World Generator Full Customization by Enchanteur
The World Generator Full Customization mod by Enchanteur gives you much more control over the world generation parameters of Endless Legend. It offers both a wider range of more granular options, and expanded limits for each option compared to the unmodded game. This allows you to create some fantastic worlds, or gain fine control over thespecifics of the map you want to play on as you familiarize yourself with the different settings.
Admittedly, the full range of options is a bit daunting at first glance, and can potentially lead to some undesirable results as the game attempts to generate worlds beyond the normal constraints, which can even lead to minor problems with the camera and UI. For those of us who want to experience new worlds but do not feel confident meddling in the specifics, Enchanteur has provided the “All-in-One” worlds, packages of presets that offer a variety of different maps and play experiences in a single click, from heavily ocean focused maps to forbidding mountain ranges.
You can see some of the examples below:
From left to right (Click for larger size):
Diamond Valley: You will always have a huge fertile valley in the centre, surrounded by rocky plateaus.
Olympus: You will always have a huge mountain, and if you reach the top, there will be the only ridges in the world.
Cathedral: You will always have huge cliffs and high plateau in the central part of the map.
Canyon: You will always have canyons, winding paths surrounded by slopes.
At this point, I want to offer a shoutout to Enchateur's other recent project, the massive Combo Techs mod. This mod contains about 90 new technologies that give you access to many new districts and dozens of new city improvements that allow you to shape your economy in new ways by exploiting one resource to enhance another, technologies that improve different unit types, as well as a new selection of units (based on the minor faction models) to round out your arsenal. This opens up many new options and opportunities, but much like the World Generator Full Customization, it can be daunting until you become familiar with it.
Interview with Enchanteur
Procedural Generation seems like a slightly unusual subject for modding. How did you first get interested in this?
About ten years ago, I programmed a random dungeon generator in VB, for a rogue-like game outline. The process of random generation of a world includes many rules, but the randomization factor depends on a unique number. If you re-use this number, the generated world will be the same! It fascinated me that with a single variable, a whole world is possible to generate. The variable (the seed number) could be coded with a name. I could generate a world for everyone's name. There's something divine in there. It did not surprise me so much that EL's world generator also uses this principle, since it is a constraint in computing, related to the generation of random numbers. And it's easier to test, to always have the same basic parameter, if you want.
What inspired you to create the World Generator Full Customization?
In 2014, an Internet user called Mindthirst had modded the very first version of WGFC.
I quickly became a very enthusiastic user of this mod. The very first Modding operation I did on EL, was to copy a localization folder, to be able to use its mod. Before that, I had already modded on the game BattleForWesnoth, with their dedicated WML language. At that time, EL mods could not be added independently, so it was necessary to merge the mods first. So I worked on the XML code, to achieve this. That was the end of my objective.
The WGFC was a limited version, but when I looked at its code, I saw a little bit how he did, and I was learning a lot. I started tweaking it a little bit to use things that were missing and that I wanted to manage better in the game, like lakes and rivers. Mindthirst had neither the time nor the energy to work on WGFC, and in the meantime, I had come up with an additional third version. And on his side, he was using my version, which was already doing what he dreamed of doing. So he passed me over the project, and of course I continued to innovate on it.
In reality (the player doesn't know it), the Vanilla options of the world generator are grouped options (several parameters are modified at the same time), and the Min-Max values are very limited.
- The basic principle of WGFC is to break down all the parameters of a basic option to have absolute control over it.
- The second principle is to give access to a new scale of values, whose Min and Max are significantly higher than the original options.
- The third principle is to totally unblock any limit (no constraint!), at the risk of the mod user blowing everything up!
- The fourth principle is the use of world builder parameters that have never been put in the game options! There is therefore new content in relation to the variables used.
Could you tell us a little more about the All-In-One Worlds?
I had no more new parameters to add to WGFC, I had explored everything and tried to use everything in the game files. So I thought that this mod had reached its final version, and that I would no longer work on it.
In 2016, I made a discovery that will lead me to work on this mod again, for an even longer time than all the work I had already done. I look a little better at how the options and listbox system works, and after a few tests, I find that I can control a listbox in the main screen, whose value can change the values of the advanced parameters!
There, I go over in my head all the emblematic worlds I had already generated with WGFC, I find the handwritten notes where I had written some mixes of variables. And I start editing worlds whose advanced options are already configured, worlds ready to go!
I felt that there was a real need on that side, because users sometimes have a lot of difficulty using WGFC. If I can offer them already configured worlds, they just have to play with them, without worrying about learning to use the mod.
I then spent hundreds of hours adjusting the parameters of each of the 20 worlds proposed, so that each of the worlds retains its coherence, its internal structure from one game to the other, even if it is a different random world. My search for perfection for these worlds concerns both gameplay and immersion.
These are worlds that make you want to play by zooming in a little on the map, and these are worlds that are less easily explored than those in the Vanilla game. This creates a very strong immersion, especially since the worlds are very distinctive, with a great depth of field (the graphic sensation of the relief has been reinforced thanks to one of the hidden parameters of the game). Due to their chaotic structure, their unexpected regions, their unevenness, it is impossible to play the same way on each of this world, as you would on any Vanilla world.
Finally, I must congratulate and thank the programmers of the game Endless Legend, about their world generator. It's splendid in every way. From the algorithmic generation process, to the final graphic rendering! They have even developed a system, where the generator will find a way to make sure there is always a path so that every square in the game is accessible! I tried to take advantage of their work, and to enhance it, much more than what the Vanilla game does.
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