NumPlayers
The number of players a generated map is built for, and the number of start positions a lobby credits it with.
Players the map is built for
- Applies to
- random map generation
- File
map seed file- Section
[RandomMap]- Value
- integer
- When omitted
- UnchangedThe read passes the current setting through, and the generator's settings outlive one map, so an omitted assignment keeps whatever the last map built in this session left behind.
The figure is the number of start points the generator must find, and it also chooses the row of the size tables that Height interpolates within, so it decides how large a map of a given size index comes out. Map seed files covers the section it is written in.
[RandomMap]NumPlayers=4Width=2Height=2Finding the start points comes late in generation, after the terrain and its regions are settled. Fifteen candidate cells per player are gathered from the largest regions reachable from one another, the most widely separated of them are taken, and the first of those become the start points. Each start point then has to flood exactly four hundred clear cells around itself; if any player’s flood runs dry sooner the start points are all discarded and picked again from the next state of the random sequence — the terrain itself is kept. Nothing caps that retry, so a player count the terrain cannot seat leaves the generator picking forever.
The figure reaches the tiberium as well. The spread that supplied the start points supplies the map’s tiberium fields from what is left over, and the amount of tiberium each field is grown to is multiplied by the player count, so a map built for more players is not left thinner. TiberiumLayout covers how many fields there are, which the player count does not change.
Start positions a lobby counts
- Applies to
- random map generation
- File
map seed file- Section
[RandomMap]- Value
- integer
- When omitted
0
This is a second, separate read of the assignment, made from the multiplayer lobby rather than by the generator. Before a game is allowed to start, the host’s chosen scenario file is opened and its [Waypoints] section counted for entries 0 through 7; only when that count comes to nothing is this assignment read instead, with a fallback of zero. The figure that comes out is compared against the players in the lobby plus the computer players asked for, and a game whose total exceeds it is refused with a message that the scenario is too small.
The fallback is what makes a saved map seed usable in a lobby. A seed file holds no waypoints — the start points do not exist until the map is generated — so without it every seed file would count as having nowhere to put anyone.