Post by ES in Village Generator comments

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A lot of really nice changes here! Appreciate all your work on this update (and in general).

On this point here - "The default map size is now medium (formerly known as small)" - does that mean that maps are smaller in general? Large is now the old medium and so on?

Unless I'm missing some options, it does appear to be that way. Selecting "Large" and "Dense" tags makes a pretty small village compared to what it used to make.

EXAMPLE: This "large village" is really a lone farmhouse with 1 building and a population of 5. https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=1541230033&tags=large

Is there any way to get back the ability to make larger villages?

timoteosg3 years ago(+3)

Agree, I would like to have the bigger sized villages back

watabou3 years ago

No, maps are not smaller in general. In the previous version(s) there were 3 size available: default, small and tiny. The default map size was the largest one - default. In the current version exactly the same 3 sizes are available, but they are called differently (and more clearly): large, medium and small. Apart from the names, the default size has been changed: it is now medium (former small) instead of large (former default). So the generator does produce smaller maps, but only if it's not told otherwise. Why? Because I think that medium-sized maps a) look better and b) are more useful on average.

While large size of map (and high density) usually means a larger size of a village, a town-like scale is not guaranteed. Cases like your example happened before, it is not something introduced in the latest update. Maps like this one are more common: https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=906625696&tags=large.

ES3 years ago(+1)

OK so New Medium and Old Small are the same size. Got it. The oddball very small village is fine and easily dealt with, I just had not experienced a single building village before myself.

There still does seem to be, on average, a tendency towards smaller population villages, even with "Large" selected. I went through a couple hundred generations just for testing and I couldn't get 1 village population over approx. the low 2,000s. I used to be able to get a population of 4,000 - 5,000 without any problem at all, usually within a couple dozen generations. If it is still possible to generate villages of this size population then it seems to be much more difficult to achieve.

watabou3 years ago

I don't know, there might be reasons for that not related to all those cosmetic (as I said) changes with names and default size. The "area" for a village is created slightly differently now to enable non-square maps in future updates, and in theory this could affect "density" maps. I'll check it later. But to be honest, 4000 is a bit too much for a village anyway...

ES3 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

there might be reasons for that not related to all those cosmetic (as I said) changes

I wasn't implying that they were related to the cosmetic changes. I was just acknowledging that the issue existed regardless of the cause.

I'll check it later.

Much appreciated!

4000 is a bit too much for a village

I personally agree with you and I use those larger "villages" for towns. VG looks great for this size settlement and I prefer the style over a comparable-size settlement created by MFCG, which I use for my cities.

Using the different styles of 1VG for villages/towns and MFCG for cities helps make them feel separate and helps the cities feel very large. (Just explaining my process and why I use it this way.)

ES2 years ago(+1)

Just wondering if you had a chance to look into this or maybe stumbled across the cause?

I was trying again to generate large, dense villages and getting results like 32 population. I am unable to get the larger village populations and number of buildings I was in previous builds.

Would really like to see this come back if possible. I know you mentioned villages not having, for example, 3-4000 population, but there's no reason to limit it for those that want to use your generator for towns and villages. MFCG doesn't do towns well in my opinion and they looked great in VG.

Also whether you agree with that or not, you do have to admit populations under 100 is not a "large", "dense" village. :) Appreciate your consideration on this.

watabou2 years ago

OK, I finally had time to look into it and I tend to agree that villages requested as "large" + "dense" end up being quite small too often. Such cases don't look like bugs, more like undesirable results caused by unfortunate combination of randomly chosen parameters. In the next update this will be fixed this way or another.

ES2 years ago(+1)

Thanks for looking into it Watabou. I'm glad you were able to confirm the undesirable behavior.

I'm not sure how the changes you make may affect things, so this may be a moot point, but since you're working on that section anyway, if it's possible to add maybe an "XL" tag as a way to generate very large "town-sized" villages (similar to previous results), that would be greatly appreciated.

Either way, looking forward to the next update and thank you for all your work!

ES2 years ago(+1)

Just coming back to this generator after being away a while. I like the way you solved this issue. The new generation options produce larger villages very well. Just wanted to say thanks!

itch.io

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