Posts from Spiral maps. Auto-translated

Here are a couple more new maps.

A continuation of the same.

Developer's workspace.

Here is a rather large map for 7 players. The map size is "Small". The distance between cities is small, about 40 cells.

Let's continue having fun. The map features 9 towns.
The archive also includes a "rough map draft"; feel free to create whatever you want.

One of the game modes is playing with computer-controlled allies. First, I played as the red faction, and the computer controlled the 8th player. They were defeated. Then, I played with two allies – the 7th and 8th players. The 7th player was defeated early in the game. After some time, the second ally was also defeated. Then, I played with three allies: the 6th, 7th, and 8th players. At the beginning, it was quite difficult to overcome the border guard. I had slow, level 1 units, while the guards had advanced Magogs (60 of them). I had to wait for 3 months until I had 300 units. In the fight against the Magogs, I lost 50 units. Then, I attacked the blue faction. I survived two battles, but I had only 100 units left. I retreated and waited for another month. By that time, the allies had captured everything, including the blue faction's city. Two squads of blue units attacked my city, I defeated them, and the game ended. In short, the allies don't let you play.

When drawing spiral maps, I adhere to the following rules: 1) You need to choose a map template. (Although, you can generate a random one.) I take maps from "Heroes III: The Restoration of Erathia," sort them by file size. The first one turned out to be "Always Ready." So, I draw on that one. 2) Unfortunately, the map has too many strong monsters. Therefore, I have to remove almost all of them; otherwise, it will be impossible to pass! To prevent the map from being without monsters, I simply reduced the rank of all monsters by 2. 3) Then, you need to remove all players. I will place my own. 4) Choose the starting radius of the map. 1, 2, 3... If the map is called "3 Good to go 2," it means that the map "Good to go" ("Always Ready") was used as a basis, the starting radius is 3, and it resulted in 2 towns (i.e., one player). 5) By sequentially increasing the radius, we increase the size of the playable part of the map. We get a bunch of maps. "Real" or "training" ones. 6) Choose the number of branches. 1, 2, 3, 4... One branch means that the entire map is traversed in one pass. 2 means that we first go to the center and then back. Three means that we go to the center of the map, then back, and then again to the center along the branches of the spiral. And so on. (Think of spiral galaxies.) 7) Choose the map scheme. Using a single-spiral map as an example: After one turn of the spiral, the spiral becomes closer to the center. The scheme chooses how much. The general rule is that the spiral should be dense enough (to cover as much area as possible and have the greatest length for the same area), and at the same time, the turns of the spiral should not overlap each other (on the previous branches) so that the spiral turns out to be at least approximately beautiful. Examples of schemes: 1-1-0, 0-1-2, 0-1-1-1, 0-1-1-1-1, and so on.

I rewrote the program for calculating arcs of various radii (which are needed for drawing these arcs on the "Heroes III" map).
I adapted the DOS version for Windows.

/*   p1
      Visual C++ 6.0
      Console application
      Radius   */

#include 
#include 

main ()
{
   int a, b, c, d;
   FILE *g;

   /*   a - radius for which the calculation is performed
          b - maximum value for which the square root is calculated
          c - counter
          d - calculated value of the circle boundary   */

   g = fopen ("1.txt", "w");
   for (a = 1; a < 61; a++)   /*   outer radius 1/8 of the circumference   */
   {
      b = (int) (a / sqrt (2) + 2);   /*   upper limit of calculations   */
      fprintf (g, "r = %i\n", a);
      for (c = 0; c < b; c++)
      {
         if (c == a) break;
         d = (int) (sqrt (a * a - c * c - .0001) + 1);
         if (d < c) break;
         if (d == a) continue;
         fprintf (g, "%i - %i\n", c, d);
      }

      fprintf (g, "\n");
   }

   fclose (g);
   return 0;
}

Same thing again.
Using the previous program, I drew templates for Heroes III maps.
These templates still need to be checked for errors, and then I need to make sure that artifacts don't block the path (otherwise, with a certain combination, the map may become impassable). I need to set the towns and initial conditions.

A continuation of the same.

"Eador. Genesis". Perfect for a long, thoughtful single-player experience. I like it more than the third and fifth installments, but it requires more thinking and has a higher barrier to entry.

I recommend "Eador" again.

PS: "Developer's Workbench" evoked nostalgic feelings for the year 2000, with a P-II 450/96Mb RAM/6Gb HDD/ and Win98SE (later Win2000 SP4).

Map for 9 cities. Before the red city, I placed a neutral city so that the blue player wouldn't attack immediately, giving time for peaceful development. The archive contains the map and a template for it.

Map archive.
Includes map templates (i.e., not just a finished map, but also a "skeleton" ready for layout).
A total of 7 maps.
From 2 to 8 players.
The archive contains screenshots.

https://yadi.sk/d/RoaXqULP7xa58g

Another map. Double spiral.

A continuation of the same. A double spiral covering three cities.