Server creates clusters of planets

[odi]

Hi

I've been playing GalaxyNG on this server for about half a year now and I tried to set up my own game. The problem I encountered is that the galaxy that the server creates from the template file contains clusters of planets (several planets are very close together and even overlap in the Turnviewer I use which makes it hard to select them).
I use the Windows server that I downloaded from the sifar homepage (I tried creating galaxies under Windows and Linux ... no difference)

The image I attached shows a galaxy created with the values of the tiny5 game (the ones from the help message).
I tried recreating the galaxy about 15-20 times but the clusters are always there.

Since I've never seen this problem in any of the games running on the wombat server I figured this is the right place to go and ask what I'm doing wrong

Any help would be appreciated!!
(Please don't tell me that I have to edit each galaxy I create by hand )

odi

[Ian]

Gi-day Odi

The Map looks correct for the values used in Tiny5. The Tiny games have their locations manually located by the GamesMasterNG program that I wrote to control the windows version of GalaxyNG.

What look are you wanting to generate for you galaxy?

The Tiny parameters created purely by galaxyng mean the following.

• The galaxy is a minimum of 50LY across.
• Player primary planets will be at least 20 LY apart.
• Empty Planets will be within 5LY of the primary planet.
• 5 Stuff planets per player will be randomly placed anywhere in the galaxy.

The Tiny games generated on the Wombat server alter the configuration as follows.

• Player positions are placed on a circle exactly 20LY apart.
• Player planets are placed in a 2LY orbit about the initial player positions.
• A planets is placed half way between the primary planets.
• A planet is places in the centre of the circle.
• No planet can be placed within 1LY(I think) of any other planet.

If you would like to use the GamesMasterNG program, it can be downloaded from sourceforge. The installation package includes a copy of the galaxyNG program from the Sifar website.

I hope that this helps.

Ian

[odi]

Hi Ian!

Thanks for your help.
I played around with the map creation of GamesMasterNG and the distribution of the planets on the map is MUCH better.
The problem with the maps the GalaxyNg server creates is that there are large spaces without planets and then there are these 3 or 4 planets really close. This may not be a big problem but it just looks so wrong .

But I also ran into some problems with the GamesMasterNG:
You wrote that there is no documentation and I have some trouble understanding what some of the options do.
Design Types are pretty clear except for 'GalaxyNG random'? No idea what that does.
How does the Seed Type and the Seed sizes influence the map?
Something seems to be wrong with the OnCircle Design type. Screenshot shows the problem (again tiny5 values). Are the seed values wrong??
GamesMasterNG crashes when changing the second core size field in the template editor (Run-time error '9' Subscript out of range). Not really a big problem, since I can edit set the sizes when adding players.

What look are you wanting to generate for you galaxy?

The Tiny5 values are just a test case since I knew they should create a nice galaxy.
I tried several different types of galaxies up to now. But I don't seem to be able to create a nice one. I am basically looking for a layout with lots of big empty planets and only very little to no stuff planets so the players can expand fast and build massive fleets with lots of battles (since the big planets are right next to each other). But I can't seem to get it right. One problem is that the planets created have very little ressources (in a test game I created most of them had 0.3 - 0.6). Then I ran into the problem with the distribution of the planets (those clusters get really bad when you add lots of empty planets ... but thats obviously due to poor code in the actual server).

Since your games always seem nicely balanced: Is there some general advice you can give me for setting the values for size, race spacing number of planets, ... (something like 'The GalaxyNG GameMaster Guru's guide to creating galaxies ' ) or is it just trial and error?

And one other thing: Did you ever create a team game? According to the server manual (of the original server) this should be possible, but the server always crashes when trying to create the game.

[Ian]

Odi

I have spent some time this morning adding a quick reference for the GamesMasterNG GalaxyNG template design window. It is in the GamesMasterNG forum. I have included only the basic information about what the options make happen in the design.

For the kind of galaxy that you are looking for it could be best to start with the "Salvation" games template. They have no stuff_planets and the empty_radius is greater than race_spacing with lots of empty_planets.

Ian

[Ian]

Oops.

I forgot to add that I have not tried the team games option yet.

I had thought about creating a game that was 6 onto 1 (not a team game as such); 6 players in a circle and a defending player in the middle. The middle player would get more and larger planets than the six individuals. A variation on the Tiny game with a middle player.

I have also been thinking about a one-on-one knock-out type game with each player only having a few planets and the races being only 10LY apart. No other planets in the galaxy. They should potentially be very quick games.

Ideas and layouts can take many different forms which is why I would gladly accept ideas from players as to the design for a game.

[odi]

Thanks for the documentation and the advice!

To bad the team games aren't working. Playing in a team would allow so many new tactics!!

[Glorfindel]

As far as I remember, there should be a Tiger option in the standard Linux NG server. Those games are 20 vs 20 team games used for Tiger ex-USSR vs RoW games. I do not know if that option is still on the Windows server. Take extra care when creating Tiger games, as there are a few odd features in them, like size 4000 fully developed planets placed at a X junction between 4 races, a size 5000 developed planet at the center of the galaxy, and a chessboard race placement pattern.

BTW I apologize for my poor performance in Duplicity2 and Isolation2 (I try to never forfeit a game) but I had problems with my cable line (3 months downtime), so had to abandon those games.

Glorfindel - Kzin

[odi]

As far as I remember, there should be a Tiger option in the standard Linux NG server. Those games are 20 vs 20 team games used for Tiger ex-USSR vs RoW games. I do not know if that option is still on the Windows server. Take extra care when creating Tiger games, as there are a few odd features in them, like size 4000 fully developed planets placed at a X junction between 4 races, a size 5000 developed planet at the center of the galaxy, and a chessboard race placement pattern.

The code and the option are still there. It is just not working for me. Every time I try to actually create the game from the template the server crashes (segfault ... looks like it happens when the additional planets get added to the avl tree).
I don't know whether the team games don't work anymore in the new server or if they require any special values to be able to create the game (the server also tends to segfault if some parameter is wrong/incomplete).
What I did was activate the TeamGame option and set the row and column variables to fit the number of players.