How much does the Random Seed Affect FT3+?
JulianDracos
Mapmaker
I am using FT3 for the first time. I am walking through the essentials guide. I started with the suggested settings and it shows a world with continents. The suggested settings are 50% water. Anyway, I make a couple of tweaks like decreasing the rainfall and increasing the greenhouse slightly. Then I do the new world as the essential guide suggests.
The result is essentially a water world. I could not find a single piece of land. I click new world five more times and the same thing. So I restore the values to what they were initially. I then get continents again. Well, I then do another new world and start a streak of water worlds again but then I get continents again.
So is this due to the random seed? Or is there something else going on? I mean 50% water with height going up to 30,000 should not result in worlds that are 100% water.
Comments
I have made over 1800 worlds, with over 1600 of them on my Traveller site, the random number can make a difference. Amount of sea also has an effect.
If you have the land small, that will result in many small islands.
Move the land size over to the left side.
The settings are:
Roughness: 0.75
Percent Sea: 50
Land Size: 2.44
So I am a bit confused as to why that would often lead to ocean worlds or occasionally many very small islands. Rarely did I get continents.
I'll try a few and post them.
world seed 445356215; rough 0.79; percent sea 50%; land size 2.48
So, I'm intrigued what seed you used ?
I tried about 10 different seeds, no other changes, all had large land masses.
same everything, but sea land size at 9.99.
Now, I'm just confused. @jslayton
Here is he first random number: 1502385372
After that, it usually adds one number to the end. Here is a sampling of like the first five versions I went through.
I don't get the first one. Looks like Joe will have to help with this one.
Have you done a repair ?
It is the first time I have used the software. Just trying to see if this was normal or not. I am thinking it is not. I assume a repair would just be to download the software and run install again?
Yes. I always right click and select install as administrator. It should give you the choice of repair or uninstal. If it doesn't do that, just go ahead and reinstall.
I hate autocorrect.
So the reinstall would not work. It could not find a network file. I uninstalled it and then reinstalled. That almost fixed it. I used the random seed number from the previous maps and it did the same thing. I then started a new map. It worked fine at first, but after 12 maps it started again. I tried another map with a different seed random and it is mostly like the first install.
What I have learned is that the land mass is essentially pixelated on these water worlds. By zooming in I see this tiny green specs everywhere. The height ranges from 40 ft to 4000. I am sure some may be higher.
There is also an issue that there are examples files listed I can look at when I load the program. However, when I click it says there is no file there. However, I navigate to the spot specified and they are there.
I am thinking there is something wrong with the program. Here is the zoomed in image of the planet so you can see what it is doing.
I did my tests using ft3+, so I have no idea.
Never seen anything like that. I tried replicate your result, but couldn't find a way to. Which Fractal Function are you using? Have you tried with a different one?
I am using Wilbur Ridge Multifractal. That is the one the Essentials recommended.
I just changed it to Ridged multifractal and it does it as well, although less frequent it seems.
I switched to RMF with improved noise. Out of 20 worlds, it has not done it yet.
I am using FT3+ 64 bit version 3.5.1
Yeah. I think I use rmf to. I've never had it do no land at 50%.
Out shopping.i can check when I get home.
My apologies for taking so long to get back to this.
On FT3, I am using rectangular projection and Wilbur Ridged Multifractal.
I didn't check on FT3+, until now. Rectangular projection, and RMF with Perlin's Improved Noise.
But I've always gotten land masses at 50% ocean. I have done about 20 to 30 worlds with ft3+ for my Traveller site. But they aren't uploaded yet.
I am pretty sure it is some bug. As the zoomed in images shows, it is making triangles in a block pattern on many of these maps. If someone official does not pop by tomorrow I will submit a bug report.
Would it be possible to get a copy of the problem file so that I can examine it more closely?
The problem file is 896 MB. In fact, every file I create is that size in FT3+. I think that is too big of an attachment for the forum.
Please try creating a smaller file (Map>>World Settings>>Editing::Small or some smaller value). The files also compress very well because they are mostly empty space.
Hmmm. That is odd. The files I get are much smaller than that. On my cell but I can check later on my computer if the info is needed.
I would think they would be much smaller either, but evidently the editing size determines the file size regardless of content. Here is one file that is zipped up in case someone is interested.
The biggest ones I have in my folder done with ft3+ are under 600 kilobytes.
I have one from ft3 that is 1.3 megs.
I just looked under editing and depending on the size selected (small, medium, or large) it sets the file size. The small world is 22MB as its file size. When I save the file, it lists it as 22 MB.
So I would love things to work like Jim's. I should not have nearly a GB file size for something like this. That will certainly eat up a lot of hard drive space.
You can set your editing to pretty much whatever size you would like. The most recent FT3 update increased the default sizes of small, medium, and large, but ended up increasing it to a larger size than it should have (it's currently defaulting to 8192 instead of 1024). If you use Map>>World Settings and select the Editing page, changes made to Editing Size should show the saved size. You can directly enter sizes under Custom if you would like. The original FT3 editing values are 256, 512, and 1024 for small, medium, and large.
What does editing size do?
Editing Size controls the editing resolution for FT worlds. The various editing images in an FT world (offset, roughness, and so on) are all images internally. The size of the images controls the size of the FT world. The smaller the editing size, the smaller world file size. Unless you're doing something extremely out of the ordinary, you shouldn't need an editing value much above 2048. Setting much larger editing sizes slows the program way down and greatly increases the amount of disk usage.
In FT3+ on my computer, editing size is set to Large. Under FT3, I had it set to Small.
I'll probably reduce it down to Medium on FT3+, but I haven't noticed it being slow.