comprendo, almeno sapere che il tutto può solo che migliorare rende una perdita accettabile, in caso ora con questa consapevolezza ci si adatta nell'eventualità che ricapiti. Grazie
A lot of really nice changes here! Appreciate all your work on this update (and in general).
On this point here - "The default map size is now medium (formerly known as small)" - does that mean that maps are smaller in general? Large is now the old medium and so on?
Unless I'm missing some options, it does appear to be that way. Selecting "Large" and "Dense" tags makes a pretty small village compared to what it used to make.
No, maps are not smaller in general. In the previous version(s) there were 3 size available: default, small and tiny. The default map size was the largest one - default. In the current version exactly the same 3 sizes are available, but they are called differently (and more clearly): large, medium and small. Apart from the names, the default size has been changed: it is now medium (former small) instead of large (former default). So the generator does produce smaller maps, but only if it's not told otherwise. Why? Because I think that medium-sized maps a) look better and b) are more useful on average.
While large size of map (and high density) usually means a larger size of a village, a town-like scale is not guaranteed. Cases like your example happened before, it is not something introduced in the latest update. Maps like this one are more common: https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=906625696&tags=large.
OK so New Medium and Old Small are the same size. Got it. The oddball very small village is fine and easily dealt with, I just had not experienced a single building village before myself.
There still does seem to be, on average, a tendency towards smaller population villages, even with "Large" selected. I went through a couple hundred generations just for testing and I couldn't get 1 village population over approx. the low 2,000s. I used to be able to get a population of 4,000 - 5,000 without any problem at all, usually within a couple dozen generations. If it is still possible to generate villages of this size population then it seems to be much more difficult to achieve.
I don't know, there might be reasons for that not related to all those cosmetic (as I said) changes with names and default size. The "area" for a village is created slightly differently now to enable non-square maps in future updates, and in theory this could affect "density" maps. I'll check it later. But to be honest, 4000 is a bit too much for a village anyway...
there might be reasons for that not related to all those cosmetic (as I said) changes
I wasn't implying that they were related to the cosmetic changes. I was just acknowledging that the issue existed regardless of the cause.
I'll check it later.
Much appreciated!
4000 is a bit too much for a village
I personally agree with you and I use those larger "villages" for towns. VG looks great for this size settlement and I prefer the style over a comparable-size settlement created by MFCG, which I use for my cities.
Using the different styles of 1VG for villages/towns and MFCG for cities helps make them feel separate and helps the cities feel very large. (Just explaining my process and why I use it this way.)
Just wondering if you had a chance to look into this or maybe stumbled across the cause?
I was trying again to generate large, dense villages and getting results like 32 population. I am unable to get the larger village populations and number of buildings I was in previous builds.
Would really like to see this come back if possible. I know you mentioned villages not having, for example, 3-4000 population, but there's no reason to limit it for those that want to use your generator for towns and villages. MFCG doesn't do towns well in my opinion and they looked great in VG.
Also whether you agree with that or not, you do have to admit populations under 100 is not a "large", "dense" village. :) Appreciate your consideration on this.
OK, I finally had time to look into it and I tend to agree that villages requested as "large" + "dense" end up being quite small too often. Such cases don't look like bugs, more like undesirable results caused by unfortunate combination of randomly chosen parameters. In the next update this will be fixed this way or another.
sarebbe utile avere la possibilità di avere un cimitero, almeno da rendere più veritiero il sessueguirsi del tempo in un dato luogo, così da ricordare che il tempo passa per tutti.
Hey, this is amazing work. Two ideas for useful additions if you'd like to hear them: the ability to 1. change the number of large buildings in the town, 2. add landmarks like your medieval city generator. This is because I'd like to use these maps for dungeons and dragons and label locations of interest like taverns, blacksmiths, seamstresses, etc
Why would you like to be able to change the number of large buildings? Do you think there are too many of them, too few, or you just need a specific number?
Village landmarks are on my list. I still have to figure out how to implement them in a better way than in MFCG. Btw, some points of interest are already generated procedurally, but are not displayed a on map. You can see a list of them in the browser console.
