwieckz wrote:

[…] I fixed some code to make it build on modern toolchains […] I just touched it because I was nostalgic of that era. […]

I for one am also nostalgic of this era – Tremulous golden age – glad you have dig up this old gem!

illwieckz wrote:

By the way we have a 0.51 release to publish so that TremGen stuff is really not on my priority list.

Wow nice! Can’t wait to put my hands on 0.51! I agree TremGen is not something of major importance yet a good memory of the past.

Keep up the good work, see you in game!

After some talks about TremGen on the chat (thanks Amelith!), I did some updates on TremGen (see the TremGen repository).

• I fixed the build again;
• I updated the readme with more links to old historical stuff like archived blog posts;
• I updated the readme with more explanations on how to do this or that;
• I made sure the dropped entities don't leak outside when removing the caulk envelope;
• I disabled the caulk envelope now that everything is properly sealed to avoid computing vis on outside parts of the map;
• I disabled the automated hinting that is likely not helping the compilation for now;
• I increased the default tree sinking value to limit the occurrences of trees flying in the air;
• I reworked some default materials, relying more on standard common materials;
• I worked-around some q3map2 model material bug;
• I re-enabled tree leave animation.

The tool may be used for generating random maps for various testing (like bot testing), but also as a basis for a generating terrains that may be reusable in other maps.

Known bugs:

• Terrain alpha blending doesn't work, it is believed to be a q3map2 bug (I myself had to modify the stock thunder and spacetracks maps “that worked before” and use the same alphagen mechanism to make them compile properly…);
• The water level seen in the ASCII representation is not the same in map.

Known limitations:

• The design of the map can't really allow good vis optimization;
• Vis q3map2 compute pass can be very slow.

Some example of seeds:

• 392021412: Reproduces both « stuck egg in geometry » and « telenode auto destruction on spawn » Unvanquished bugs, also feature a terrain shape that is bad for gameplay because of featuring a large central open area;
• 945780912: Produces working default alien and human bases, with a more interesting terrain shape that requires to walk around hills, if we move the default bases to not be that close together and not be seen from each other at map load.