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>So, I went over the map and wrote down the elevation value of every tile. All 8,192 of them. Surely there was a more automated solution than to do something 8

>So, I went over the map and wrote down the elevation value of every tile. All 8,192 of them. Surely there was a more automated solution than to do something 8k times manually?

yojo 1y ago
I thought the same. There are a ton of nerds (I count myself among them) who loved this game in its day and would happily take a crack at programmatically extracting these data points.
- bernds74 1y ago
  Perhaps this is a good place to mention that someone is working on remaking the SMAC engine, the project is called "glsmac" on github. Unit graphics seem to be one of the major sticking points since the game used some kind of ancient forgotten voxel format.
  - yojo 1y ago
    Looks like they've figured out the tile format. Haven't grokked the whole codebase, but this seems to be the code for parsing out the data: https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac/blob/55fc72047607425149164022ccfb328a21e7541b/src/game/backend/map/tile/Tile.cpp#L117 https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac/blob/55fc72047607425149164... So yeah, someone technical with the map file and half an hour could probably have gotten him the full elevation specs.
Aurornis 1y ago
I have no doubt that many people reading this comment section could extract the map data and write a script to translate it to a .CSV very quickly. But there’s something to be said for a mindless, long-term repetitive project that you can chip away at when you feel like occupying yourself with something unimportant for a bit.
- Wojtkie 1y ago
  That's what Old School Runescape is for
- eternauta3k 1y ago
  This made me briefly ponder the meaning of lives spent copying manuscripts or doing other repetitive tasks.
- jonathanlydall 1y ago
  I get this satisfaction from mining big spaces in Minecraft, mindless but satisfying. Unfortunately this specific activity in Minecraft very easily turns into an enormous time sink which unless I was really too tired to do anything else and sleeping wasn’t an option, I inevitably regret afterwards.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    That's kind of how video games started to feel after ~30. You can't unsee the Skinner boxes, once you notice them. But they are generally targeted at ~18 biological age, so I'd expect suspension of disbelief in value can only stretch so many years.

>So, I went over the map and wrote down the elevation value of every tile. All 8,192 of them. Surely there was a more automated solution than to do something 8k times manually?

yojo 1y ago

I thought the same. There are a ton of nerds (I count myself among them) who loved this game in its day and would happily take a crack at programmatically extracting these data points.

bernds74 1y ago
Perhaps this is a good place to mention that someone is working on remaking the SMAC engine, the project is called "glsmac" on github. Unit graphics seem to be one of the major sticking points since the game used some kind of ancient forgotten voxel format.
- yojo 1y ago
  Looks like they've figured out the tile format. Haven't grokked the whole codebase, but this seems to be the code for parsing out the data: https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac/blob/55fc72047607425149164022ccfb328a21e7541b/src/game/backend/map/tile/Tile.cpp#L117 https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac/blob/55fc72047607425149164... So yeah, someone technical with the map file and half an hour could probably have gotten him the full elevation specs.

Aurornis 1y ago

I have no doubt that many people reading this comment section could extract the map data and write a script to translate it to a .CSV very quickly. But there’s something to be said for a mindless, long-term repetitive project that you can chip away at when you feel like occupying yourself with something unimportant for a bit.

Wojtkie 1y ago
That's what Old School Runescape is for
eternauta3k 1y ago
This made me briefly ponder the meaning of lives spent copying manuscripts or doing other repetitive tasks.
jonathanlydall 1y ago
I get this satisfaction from mining big spaces in Minecraft, mindless but satisfying. Unfortunately this specific activity in Minecraft very easily turns into an enormous time sink which unless I was really too tired to do anything else and sleeping wasn’t an option, I inevitably regret afterwards.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  That's kind of how video games started to feel after ~30. You can't unsee the Skinner boxes, once you notice them. But they are generally targeted at ~18 biological age, so I'd expect suspension of disbelief in value can only stretch so many years.