Hey bud, checking in again. Tried your twitter but messages not allowed, so if you have a chance please hit me up on twitter, @ETHVillages_NFT. Hope to talk soon! Have a great day!
Hey bud! Absolutely amazing generator! Hands down my favorite! I actually used your generator to make some real money and I would very much like to share some of the wealth with you! I would also like to know if you are open to creating new projects together! Would love to partner up with you! Have a great day & hope to hear from you soon
Molto molto bello come generatore, mi storce un po il naso il fatto che quando ricarico un link di una delle mappe che ho preso, gli alberi non sono uguali alla prima volta in cui ho scelto la mappa del villaggio stesso, dove magari la prima volta prima di prendere il link è pieno di alberi, il link mi da pochissimi alberi e non posso cambiare molto per riportarlo allo stato che volevo. Comunque apparte ciò molto bello.
Great and useful piece of software for worldbuilders. Thank you for making those available.
As a side-note: is it possible to use "round caps" for the walls of the buildings in the SVG exports (for both Village and Neighbourhood Generators) ? I'd be happy to propose a merge request if sources are accessible.
Been making a few with dm for our sessions, is there any plans to add warp options to this or how many roads like in city generator? would love to see some housing control like spacing and sizes, and terrain variable control like swamps, hills mountains, keep up the great work, love the systems
The village generator works very differently from the city generator and it would be very hard to implement a warp tool here. I'll probably allow to edit the underlying population density map (currently it's generated automatically) which essentially defines the shape of a village. Regarding the number of roads, there will be an option to choose one of road configuration: highway, dead end, cross roads, maybe something else.
Yeah, it happens from time to time and it will be fixed eventually. To be honest, I don't think it's a big deal: in this case someone just got lucky to have a pond on their field. Sometimes the generator builds piers in such ponds and that really is silly :)
Yeah, adding squares/markets/village greens is on my list. Meanwhile you can try generating square neighbourhoods in the Neighbourhood Generator. It's not the same but sort of close.
Question. How is the population calculated here? I generated a few villages and got (in my opinion) weird results. Assuming that all houses are family homes (no stores, no storage facilities, workshops), there have to be quite big households.
A few examples with medium density (first three for small maps, last two for default) are in the table below. The last one seems fine, the rest...
I am not sure if I am overlooking something obvious or if the automated calculation is a bit off.
I can't speak for the developer, but this is how I've viewed it: historically a dwelling would have two parents, several children (up to 8 or 10 depending on various factors, 4 is a good average assumption), and 2 to 4 grandparents. There might also be a couple aunts and uncles. So that's around 8 to 10 people per household, using my educated guess assumptions. How many other buildings there would be beyond houses would depend on various factors, but a general rule of thumb is the larger the village the more buildings will be not-houses. You'd want grain storage, animal housing, and the like for any village. As it gets larger you'd start to see taverns, inns, shops, government buildings, brothels, et cetera. There's going to be some kind of calculus relating the average population to the average number of shops, of taverns, of restaurants, et cetera, but that's beyond my level of education on the subject.
If you're designing a village for a tabletop game or something like that, it's easy enough to re-jigger the numbers to your liking (5 people on average per household, say) and pick a number of buildings based on that average. That's what I do.
The values in your table seem right. The formula for population is very simple:
population = number_of_buildings * random_number_around( 5 )
Why?
The average number of persons per household was much higher in a medieval rural settlement than in a modern city. The household usually consisted of an extended family (as @SophieNicole mentioned): the main couple, their children (not 1-2, but rather 3-4), some of their unmarried brothers and sisters, the husband's parents etc.
I use a much smaller multiplier (5) than a reasonable average number of persons per household to take into account the fact not all buildings are farmhouses. Another reason is to make that value not so odd for a modern eye.
I use random numbers instead of a fixed value to disguise the simplicity of the formula (otherwise the population of a hamlet of two houses would always be 10 for example) and also to "emulate" cultural differences.
Hi, is there anywhere that I can email you about how this was made? I am doing something similar as a project and a lot of the papers that I have seen are pretty confusing to understand.
AWESOME generators all. I would love to have a way to match the color palette / style across all of them. Perhaps even a way to link from one to another seamlessly (eg Village Gen -> City Viewer.
