Is there such a monster?

[xoxos]

it's not a subject for this forum, but of course capitalism is inherently flawed. money is an abstraction, which means it is not actuality.

an abstraction may be presented in a skewed fashion to promote a favourable outcome, and as a culture we are all subjugated to it to the extent that it is superliminal and few people question it's existence. rabbits are frequently equal to $2. humans are equal to about $25 in the chocolate industry. you can say "i don't buy slaves" but you are implicated most of the time you eat chocolate. as said, an abstraction that may be skewed to disguise the truth, eg. a lie.

all life requires land. since land is property, life is property. it seems pretty clear really. try slipping out of the leash and watch the fireworks. but don't expect other people to see them.

fnord.

[ravells]

Of course you can! For example, the biggest defect in the random city generator is that its streets don't appear to do anything in the way of self-avoidance or leaving much in the way of spaces between streets. In the real worlds, streets are there for a reason: they connect places of interest in a way that can be navigated efficiently by a mode of transport. If your mode of transport is foot traffic and your streets are evolving from cowpaths, then streets will tend to be curvy, convergng things that follow the terrain pretty well. If your streets are laid out beforehand with cart traffic in mind, then there is likely to be a grid involved and moderately wide streets. If the town has two high-volume points of interest, there is likely to be a wide avenue connecting the two directly. The random city generator doesn't take any of that into account.

I guess you can argue with free then! This is what I like about City Engine, (which I need to get back to) - you can tweak the streets after you have drawn them in to make the city fit in with the model in your mind.

[Graeme Brown Winnipeg]

I didn't realize this would start such an interesting conversation. By no means to I underestimate the complexity of true map-making - nor am I looking for a push-button program that makes a real map. I was just wondering if there was something that would create terrain to give me an idea of what is doable or not. At present, though, I do not invest as much time in my map, except as ideas come to me. It builds as I write. In past, I have tried to draw a full-up map and it ends up being unrealistic, because I don't know some of the basic principles of map-making. I was hoping that software might generate something so that I could use it to learn and then modify to make it realistic or as I'd like it. When all is said and done, I'd be taking the generated model and hand-drawing something else, using it as a reference. Many fantasy writer's, for example, take maps of the world and modify it in shape so it looks different, but it's geographic forms are believable.

Anyway, thanks for all your replies. I will check out some of those links as time permits and stop in here again.

[Wirelizard]

I didn't realize this would start such an interesting conversation. By no means to I underestimate the complexity of true map-making - nor am I looking for a push-button program that makes a real map. I was just wondering if there was something that would create terrain to give me an idea of what is doable or not. At present, though, I do not invest as much time in my map, except as ideas come to me. It builds as I write.

Real cities don't get built all at once either, as the famous saying concerning Rome goes.

In his introduction to the Map of Ahnk-Morpork, British author Terry Pratchett says something to the effect of never planning the city and not thinking it was mappable, until he realized that real cities get put together more or less the same way, except instead of authorial whim or the needs of the plot, real cities are shaped by economics, the occasional fire or other disaster, the whims of rulers, that sort of thing.

Maybe keep a sketch map of your nominal city around (or a series of maps), and rather than trying to force the whole thing out at once, come back and add to it a bit at a time, fill in a few details, that sort of thing?

[Graeme Brown Winnipeg]

This discussion has helped me to gain a lot of appreciation for the hard work that goes into making a good map. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to it. At this point, I think I will look to (when funds, or publishers, allow) work with a professional cartographer to take the world I've sketched out and generate a realistic map. It's easy to look at the maps Christopher Tolkien drew for his father and then assume fantasy map making is a matter of a nice detailed sketch, but there's so much more to it.