update
Hi happy tree friends,
thanks for your comments. Sorry, I hadn't enough time to implement the features you asked for. However, a simple update is done - you can now load your own map (b/w png) in order to shape the forest. Unfortunately, Flash has an upper limit of approx 2800 px in one dimension and it becomes very slow with large bitmaps. Therefore, one map at one time shouldn't be larger than 2000 x 2000 px.
To get the shape you want to: create a png no larger than 2000 x 2000 px with a white background (no trees) and black areas (trees). More adventureous people can just leave the to-be-forested area transparent and paint everything that must not have trees on it white. At present, there is no preview for the whole map if it is larger than the apps' viewing window. Also, at present you can't drag the forest to get a better view. So you need to trust the tool
Please be patient when saving - you will get a large png that does take some time to compute. The ui has changed a little bit: now at start you won't get a default forest. Instead, you can choose between generating a totally random forest or loading a map. In the first case, everything works as in the previous version with the exception that there is no map locking button anymore. In the second case, the map is active as long as you don't generate or load a new one. This is true even when you change the density param (didn't look at it more closely but I think changing the threshold does only affect a forest based on a random map, not a loaded one).
How to use:
Random Map:
1. Click at the button "Random" at the lower left of the panel. More on that in my first post
Custom map:
1. Click at the button "Load" besides the above mentioned "Random" button. A dialog will pop up where you can choose a png to load.
2. After a short time, a forest based on the black (or transparent) area of the map will be generated. It does consist of just one single tree type (the default one: second from left in the panel).
3. You can do the same with this forest as with a randomly generated one (again, look at the first post).
4. Play around with the different tree types: every time you change the settings, a new forest with the same tree positions but with other types is calculated. Changing types: click on a tree pict in the panel. If that tree was not active (marked with red halo), it will now be activated. To deselect it, shift-click on it (if it is the only active tree, you can't deselect it at all). To select multiple trees, just shift-click on them. If there are several types active and you click on one tree (active or not), it will be activated and all other trees will be deactivated. Whatever that does mean - just try it out.
5. The shadow options are self-explanatory (in a ui, this is almost never true but it saves me time describing the tool)
6. The density button changes the distance between single trees. That way you can get a very dense forest (which will result in a very fat png).
7. Click on the logo in the upper right to save the forest as a transparent png - please be patient, Flash is a little bit slow here (no, in fact I didn't optimize even one single line of code, sorry)
The slightly changed interface:
A map example (was: 1500 x 1500):
The resulting forest with different tree types (in the png, the bgd is transparent; this jpg is just to give an idea of the result):
download: http://www.mediafire.com/?u6z0jlz2b5i8j3j
Happy foresting
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