Something like that may be implemented one day, but actually all this is relatively easy to extract from exported SVG - most of the map features are grouped there, so there is a group with trees, a group with lights etc.
Would it be possible to add a `tiny` population density option? I really love those maps where it's mostly wilderness with just one or two houses, but it takes a while to find them by regenerating over and over.
The easiest way to generate a tiny village is to choose "Low" population density and "Tiny" map size. There probably won't be much wilderness (because the map will be tiny), but you'll get the right number of houses.
Hi! I love your generators and as someone who is working on my own game in C++ I was wondering if you ever considered giving access to your code in some way shape or form, I know I can just look into the generated javascript code for some of your projects but I think it would be valuable to maybe more people than just me to use this in an actual project, maybe through some Patreon tier, or selling it here on itch.
Thanks! I can consider it, but why? To me it seems that streets in this generator aren't interesting enough to have any value without buildings, are they?
I'd definitely like the option myself, sometimes I like to have a blank template of roads and to be able to place houses as I want so its just another nifty feature to have.
This would be too much specifics for my taste, but I do plan to add special larger buildings without specifying what they are and I'll try to find a convenient way to customise their number, shape, placing…
You have to fuss a bit with the value slider under style settings to get black and white maps, but there's so much convenience packed into this program, it's versatile, and it's free.
To those of you supporting the patreon, thank you.
You can use images created by the generator as you like: copy, modify, include in your commercial rpg adventures etc. Attribution is appreciated, but not required…
What do you mean by "your own"? If you are asking about building a village of a specific shape, than no, it's not possible here. This application is only capable of generating random villages.
May i ask what are the Avaible Fonts for the texts? Im was trying using the google fonts but none of them work, so if there is a specific List of which fonts are used, i would gladly ask for it please
You can use any font installed on your computer. For example, if it's Windows then Calibri, Impact and Georgia (among others) are most likely available to you. To use a specific font from Google Fonts you need to download and install it first.
Do you happen to live in the southern hemisphere? I can't help noticing that all the houses cast their shadows southeast, indicating the Sun is northwest. :)
The newest update (1.2.7) seems to constantly generate lopsided fields, often covering fields with trees while leaving a big empty space field & tree free. (e.g. https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=313542736) is that deliberate?
The only thing that has changed about trees is that the last chosen value of None/Some/Many is remembered now. The way of distributing them across the map hasn't been changed.
If you need fewer trees, make sure that "Some" is chosen and then "Reroll" trees until you have the right amount of them.
Lopsided fields are mostly fields which the generator tries to place in rings around the centre of a village. So yes, this is deliberate, although as I said in the post, I'm not sure this is such a great idea. If there will be enough negative feedback about them, they will be removed.
The only thing that has changed about trees is that the last chosen value of None/Some/Many is remembered now. The way of distributing them across the map hasn't been changed.
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I vecchi link ora sono inutili, i villaggi che avevo prerato sono stati completamente stravolti. peccato
I'm sorry, but this is the costs one has to pay for using a project in active development. There is no (easy) way around.
comprendo, almeno sapere che il tutto può solo che migliorare rende una perdita accettabile, in caso ora con questa consapevolezza ci si adatta nell'eventualità che ricapiti. Grazie
A lot of really nice changes here! Appreciate all your work on this update (and in general).
On this point here - "The default map size is now medium (formerly known as small)" - does that mean that maps are smaller in general? Large is now the old medium and so on?
Unless I'm missing some options, it does appear to be that way. Selecting "Large" and "Dense" tags makes a pretty small village compared to what it used to make.
EXAMPLE: This "large village" is really a lone farmhouse with 1 building and a population of 5. https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=1541230033&tags=large
Is there any way to get back the ability to make larger villages?
Agree, I would like to have the bigger sized villages back
No, maps are not smaller in general. In the previous version(s) there were 3 size available: default, small and tiny. The default map size was the largest one - default. In the current version exactly the same 3 sizes are available, but they are called differently (and more clearly): large, medium and small. Apart from the names, the default size has been changed: it is now medium (former small) instead of large (former default). So the generator does produce smaller maps, but only if it's not told otherwise. Why? Because I think that medium-sized maps a) look better and b) are more useful on average.
