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Unify map generator controls and tune playable defaults - #238

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codex/map-generator-defaults
Sep 10, 2026
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Unify map generator controls and tune playable defaults#238
genixpro merged 2 commits into
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codex/map-generator-defaults

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@genixpro genixpro commented Sep 10, 2026 •
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Random-map defaults now leave more grassy building room while retaining each generator's shape. The lobby, map editor, command-line stress tool and study tooling share one definition of generator names, available controls, ranges, steps and defaults.

Stacked on #237 (codex/custom-game-ux, 82943d9). The diff contains only the generator follow-up.

Changes

  • Tune all eight procedural presets. Against Redesign custom-game lobby with automatic maps, teams, and rules #237's lobby settings, immediately free tiles rise from 9.8% to 40.7% for River and 9.2% to 57.1% for Crater Lakes.
  • Add measured lake-size, channel-width, neutral-island, island-size and bridge-width controls. Both UIs use the same definitions, remember terrain settings per mode, and share dimensions/colony/worker settings. Grass 75 and island size 65 are selectable; bounds and five-unit steps agree everywhere.
  • Remove ineffective wheat/wood/stone/algae ratio widgets; retain working fruit controls. Restore legacy resource placement and fix the invalid team index during island base placement.
  • Rename the legacy modes to Shattered Coast and Rugged Archipelago, with matching labels in all 33 languages.
  • Export the compiled catalog to generate the control reference and chart labels. Add reproducible study seeding without changing normal UI random seeding.

Validation

  • Release game build, shared-control regression, and existing custom-setup headless/native SDL tests pass, including previews, controllers, saves and replays.
  • Every selectable editor value, lobby dropdown/stepper interactions, per-mode memory, and descriptor serialization checked. Add shared-control coverage to Linux CI.
  • 24,000 fixed-seed attempts: 1,000 per generator for tuned, previous lobby, and previous editor settings. 72 independently repeated seed/configuration pairs match. Inspect 24 final map previews plus native UI captures.
  • Strict translation audit, English-fallback regression, Python syntax and diff checks pass.

Both baseline cohorts include the same legacy correctness fixes. Placement failures remain: River has 18/1,000 (versus lobby 4 and editor 145), and Shattered Coast 14/1,000 (versus lobby 0 and editor 2), alongside substantially better building room and starting-resource access. Small crowded maps remain a limitation; this is not a full-match balance study.

Coverage comparison

Generated reports, study data and screenshot files are excluded from the branch tip and final source changes. Existing image embeds reference earlier review commits; future artifacts stay outside tracked source.

@genixpro genixpro mentioned this pull request Sep 10, 2026
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Base automatically changed from codex/custom-game-ux to master September 10, 2026 16:57
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genixpro force-pushed the codex/map-generator-defaults branch from 9e9f0f1 to b74f6df Compare September 10, 2026 21:36
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genixpro commented Sep 10, 2026

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Rebased onto current master (e3a01b051). This branch forked from codex/custom-game-ux at 82943d96e, but #237 merged with more commits added after that point (and was squash-merged, so 82943d96e never became a real ancestor of master). A plain git rebase tried to replay this branch's full pre-fork history against master and produced conflicts across every translation file; I instead used git rebase --onto master 82943d96e to replay only this branch's own 3 commits, which reduced it to genuine, small conflicts:

  • All data/texts.*.txt and data/texts.keys.txt conflicts were pure append/append (both sides added unrelated new keys at the end of the file) — resolved by keeping both additions.
  • src/SConscript was two unrelated new build-target blocks added at the same location — resolved by keeping both.
  • The trailing commit (9e9f0f19d, the Cortex-difficulty-label fix) dropped cleanly during the rebase — its change was already upstream via #237's later commits, confirmed by diff before pushing.

