09 Sep, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Your map looks good, Ripley, but how do you plan to handle rivers? If your data includes elevation, it might be possible to automate those as well.

Likewise, how will you differentiate between lakes and ocean? That would be an expensive operation to perform on the fly, but it could be done when the map is generated. The same approach could also be used to identify separate sections of terrain for naming purposes (and you could even have a random generator for the names) - for example if the "black forest" is separated from another section of forest, it would make sense to give that other section of forest its own name.
09 Sep, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
Nice looking maps, looks very realistic. How many try to get one that look that "natural" ?
09 Sep, 2013, Ripley wrote in the 23rd comment:
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I apologize for any grammer or spelling issues, I am typing this on my phone while I am in the hospital. :p

KaVir said:
Your map looks good, Ripley, but how do you plan to handle rivers? If your data includes elevation, it might be possible to automate those as well.

Likewise, how will you differentiate between lakes and ocean? That would be an expensive operation to perform on the fly, but it could be done when the map is generated. The same approach could also be used to identify separate sections of terrain for naming purposes (and you could even have a random generator for the names) - for example if the "black forest" is separated from another section of forest, it would make sense to give that other section of forest its own name.


Rivers and lakes are an issue, agreed. Pregen on load is probably what I will do, storing them in a data structure accessible via a coordinate hash and checked when generating maps/locations. This ties in with the way I will deal with named areas and such - Regions.

A Region is simply a polygon with a minimum of three points that describe the shape. The algorithm for determining if a coordinate is within a polygod can be optimized and is quite fast (raycasting). Regions can do the following: provide a name to an area, transform terrain (i.e. forest becomes blight, plains become wasteland, etc. Up to and including just setting all locations in the region to a particular terrain.), alter elevation/moisture/temp within that area, etc. This depends on the hooks I am willing to write.

I appreciate and comments/critiques btw. :). The wilderness is live on Luminari (luminarimud.com 4100) if you want to take a look. It is accessible from the east and west gates of Midgen.
09 Sep, 2013, Hades_Kane wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
I've got to check that out. I'm a huge fan of wilderness maps and systems :)
09 Sep, 2013, Ripley wrote in the 25th comment:
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Please do, I am Ornir there. Just know that it is not complete and there is a lot of debugging info being printed.
11 Sep, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Your map looks good, Ripley, but how do you plan to handle rivers? If your data includes elevation, it might be possible to automate those as well.

Likewise, how will you differentiate between lakes and ocean? That would be an expensive operation to perform on the fly, but it could be done when the map is generated.


I used Fractal Terrains ( http://www.profantasy.com/products/ft.as... ) for a world map project recently. It generates rivers very nicely, lakes, too.

Elevation is color-coded, and you can specify many ranges (I forget how many). Of course, if you draw something on top (e. g. forests, etc.) you'd need to do it in a separate layer to have both elevation and sector type.

And you can do everything you need to do within the 30-day free trial.

Some of you have already seen what FT can do here: http://www.playbedlam.com/world/ . I'm just using it for a static world map, but I imagine it can fairly easily be used for much more.
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