While large size of map (and high density) usually means a larger size of a village, a town-like scale is not guaranteed. Cases like your example happened before, it is not something introduced in the latest update. Maps like this one are more common: https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=906625696&tags=large.
OK so New Medium and Old Small are the same size. Got it. The oddball very small village is fine and easily dealt with, I just had not experienced a single building village before myself.
There still does seem to be, on average, a tendency towards smaller population villages, even with "Large" selected. I went through a couple hundred generations just for testing and I couldn't get 1 village population over approx. the low 2,000s. I used to be able to get a population of 4,000 - 5,000 without any problem at all, usually within a couple dozen generations. If it is still possible to generate villages of this size population then it seems to be much more difficult to achieve.
I don't know, there might be reasons for that not related to all those cosmetic (as I said) changes with names and default size. The "area" for a village is created slightly differently now to enable non-square maps in future updates, and in theory this could affect "density" maps. I'll check it later. But to be honest, 4000 is a bit too much for a village anyway...
I wasn't implying that they were related to the cosmetic changes. I was just acknowledging that the issue existed regardless of the cause.
Much appreciated!
I personally agree with you and I use those larger "villages" for towns. VG looks great for this size settlement and I prefer the style over a comparable-size settlement created by MFCG, which I use for my cities.
Using the different styles of 1VG for villages/towns and MFCG for cities helps make them feel separate and helps the cities feel very large. (Just explaining my process and why I use it this way.)
Just wondering if you had a chance to look into this or maybe stumbled across the cause?
I was trying again to generate large, dense villages and getting results like 32 population. I am unable to get the larger village populations and number of buildings I was in previous builds.
Would really like to see this come back if possible. I know you mentioned villages not having, for example, 3-4000 population, but there's no reason to limit it for those that want to use your generator for towns and villages. MFCG doesn't do towns well in my opinion and they looked great in VG.
Also whether you agree with that or not, you do have to admit populations under 100 is not a "large", "dense" village. :) Appreciate your consideration on this.
OK, I finally had time to look into it and I tend to agree that villages requested as "large" + "dense" end up being quite small too often. Such cases don't look like bugs, more like undesirable results caused by unfortunate combination of randomly chosen parameters. In the next update this will be fixed this way or another.
sarebbe utile avere la possibilità di avere un cimitero, almeno da rendere più veritiero il sessueguirsi del tempo in un dato luogo, così da ricordare che il tempo passa per tutti.
Would love a Crossroads option — choose three-way or four-way!
could you also make a pixelart version of it? like i have road tiles, house tiles, farm tiles, water tiles etc and it generates ? pls...
Hey, this is amazing work. Two ideas for useful additions if you'd like to hear them: the ability to 1. change the number of large buildings in the town, 2. add landmarks like your medieval city generator. This is because I'd like to use these maps for dungeons and dragons and label locations of interest like taverns, blacksmiths, seamstresses, etc
I would like the ability to set a specific number, but as a general concept i would say that there are too few large buildings. Thanks again
I'll consider it 👍
Hey bud, checking in again. Tried your twitter but messages not allowed, so if you have a chance please hit me up on twitter, @ETHVillages_NFT. Hope to talk soon! Have a great day!
Hey, saw your tweet. I’m gonna reply there. Cheers!
Hey bud! Absolutely amazing generator! Hands down my favorite! I actually used your generator to make some real money and I would very much like to share some of the wealth with you! I would also like to know if you are open to creating new projects together! Would love to partner up with you! Have a great day & hope to hear from you soon
one word: DND
Molto molto bello come generatore, mi storce un po il naso il fatto che quando ricarico un link di una delle mappe che ho preso, gli alberi non sono uguali alla prima volta in cui ho scelto la mappa del villaggio stesso, dove magari la prima volta prima di prendere il link è pieno di alberi, il link mi da pochissimi alberi e non posso cambiare molto per riportarlo allo stato che volevo. Comunque apparte ciò molto bello.
Great and useful piece of software for worldbuilders. Thank you for making those available.