Verification on this head (b74f6dffb):

  • Full scons -j8 release=1 server=0 client build is clean.
  • scons -j8 release=1 server=0 map-generator-defaults-test map-generator-study builds clean.
  • MapGeneratorDefaultsTest . passes (shared presets, ranges/steps, editor values, lobby/editor mode memory, serialization and validation).
  • MapGeneratorStudy --catalog runs and emits the expected control catalog for all 9 generator methods.

Requesting review from @Giszmo and @kylelutze — this is still marked draft; let me know if it should come off draft. No merge performed.

genixpro added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 10, 2026
@genixpro @claude
Bridge CustomGamePreferences through the legacy generator descriptor
2a0895c 
#238 (already merged) added CustomGamePreferences.h, which serializes
CustomGameSetup::generator by taking Sint32 MapGenerationDescriptor::*
member pointers directly. #240 replaced generator's type with
GenerationRequest, whose method-specific options live in a generic
std::map<std::string,int> instead of fixed struct fields — an
architecture change, not a rename — so the file no longer compiled.

- CustomGamePreferences::encode()/decode() now convert through
  toLegacyDescriptor()/fromLegacyDescriptor() (the compatibility
  adapter #240 already built for exactly this kind of interop), so the
  on-disk wire format and its corruption-recovery bounds are unchanged.
  decode()'s method-validity check now asks the live GeneratorRegistry
  instead of a hardcoded 1-8 range, so it stays correct as generators
  are added or retired.
- Widened several fields() bounds (terrain weights 0-64 -> 0-100,
  riverDiameter's max 64 -> 65, oldIslandSize 1-64 -> 1-70) to match
  the modular registry's current ranges. These are approximate,
  same as before: the reused legacy fields (e.g. riverDiameter also
  stands in for lake size/channel width/bridge width) don't have one
  true bound, so this is a safe envelope, not a tight per-method one.
  Without this, decode() could reject a preferences file that a normal
  save legitimately produced (oldIslandSize's own default already
  exceeded the old 1-64 bound for any method other than Isles/Old
  Islands).
- Found and fixed a related crash bug in the compatibility adapter
  itself while tracing this: Lattice and Maze register wheat/wood/
  stone/algae controls with no entry in legacyField()'s mapping table,
  so converting either method through toLegacyDescriptor/
  fromLegacyDescriptor threw an uncaught std::invalid_argument. Added
  the four missing mappings (they match pre-existing legacy struct
  fields exactly) and changed every other option with no legacy slot
  (loopiness, home-radius, cell-size, ...) from throwing to falling
  back to its control's default value, so a newer generator's full
  option set can never crash this adapter again.
- test/CustomGameSetupHarness.cpp: preferencesModel()/preferencesScreen()
  built a GenerationRequest via the same member-pointer approach;
  updated both to build a temporary MapGenerationDescriptor and convert.
  Switched preferencesModel()'s method from Old Islands to Crater Lakes
  (one of the four modern height-map generators that still exposes a
  repeat-landscape control; Old Islands never did in the new registry,
  so it always round-tripped back to 0). The per-field assertions in
  preferencesScreen() now compare against the same achievable
  conversion rather than raw field maximums, since only the options a
  method actually registers survive a GenerationRequest round trip.

Verified: full scons -j8 release=1 server=0 client build is clean.
CustomGameSetupHarness passes in default, preferences-write and
preferences-read modes. MapGeneratorDefaultsTest and
MapGeneratorStudy --catalog also pass, unaffected by the adapter fix.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KFxsZmLM4qsovemHqDrHGP
@genixpro
genixpro marked this pull request as ready for review September 10, 2026 23:23
@genixpro
genixpro merged commit 8b8c934 into master Sep 10, 2026
3 checks passed
@genixpro
genixpro deleted the codex/map-generator-defaults branch September 10, 2026 23:23
genixpro added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 10, 2026
@genixpro @claude
Bridge CustomGamePreferences through the legacy generator descriptor
427a47e 
#238 (already merged) added CustomGamePreferences.h, which serializes
CustomGameSetup::generator by taking Sint32 MapGenerationDescriptor::*
member pointers directly. #240 replaced generator's type with
GenerationRequest, whose method-specific options live in a generic
std::map<std::string,int> instead of fixed struct fields — an
architecture change, not a rename — so the file no longer compiled.

