Public Release

Prag is now available for anybody to download. Thanks to those who provided some good suggestions, and more are certainly welcome. You can get it here:

http://cod2gen.googlepages.com/prag_20080415.zip

There is a README.txt file included that you should check out before using the program. There is now also a very simple GUI. For CoD4, you should be able to generate, compile, and link a map all from right here.

CoD4 Minimaps?

So I'm trying to figure out the minimap in Call of Duty 4. This is the little radar image that is displayed in the corner of the screen when you have a UAV. It seems to be required for making air strikes work properly as well.

I've got code now to generate an image that should hopefully be suitable for each randomly generated map.


This is a screenshot from Radiant of a map made with prag:



This is the corresponding minimap image generated with prag:


OK, that's working. But now I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get my image to actually be used in-game. Anybody had any luck with this? Do you have to use an IWD file, or can the image get rolled up into the fastfile?

Roofs, entities, game modes

This screenshot shows a randomly generated map that was today's MOTD (map of the day). You can see that there are some entities now, like the palm trees, blue barrel, and roadblock. Also implemented recently is support for team deathmatch and sabotage game modes. You can see the rooftops are now covered with a pitched roof instead of just a flat walkable surface. I plan to make that optional, but these roofs seem more natural for motifs that would be in settings other than the middle-east.

I have got a version now that is considerably easier to use - it lets you type in a map name to create and it does the rest. Hopefully I'll have a couple more bugs worked out soon and be ready to do a public release and start announcing it on some of the mapping/modding forums.

One real hangup is the difficulty of making airstrike and helicopter paths. You'd really think this would just work automatically, but these cool new features are only possible with some work on the part of mappers.

Introduction

So Call of Duty 4 hasn't been out that long yet, but my coworkers and I have started getting a little too familiar with all the nooks and crannies of the maps that came with the game. As I did with cod2gen my intention is to create a program that will randomly generate a "map of the day" for us to play. I find the idea of procedural content generation to be an interesting way to add infinite variety to a game. There are also a lot of very interesting programming and geometrical problems to solve to make something like this work.

I've started from scratch, using not much but ideas from the original cod2gen program, and am writing it all using the javascript programming language instead of C.

This little pictorial history will show you more about my progress and what I'm going for here than anything else:

Skybox, main roads, and dirt roads, all procedurally generated.

Placeholder blocks where buildings could go.

Four blocks deleted to show holes in terrain where the buildings sit.

Doorways added to buildings and an outer fence to prevent players from falling into the void.

A small building-less area surrounded by partial fence.

Windows added to buildings in random (not always sensible) locations. Stairways too.

So, where do I get it?
I'm going to hold off from making a public release until I've got some of the bugs worked out, and have put it in a form that can be used by people who aren't comfortable working from the dos command prompt. I am looking for technically savvy mappers and modders to do pre-alpha testing and to give suggestions for features and to answer questions and so forth, so if that sounds like you, please send me an email: pragfps@gmail.com.