As a side-note: is it possible to use "round caps" for the walls of the buildings in the SVG exports (for both Village and Neighbourhood Generators) ? I'd be happy to propose a merge request if sources are accessible.
"Butt" caps in these generators are a bug and will be fixed👍
Been making a few with dm for our sessions, is there any plans to add warp options to this or how many roads like in city generator? would love to see some housing control like spacing and sizes, and terrain variable control like swamps, hills mountains, keep up the great work, love the systems
The village generator works very differently from the city generator and it would be very hard to implement a warp tool here. I'll probably allow to edit the underlying population density map (currently it's generated automatically) which essentially defines the shape of a village. Regarding the number of roads, there will be an option to choose one of road configuration: highway, dead end, cross roads, maybe something else.
very great work
Hey I got a bug where a lake formed in a field. Parameters were default map size, high population, coast. Here is a perma link. https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=478974019&tags=high%2Ccoast
Yeah, it happens from time to time and it will be fixed eventually. To be honest, I don't think it's a big deal: in this case someone just got lucky to have a pond on their field. Sometimes the generator builds piers in such ponds and that really is silly :)
hello is there way to add crossroad
You mean a crossroads of two large roads? Currently it's not possible but this will change in the future.
hello this generator is very nice it is done very well, but it would be nice to be able to add walls like in the fantasy city generator
Yeah, this may become possible in the future.
This is awesome, great work! If I could leave a suggestion, it would be to perhaps have a plaza or market spawn along with the other buildings?
Yeah, adding squares/markets/village greens is on my list. Meanwhile you can try generating square neighbourhoods in the Neighbourhood Generator. It's not the same but sort of close.
Question. How is the population calculated here? I generated a few villages and got (in my opinion) weird results. Assuming that all houses are family homes (no stores, no storage facilities, workshops), there have to be quite big households.
A few examples with medium density (first three for small maps, last two for default) are in the table below. The last one seems fine, the rest...
I am not sure if I am overlooking something obvious or if the automated calculation is a bit off.
I can't speak for the developer, but this is how I've viewed it: historically a dwelling would have two parents, several children (up to 8 or 10 depending on various factors, 4 is a good average assumption), and 2 to 4 grandparents. There might also be a couple aunts and uncles. So that's around 8 to 10 people per household, using my educated guess assumptions. How many other buildings there would be beyond houses would depend on various factors, but a general rule of thumb is the larger the village the more buildings will be not-houses. You'd want grain storage, animal housing, and the like for any village. As it gets larger you'd start to see taverns, inns, shops, government buildings, brothels, et cetera. There's going to be some kind of calculus relating the average population to the average number of shops, of taverns, of restaurants, et cetera, but that's beyond my level of education on the subject.
If you're designing a village for a tabletop game or something like that, it's easy enough to re-jigger the numbers to your liking (5 people on average per household, say) and pick a number of buildings based on that average. That's what I do.
The values in your table seem right. The formula for population is very simple:
Why?
Hi, is there anywhere that I can email you about how this was made? I am doing something similar as a project and a lot of the papers that I have seen are pretty confusing to understand.
AWESOME generators all. I would love to have a way to match the color palette / style across all of them. Perhaps even a way to link from one to another seamlessly (eg Village Gen -> City Viewer.
THANKS for the amazing work.
Thanks! I'll probably make a tool to convert palettes from one generator to another as close as possible.
Hey this generator is great!
I would find it really helpful if there was some way to export the layers individually.
I.e. a layer with trees, a layer with roads, a layer with houses, a layer with lights, a layer with terrain features.
Thanks!
Something like that may be implemented one day, but actually all this is relatively easy to extract from exported SVG - most of the map features are grouped there, so there is a group with trees, a group with lights etc.
Oh that's nice to know, thank you :)
Would it be possible to add a `tiny` population density option? I really love those maps where it's mostly wilderness with just one or two houses, but it takes a while to find them by regenerating over and over.
The easiest way to generate a tiny village is to choose "Low" population density and "Tiny" map size. There probably won't be much wilderness (because the map will be tiny), but you'll get the right number of houses.
It was more about having that huge expanse of space with the one lonely house, nice image and feeling it gives the viewer
This has helped me a lot! Thank you!
