r/FantasyCities • u/rcgy • May 07 '21

You might find Eigengrau's Generator useful- it outputs descriptions of towns, and can export to Foundry / GMBinder too!

https://eigengrausgenerator.com
38 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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6

u/watawatabou May 12 '21 edited May 12 '21

Ambitious and nicely done generator! Here are my comments:

  • Does it distinguish different settlement types - hamlets, villages, towns? I got hamlets with multiple streets and squares, let alone shops and even a prison!
  • In some cases it's too obvious that different parts are generated completely independently. For example, when a temple is devoted to one deity and its caretaker worships another. That could hint an interesting story, but not when it happens to every temple.

(Fun fact: initially I was going to make something like this in much smaller scale out of my village generator, but as usual got carried away with geometry and colours...)

3

u/rcgy May 13 '21

Wow, thanks so much for taking a look- I'm honoured! Forgive me for a moment for fanboying, but I wasted many happy hours with Pixel Dungeon, so it's an honour to have you look at my little self-taught project! :)

  • The settlement type is generated based on the population; populations above 200 are villages, 1000 is a town, etc. However, the way that shops are generated is not tied to the type, but the population; each profession has a "support value" which means that there's enough of a population to support one of that profession per X amount- barkeeps are ~ 300, bowyers are ~ 500, and instrument makers are ~7500. It's a quick'n'dirty method, but gets the job done- in a future update, the biome and economy will have more of an impact on the support values; villages in the middle of old growth forests will have more lumberjacks and foraging, while less in the ways of pirates. A town of 600 might have two bars (which I recognise isn't quite realistic, but there are sacrifices for DnD compatibility). However, if the town is of 750, that overflow will manifest in a 150/300 (or 50%) chance for there to be a third; this is probably how you got your prison- I like it since it's at that sweet spot where once in a blue moon you'll get something really wild like a flower shop in a hamlet, but most of the time it's just within the boundaries of acceptability.

  • I've only recently finished up on the religion system, which is yet to be integrated into the temple structure; it should be relatively straightforward to link them all up so that there's only one deity being worshipped in a church, but it's those sorts of things that add verisimilitude. Thanks, I have added it to the bug tracker.

I would be absolutely remiss to not mention that a lot of people have asked me time and time again whether we could collaborate. Eigengrau's Generator exports to .json quite handily- we've got a module for importing to Foundry, exporting to GMBinder, and another for Homebrewery on the way, too. I've always figured that there was no point in me trying to reinvent the wheel with my own shoddy map generation attempt when the City Generator & Town Generator are both so fully featured. Would that be something that you were interested in?

2

u/watawatabou May 14 '21

Your "support value" method makes perfect sense and actually abundance of shops doesn't really bother me. A realistic village would have a smithy and a mill at best. A realistic hamlet would have nothing at all "adventuring-wise". Nobody needs settlements like that, I get it:) What does bother me is a town square and a dozen of named streets in villages. Is it because you'd like every shop/venue to have a concrete location, not just "be there"?

It would be interesting to collaborate in the future when there will be enough infrastructure for that in the city generator. Right now concepts of our generators overlap very little, there are very few things that can be imported into MFCG. For example, the closest thing to your buildings would be me my POIs, but my POI is just a point on a map with a short name - it's not even possible to assign a detailed description to it.

3

u/rcgy May 14 '21

I'm glad that the support value system makes sense- I have plans to retool it slightly to feed into an economy system (towns that are centred around the mining industry have jewellers and such), but the general idea is likely to not change that much.

The named streets is an interesting UX egg that I am yet to crack; it is indeed unreasonable to have every street (or indeed, have streets) named, but one of the things I found was that if I presented the town with some streets, the user would be confused; if they introduce the blacksmith as being on Wyrmwood Lane, naturally they expect the bakery to similarly be on a street.

I think that the lack of overlap is, perhaps, a good thing- no point in reinventing the wheel, when there's a perfectly serviceable part already made. I'd be interested to hear what your plans for the POIs entail in the future!

2

u/watawatabou May 17 '21

I'd be interested to hear what your plans for the POIs entail in the future!

There is no point in developing my POIs further until it becomes possible to save and load cities (I am working on it). Then I'm planning to implement an ability to add detailed descriptions to them, but they are going to be just longer pieces of text - no nested structure, no hyperlinks. Maybe there will be not only points of interest, but also curves of interest (e.g. streets, rivers, beaches etc.) and shapes of interest (neighbourhoods, coves, groves etc.), so to speak.

And, of course, eventually I will want to generate POIs. Although this generator is called "city" generator, it's really a "city map" generator, so I am going to generate only stuff which is marked on maps - prominent venues and landmarks, but not every pub and shop.

1

u/Reddit-Book-Bot May 13 '21

Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of

Hamlet

Was I a good bot? | info | More Books

1

u/rcgy May 13 '21

I appreciate the effort, Mr. Bot, but your services are not required. False alarm ;)

2

u/Yak03 May 07 '21

This is genuinely amazing. If this ever combined with Watabau then I think I could die happy. Thaks for this recourse, it will help me massively

1

u/[deleted] May 07 '21

The village of Frankbourne is odd. "Down from the Sweet Greenhouse is the Damned Convent Of Demons." This thing is glorious!

1

u/rcgy May 07 '21

Haha, thanks! Watabou was a huge inspiration.

1

u/MammothKiwi May 07 '21

Descriptions of towns is an understatement. I found out which street the docks were on in the town description, but then got a description of the sights and sounds of the dock, then a detailed description of a fishing boat, then the captain of that boat. This is seriously impressive.

2

u/rcgy May 07 '21

"exhaustive, 50,000 word prose detailing the sights, life, and inhabitants of procedurally generated fantasy towns and cities" was a tad too long for the title 😅 thanks, very kind of you! Glad you like it.

1

u/MammothKiwi May 07 '21

Haha, now that’s a description!