Hello! I'm new to Multiplayer. I've read some forum posts, player reports, etc., and I have a question: people often complain about the random map generator. But why do they put up with it?
It seems to me that writing a program that generates random maps based on predefined templates is not a task that would take weeks, but it's not very difficult either. A simple Google search gave me a file describing the h3m format (it doesn't contain everything, but it's enough to figure out the rest through experiments in a day or two). We write a program that generates h3m files. And that's it – no more restarts due to a strong starting position. No more misplaced guards. No more situations where one player gets 5 bee hives and 3 strongholds, while the other gets nothing. You could even make it so that the template allows you to specify the number of key buildings (e.g., a Dungeon) for a territory.
Or you could make it so that identical important objects are guarded by identical guards (and not that one has a Cyclops, and the other has Hydras). And so on. I was even inspired to sit down and write such a generator.
But then I thought – there are very knowledgeable people here. Some have practically disassembled the entire Heroes code (I wouldn't take on such a task). But for some reason, no one has done it. Perhaps there are reasons for this that I, in my newbie state, don't see. Perhaps such a generator is simply not needed by anyone, or there are some serious limitations that would prevent its creation. Basically, the question is this: has anyone thought about this?