Adding a new biome: Island

[Siemvandenberg]

Hi,

I'm a graphic designer with some developing skills. I'd like to take a stab at modding RimWorld. I would like to add a new Biome to the world generator. This will be an island and will have to be surrounded by water on the world map, and also at the edges of the game map.

So far I've only added the biome to Biomes.xsl and disabled base building for the other biomes. When generating a world and a base, I can't continue because, surprise, the are no available biomes. So I'm guessing I need to add the island biome to some list in the core files?

Can anybody tell me if I need to de-compile a file and if so which one? Do I need to write a solution? I want to find the part of code that handles generating the world map.

Oh, RimWorld wiki is being a bit of a downer, had a bit of a hard time finding more info, so I'm asking here now.

[Berengar]

Have done an mod like that, for an long long time. Was fun to play with.

Just use the ocean Biome, change it to landable. And Add an new floor that can build on light water.
When you are an graphic designer i would recommend to ad some more watertypes. Like on with waterplants, and some ceatures. But is not needed.

PS: Yeah the wiki is pretty out datet. Here that will help you.
https://rimworldmod.slack.com/messages/modding-talk/details/

[Siemvandenberg]

Hi Berangar, that's a good idea to start with. I'll try it first, see if I can improve on it later. For example, would be nice to have specified islands on the world map instead of any old ocean tile. The world generator already does generate 1-2 tile islands.

Yeah I'm aiming for an naked-and-afraid-style overhaul. So sandy islands, palm trees, coconuts, diarrhea, crabs, fire-bows, palm leaf skirts, volcanoes... And for those who worry, raiders coming by boat or something..

[Siemvandenberg]

So I just applied Tropical Jungle BiomeDef settings to an ocean square and it came up with this. Might I say that is just perfect? I hadn't seen coastlines in this game before.. What would it take to have that effect all around the map edges, with some more perlin in for good measures.

[Limdood]

if you build a colony on a map square that is adjacent to water, you get coast.  This always happened.

[Loki88]

I'd be interested in having an island map with coasts on all sides. As it stands "islands" on the world map that are only 1x1 are generated with only one coast line on them which never made sense to me. From a coding perspective it likely has something to do with land based raids having nowhere the spawn at the map edge, and no where for fleeing enemies to retreat to. That could be fixed I guess by making deep water passable with an extremely high movement penalty to simulate swimming. If and when vehicles become a thing, there could be things like canoes.

One thing also I would like to see added as a genstep for the map generator is that more 1x1 islands are thrown in to the mix if it can indeed be made a thing to have a proper island.

[Toggle]

I'd be interested in having an island map with coasts on all sides. As it stands "islands" on the world map that are only 1x1 are generated with only one coast line on them which never made sense to me. From a coding perspective it likely has something to do with land based raids having nowhere the spawn at the map edge, and no where for fleeing enemies to retreat to. That could be fixed I guess by making deep water passable with an extremely high movement penalty to simulate swimming. If and when vehicles become a thing, there could be things like canoes.

It does indeed have to do with valid places for them to spawn and flee on the map.

[Austintrollinski]

it sounds like a fun idea 

[milon]

I did a quick little test.  Using my Terraformer mod (adds buildable terrain to the Floor build menu - attached), I created an island by making Deep Water all around the perimeter of a map.  Then I forced some raids.  Air drops worked just fine.  Land raids, seiges, etc all threw errors as Z0MBIE2 indicated.  Interesting, clicking on the location of the failed raid jumped the camera to the lower-left corner of the map (co-ords 0,0 I think).  Forcing enemies to flee caused some to panic & break (became non-hostile), while others just started wandering (still "hostile" but not attacking).

This means for an island to become a thing, either Deep Water must be passable (easily moddable) or else vehicles/bridges need to be introduced.  Bridges would be easy enough to mod, and would allow river-creating GenSteps etc.  Vehicles would mean some deep-level modding that involves the pathing AI, and that's WAY out of my depth.  But a vehicles framework mod would open the door to a LOT of other cool mods, so that's a plus.  Any thoughts?

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