First off, when I heard about the DLL, and not being too knowledgeable about technical stuff, I figured it was just in the form of a complex file of some type and would be somehow difficult to use. As it turns out, it's really an actual program in itself, with a professional looking interface, and a myriad of clickable functions and options. Here's a screenshot:
(Don’t be alarmed by the background – that’s my customized EDIE start screen!)
I'll get to what all this stuff does in a second, but first I would like to briefly describe the install and how one accesses Fubby from within EDIE...
Installation
The installation is pretty straight forward, although there are a couple of steps involved. After one downloads the zip file you simply click on the file and let winzip launch. Inside the zip are 3 files. Now you want to create a temp folder somewhere and extract these 3 files into that folder. Ok, now go to that temp folder and click on the file called 'Setup'. This will launch the program installation screen, which is quite well done and typical of a professional looking install screen. Click Ok and off you go! (Note- I encountered another screen at this point, telling me my system files were out of date and would I like them to be updated - after sending a worried message to Fubster, who was very helpful, I said yes to this and everything installed fine...)
Now after the install has completed there's one more small step. There's one change you must make to the Ed.ini file. Open up the Ed.ini in Notepad (just drag the file onto Notepad) and
Change the line that reads
"WORLDBUILD_DLL=WorldBuild.dll" so it says
"WORLDBUILD_DLL=Fub.dll" (ignore quotes)
This line is about 3/4 of the way down in the file in the section called 'Worldbuild'. Make sure to save your changes to the ini and close it. Now you're all set...
Accessing within EDIE
Method 1
1) Go to Game Editor - New World
2) You will be presented with the Map Sizing screen. Here's where you pick the dimensions of your map as well as map wrap. This is the same screen as usually comes up and is also used by the Fubby...set the options and click OK
3) Now you're into the editor screen, so far nothing new has happened and you're wondering 'where the heck is the Fubster program!' Not to worry, it'll pop up soon...
4) Go to Map - Build with DLL from the menu
5) You will now be presented with 2 screens which usually come up when using the stock map editor. Click OK on both of these screens (they will have no bearing on the Fubby's operations)
6) After clicking ok on the 2nd one, there will be a brief pause, and then - bingo! - up pops Fubster's Random Map Builder Interface! (see first screenshot)
Method 2
1) Go to Play Game – choose Advanced/Standard/Basic - then choose “Generate Random World with DLL”
2) The map sizing screen comes up, choose your map size and click ok. (choose 100*100 with map wrap to follow examples in this review)
3) The two unneccesary screens come up, click ok on them.
4) Voila! The Fubby appears!
The Program
As you can see, there are 5 main sections of the program, represented by the 5 tabs "Land Masses", "Terrain and Cities", "Player Cities", "Building Algorithms", and "Shapes". Now there are a lot of functions and choices in this program – it lets you control a heck of a lot of stuff (some I didn’t even know existed!) – so it’s important to read the Fub Readme file which should be in your EDIE folder which explains what everything means and does. One thing I really like about the program is that you can choose to keep things really simply, picking only a few important options with a mouse click or typing in a few numbers here and there; or you can get very detailed and control a whole shwack of options. In fact, there are many, many options available in this program, some of which I have yet to fully understand and will not get into in this review. For now I’ll just go the fairly simple route to give the reader a basic idea of what’s going on…
The first section is probably the most important and quite a few things are set here. The first part we’ll look at is ‘Land Masses’ Here we’ll choose large, medium, or small land masses, how many of them, how big they are, and what ‘range’ to tell the Fubby to choose from for each. We will also choose the ‘Sea Border Size’ – how far apart the islands are from eachother are how far away from the map edge. Which numbers you put into these categories will likely depend on two main things, what size of map you picked, and how much land/water you like on your maps. Since you can’t see the map until it’s built (or if it’s for a PBM game until you actually start playing on it) you will have to create the map ‘blind’ as it were, trusting that you’re setting the right parameters. With practice you will get better and know what options to set to get the map you want. But at the bottom of the program is a very helpful aid…
The section that says Land = is telling you what percentage of the map is currently land, so we see here we have 84% land – and therefore 16% water. That’s a lot of land, and as I like a lot of water on my maps, we’ll be taking out some land masses to change this. As you change the land masses this percentage will update itself. Just enter the changes and click in another box somewhere else and you’ll see the percentage change.