- CustomGamePreferences::encode()/decode() now convert through
  toLegacyDescriptor()/fromLegacyDescriptor() (the compatibility
  adapter #240 already built for exactly this kind of interop), so the
  on-disk wire format and its corruption-recovery bounds are unchanged.
  decode()'s method-validity check now asks the live GeneratorRegistry
  instead of a hardcoded 1-8 range, so it stays correct as generators
  are added or retired.
- Widened several fields() bounds (terrain weights 0-64 -> 0-100,
  riverDiameter's max 64 -> 65, oldIslandSize 1-64 -> 1-70) to match
  the modular registry's current ranges. These are approximate,
  same as before: the reused legacy fields (e.g. riverDiameter also
  stands in for lake size/channel width/bridge width) don't have one
  true bound, so this is a safe envelope, not a tight per-method one.
  Without this, decode() could reject a preferences file that a normal
  save legitimately produced (oldIslandSize's own default already
  exceeded the old 1-64 bound for any method other than Isles/Old
  Islands).
- Found and fixed a related crash bug in the compatibility adapter
  itself while tracing this: Lattice and Maze register wheat/wood/
  stone/algae controls with no entry in legacyField()'s mapping table,
  so converting either method through toLegacyDescriptor/
  fromLegacyDescriptor threw an uncaught std::invalid_argument. Added
  the four missing mappings (they match pre-existing legacy struct
  fields exactly) and changed every other option with no legacy slot
  (loopiness, home-radius, cell-size, ...) from throwing to falling
  back to its control's default value, so a newer generator's full
  option set can never crash this adapter again.
- test/CustomGameSetupHarness.cpp: preferencesModel()/preferencesScreen()
  built a GenerationRequest via the same member-pointer approach;
  updated both to build a temporary MapGenerationDescriptor and convert.
  Switched preferencesModel()'s method from Old Islands to Crater Lakes
  (one of the four modern height-map generators that still exposes a
  repeat-landscape control; Old Islands never did in the new registry,
  so it always round-tripped back to 0). The per-field assertions in
  preferencesScreen() now compare against the same achievable
  conversion rather than raw field maximums, since only the options a
  method actually registers survive a GenerationRequest round trip.

Verified: full scons -j8 release=1 server=0 client build is clean.
CustomGameSetupHarness passes in default, preferences-write and
preferences-read modes. MapGeneratorDefaultsTest and
MapGeneratorStudy --catalog also pass, unaffected by the adapter fix.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KFxsZmLM4qsovemHqDrHGP
genixpro added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 10, 2026
@genixpro @claude
Fix MenuColonyHarness for the modularized generator API
db88fb0 
Rebased onto master now that #238 has merged. That surfaced a real compile
break: the harness still called Map::oldMakeIslandsMap/Game::oldMakeIslandsMap,
which the registry-driven generator rewrite removed.

Route it through MapGenerator::generateMap(Game&, const MapGenerationDescriptor&,
seed) instead, which owns map sizing and the game association internally. Seed
explicitly since generation determinism no longer follows the global sync-rand
state.

Also start from setMethodDefaults() rather than hand-picked constants: #238's
defaults tuning tightened several control ranges (island-size moved to 50-70,
the shared "workers" control caps at 8), so the harness's old literals
(oldIslandSize=35, nbWorkers=48) now fail request validation. Defaulting first
and overriding only what this decorative colony actually needs to differ keeps
it from rotting the same way again as ranges keep moving.

Verified: full client and menu-colony-harness build clean; `check`, `navigation`,
and `generate` subcommands all pass (generate grows the colony from 8 to 56
units over the same 12,000-tick warmup, confirming the reduced starting worker
count doesn't defeat the decorative intent).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Le23P4h9QuDjwExuK6HU96
@Giszmo Giszmo mentioned this pull request Sep 11, 2026
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