Creating World Maps

[staples357]

off topic

This is kinda off topic but can anyone tell me where I can find a referee's screen for ct.?

 

[BlackBat242]

The only one I know of:

Judges Guild Traveller Referee Screen

 

[drow]

donjon fwg

on record, the donjon world generator is based on John Olsson's code,
but has been entirely rewritten to fix some bugs and support some additional features.

 

[Andrew M]

For what it's worth I put something very basic together with Matlab, using triangle patches on an icosohedron as the grid. It seems to work okay even though it isn't properly fractal. [Only new point values are calculated at each stage.]

When I was really bored I devised a method to make fractal maps by dice as well.

 

[Icosahedron]

When I was really bored I devised a method to make fractal maps by dice as well.

Interesting. I tried that, but got bogged down in 'if-then' cycles trying to get realistic continental land masses and realistic mountain ranges. I ended up more bored than I started out.
How successful was yours?

 

[Andrew M]

Interesting. I tried that, but got bogged down in 'if-then' cycles trying to get realistic continental land masses and realistic mountain ranges. I ended up more bored than I started out.
How successful was yours?

It worked pretty well. I got it down to a couple of hours of rolling and yawning per map. As with the program old values are never rerolled. Each point requires a single die, so a bunch of rolls can be made together. I also only had six or seven different land types. I don't know about realistic, but it seems okay for what I want.

One thing that seems easier to do by hand is river formation. It's easier when you can make judgement calls over where a river will go or when a little bit of mountain needs to be removed. Computer programs seem to be seriously bad at this at the moment.

 

[FreeTrav]

Andrew, please contact me via email (editor@freelancetraveller.com). I'd like to discuss with you your algorithm for doing this terrain generation, with an eye toward ultimately asking you for an article for Freelance Traveller on same.

(I also wouldn't mind a few more covers, either... )

 

[su_liam]

A hopefully worthwhile bit of thread necromancy("It's alive! It's Alive!!!).

If fractal generation by-hand is desirable, how much more desirable would a computer-driven plate tectonic simulator? Here is tectonics.js. It's not my work(if it were, there are a few additional features I would have implemented and it probably wouldn't work), but it's pretty awesome and a little interest could inspire the author to keep working on it...

I've seen a few of these. Even gotten the occasional one to run on my computer. This one has the rather large advantage of running on a sphere rather than on a finite flat plane.

Like most of these the output is somewhat sketchy, but it's an excellent guide to hands-on terrain building.

 

[su_liam]

A hopefully worthwhile bit of thread necromancy("It's alive! It's Alive!!!).

If fractal generation by-hand is desirable, how much more desirable would a computer-driven plate tectonic simulator? Here is tectonics.js. It's not my work(if it were, there are a few additional features I would have implemented and it probably wouldn't work), but it's pretty awesome and a little interest could inspire the author to keep working on it...

I've seen a few of these. Even gotten the occasional one to run on my computer. This one has the rather large advantage of running on a sphere rather than on a finite flat plane.

Like most of these the output is somewhat sketchy, but it's an excellent guide to hands-on terrain building.