Generating details from map sketches #
I was pretty happy with the sketching tool from last week but I wasn't sure whether it actually produced the data I needed. I connected several separate projects together to make the sketching tool guide the generation of rivers and elevation. These projects weren't coded to work together, so the page is rather clunky, but it served its purpose. I found that the sketching algorithm needed some tweaks, and the river and elevation algorithms need some tweaks too.
I also extended the sketch demo to let you change the boundary points, which have elevation -1. By default they're at the borders of the map. By removing them from the borders you can get non-island maps. By adding them elsewhere you can generate lakes.
Elevation control #
The main reason I put the previous experiments on hold is that one of the major goals for the current project is for the game/level designers to have some control over the procedural generation. This week I experimented with a sketching tool that lets you draw mountains and coastlines.
It ended up being a fairly simple algorithm that's fun to play with. The demo works on touch devices too.
Elevation from rivers, part 2 #
I had been working on generating mountains from rivers. I got some cool results, but put it on hold. I had been pursuing things based on what would be cool but had lost sight of the actual goals of the project. Some images:
And here's the writeup. Next time — something different!