This tool is fantastic!
If I can make a request, can you add the option to create a "walled" village?
Thet would be super useful
Thank you! Adding an option of the palisade wall around a village is on my list.
I have most of your st6uff bookmarked. Keep up the great work.
Hi! I love your generators and as someone who is working on my own game in C++ I was wondering if you ever considered giving access to your code in some way shape or form, I know I can just look into the generated javascript code for some of your projects but I think it would be valuable to maybe more people than just me to use this in an actual project, maybe through some Patreon tier, or selling it here on itch.
Heya! Fantastic stuff as usual Watabou:) Is there any chance we can get an option for River + Coast, like in the City Generator?
There are some (road-related) difficulties with such layouts, but it's a popular request, so this will be implemented eventually.
Cheers!
Here is my version of a cherry blossom forest.
Heyyo! Awesome generator, congrats for this work. Is there any chance of adding an option to disable houses without disabling streets?
Thanks! I can consider it, but why? To me it seems that streets in this generator aren't interesting enough to have any value without buildings, are they?
I'd definitely like the option myself, sometimes I like to have a blank template of roads and to be able to place houses as I want so its just another nifty feature to have.
Exactly!
I doubt it will ever be possible to place buildings manually, but I can implement rerolling buildings without affecting existing roads.
Hi there Watabou, Thanks very much for your generators, they are fantastic and I appreciate the work you have put into them.
I am wondering if you potentially share with me the source of this generator similar to how you shared the town genereator source.
Thank you very much!
Love it! For use in historical games/publications would there be an option to (always) include a manor and church?
This would be too much specifics for my taste, but I do plan to add special larger buildings without specifying what they are and I'll try to find a convenient way to customise their number, shape, placing…
Indeed no need for labels/naming. Just 2 large buildings (of which one with a tower) would already suffice, sounds like what you plan.
This generator is an absolute treasure.
You have to fuss a bit with the value slider under style settings to get black and white maps, but there's so much convenience packed into this program, it's versatile, and it's free.
To those of you supporting the patreon, thank you.
Awesome! Can I use it to my game?
Thank you for replying!
How do i build my own city/village? Is is even possible, if so what game should i use?
What do you mean by "your own"? If you are asking about building a village of a specific shape, than no, it's not possible here. This application is only capable of generating random villages.
Where can I find the assets for things like the buildings and trees?
No assets are used here. Everything is created procedurally within the generator.
is there a way to load a map back in to the app
Not exactly. If you'd like to get back to a specific map later you need to save its permalink ("Permalink…" in the context menu).
it works but when i reroll the trees the change is not saved
Yeah, that's one of the limitations of the method - rerolls of the trees do not get saved.
May i ask what are the Avaible Fonts for the texts? Im was trying using the google fonts but none of them work, so if there is a specific List of which fonts are used, i would gladly ask for it please
You can use any font installed on your computer. For example, if it's Windows then Calibri, Impact and Georgia (among others) are most likely available to you. To use a specific font from Google Fonts you need to download and install it first.
Thanks for the help, Appreciate it!!!!
What's the default font?
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cinzel
Do you happen to live in the southern hemisphere? I can't help noticing that all the houses cast their shadows southeast, indicating the Sun is northwest. :)
Just a coincidence :) You can specify the direction of shadows in the Style settings dialog: Shadow > Angle.
This is simply amazing! I love how easy and detailed it is!
Just one thing. When you toggle the fields on/off, it also turns on/off the trees.
The newest update (1.2.7) seems to constantly generate lopsided fields, often covering fields with trees while leaving a big empty space field & tree free. (e.g. https://watabou.github.io/village-generator/?seed=313542736) is that deliberate?
I noticed too. Loooooot of trees.
If you need fewer trees, make sure that "Some" is chosen and then "Reroll" trees until you have the right amount of them.
Lopsided fields are mostly fields which the generator tries to place in rings around the centre of a village. So yes, this is deliberate, although as I said in the post, I'm not sure this is such a great idea. If there will be enough negative feedback about them, they will be removed.
The only thing that has changed about trees is that the last chosen value of None/Some/Many is remembered now. The way of distributing them across the map hasn't been changed.