O.o
Amazing proof of concept. A slap in the face indeed, for wannabe scripters like myself, and for wannabe mapmakers (koczis would say "like sado" xD). This still looks better than countless CR "remakes"
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
(if this ever gets implemented in game, we need a "CR mode" for the generator)
How ambitious can this idea become in the future? I can already expect some people asking whether there's anything that could be done to improve the visual quality of such generated maps, but it doesn't look too bad for the start. Some loose ideas I'd have would be to:
-new constants for setting number of players, iron/goldmine spots, amount of coal per loc, etc.
-auto storehouse positions (I believe the locs should be generated starting from the storehouse point somehow), and constants to set stuff like, how far the basic resources will be, how much space per loc there should be, etc.
-style of locations layout: left vs right vertical (a'la The Final Frontier), L-shaped left vs right, etc...
-campiness of locs
...
Of course, this list is VERY optimistic about what can be done, and what you would be willing to do. Consider this more of a "if you're looking for directions on how to improve it in long term" than "I want this to replace human mapmakers". It's highly unlikely for now that I'll ever play a satisfying eco game on a randomly generated map, there'd have to be loads of work put into the generator before this can happen, so for now it's only a really interesting fun thing to play with.
If you're looking for a fun and not too hard thing to do... current code generates a potential good enough fighting map in my opinion. Adding some randomly placed random troops (same way like on Cross, random but same for everyone) and stuff for every player shouldn't be too hard, and it would be fun to show this around with something to do other than staring at the blank map.