Lo =Hi: This is telling you what the random range will be. So for example in the large category you’re telling it to pick between 3 and 5 large land masses. Now if you click a checkmark beside ‘Lo’ there will be no randomness. It will simply put 3 large land masses on the map. This can be handy if you really want to closely control the amount of land there is.
Notice the second box automatically has changed to 3. Ofcoarse you can simply enter the same number in both boxes manually yourself to accomplish the same thing. You will see this Lo =Hi choice in many sections of Fubby…
Moving on, we will set the low =hi for land mass size and pick 1 large, 6 medium,, and 15 small, as this will give us an example of a map with lots of water and strategically placed land – there will be 38% land to be exact - everyone will have their own goals as far as the land/water ratio goes, depending on the kind of game one wants to create. The one large land mass will likely be the decisive factor in the game – whichever player controls this baby is likely going to win. However since it will be placed right in the middle, then the opponents may end up in a fierce battle for it, which makes for some quite interesting situations…To this effect, and to also make sure the medium and small islands are spread out evenly, we will checkmark the option ‘Space Large Land Masses Evenly Apart’ in the section on the right.
Terrain and Cities
This one is pretty self explanatory and chooses the parameters for terrain type and cities. I’ve set everything in terrain at 5-10% except mountains at 10-15%, just to make things interesting. How frustrating when there’s an annoying mountain range blocking your armour divisions!
For cities, I’ve chosen exactly 135, a fairly large number, but small enough that there might be some resource drain problems later in the game. Production is at between 75% and 150% - a pretty wide range which will make capturing those 150’s pretty important. ‘% Specialty’ is between 20-25%, which controls what percentage of the cities will have a production specialty. What that specialty is will be randomly set as this cannot be controlled. (Would be interesting to be able to pick something though, like ‘Carriers’ and then see how the players try to use this to their advantage, could end up with some nice carrier battles). Lastly on this screen there is ‘% Coastal’, which chooses the percentage of cities which will be coastal cities – important in a game with a lot of water…
The next tab ‘Player Cities’ is currently blank, and one hopes that this means there are some further developments planned in regards to this important aspect of things. In particular – where are the starting cities, and perhaps even how many of them. But where they are is the most important factor I would say, and to be able to create fair starting positions would be terrific. The lack of this is really the only major deficiency in the program…
Building Algorithms
Now things start to get a little complicated, and I have to admit I have yet to master and learn fully the choices on this tab. Suffice it to say that choosing ‘Wandering Blob’ or ‘Stick Blob’ creates random extensions to your land masses, just to mix things up a little bit and keep everything from being too symmetrical and predictable. The ‘Wandering Blob’ will create larger sized extensions, and the ‘Stick Blob’ will create more or less thin extensions. The ‘wgt’ box tells the Fubby how much ‘weight’ to assign to each choice… For now I’ll pick the Wandering type only, and I’ll toss in some other numbers there to make things ‘erratic’ – we don’t want to end up with bland islands! Also, on the right we have ‘Shapes’, which is directly related to the last tab, and basically authorizes the use of the shapes to be chosen on that screen…
Shapes
I find this screen to be quite interesting, as it let’s you pick the basic geometric shapes to be used for your islands and land masses. I’ve picked a few ‘unusual’ shapes, to spice things up a bit. These shapes provide islands with all sorts of nooks and crannies, with harbors and peninsulas which will surely have an interesting strategic effect on the game…
Ok when we’re finally ready we’re going to click on Build in the lower right corner and…
Voila!
Everything is spaced out fairly evenly, there’s variety in the shapes – with none of the dreaded archipelago type shapes of the old ED map editor - and instead of having to rely on a mirrored map we have a full map for each player to explore, should make for a good game!
Conclusion
The Fubby has changed my expectations of what a good map is, raised the bar as it were, and now I find I simply cannot/will not play on maps which are created using the old method.
Good work Fubster! This program obviously from the looks of it took a lot of time end effort to create and your work is much appreciated! When a guy takes the large amount of time out of his schedule to embark on such a project (for free, no less), and comes up with something as successful as this, he really should be applauded for his skills and efforts. In the words of EDIE – “Honor has been thrust upon Fleet Admiral Fubster!”