Dawn of Man – Creating Environments

Creating Environments

This is a guide on how to create environments for Dawn of Man.

Environments define the terrain, trees, resources and seasons in a game.

Creating an environment for your scenarios is optional, as you can use one of the builtin ones:

  • eurasia – Standard environment, used in the Continental Dawn freeplay scenario.
  • eurasia_north – Longer winters, few resources, only perennial trees, used in the The Northlands freeplay scenario.
  • eurasia_conflict – Like eurasia but with less resources, used in the Ancient Warriors freeplay scenario.
  • eurasia_warm – More resources, shorter winters. Used in Creative Mode.

There are other scenarios tailored to some of the challenges too, like: eurasia_flatlands and eurasia_glacial.

Basics

Environments must have xml extension, and must be located the Environments subfolder relative to the scenario definition file.

So if your scenario is called my_scenario.scn.xml and your environment is in Environments/my_environment.xml, you can then reference it from the scenario using like this:

  • <location id=”main” seed=”5492625″ environment=”my_environment” map_location=”0.35,0.35″/>

Sections

We will be using the builtin eurasia_flatlands scenario as an example.

Most sections in the environment file are optional, if not present the defaults will be used.

Terrain

  • <noise_amplitudes values=”0.0 0.03 0.2 0.154 0.097 0.045 0.025 0.005″/>

Terrain in Dawn of Man, like in most games, is generated by combining noise of different frequencies: Large mountains are low-frequency high amplitude, small bumps are high-frequency low amplitude.

This line allows you to modify the amplitudes of the different noise layers, the initial numbers define the amplitudes of the low-frequencies (the height of large mountains), and the later numbers define the amplitudes of the high_frequencies (the height of the small bumps).

Terrain Features

  • <trees values=”Oak Birch Beech Rye Einkorn Emmer Flax BitterVetch Chickpeas Lentils Peas Blackberry Blueberry Raspberry Strawberry Chestnut Pear Cherry Service”/>

What trees are present in the level.

  • <deposits values=”Flint”/>

What types of deposit are present in the level.

  • <distance_height_offset value=”0.02″/>

How much bigger are mountains at the edge of map.

  • <resource_factor value=”0.75″/>

The amount of resources in the map. 1.0 is the default.

  • <ford_distance_factor value=”1.5″/>

The average distance between river fords, 1.0 is the default.

Seasons

This section defines the length, precipitation and temperature of each season.

Misc

  • <sun_angle_factor value=”0.8″/>

How high is the sun in the sky, 1.0 is the default.

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