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Thread: Leend - first try

  1. #21

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    By the way, I found a really better example to illustrate my speech!

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    It's one of the many things that tends to indicate that water flowed on Mars in the far past

  2. #22
    Guild Member Zach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lyrillies View Post
    Zach, if it's free that might just be the reason why there's no mac version… But your project sounds extremely interesting! is that a generator for random terrain or would that include a function where you can set a certain general shape for the terrain which is then converted into fractals?
    The images it produces are simple heightmaps that look very much like...well, ARE...fractal noise. I won't go into detail with the algorithm, but it basically interpolates between points a bunch of times with some controlled randomness. You can read more about it here, but I get better results from my program than the Wikipedia images show (sample below). To get a coastline, take the sample image and do a basic threshold operation on it. I also have programs that create an island surrounded by water and add an ocean to an existing heightmap.
    I kind of want to post the code on this site, but it is not in any way a finished product. You would have to be able to compile and run it on your system.
    As for the rivers...actually, after my earlier post, I created a new program that hopefully will be the groundwork of later river functionality. It can trace multiple rivers across the terrain the way real rivers would go. It's still a long way from being integrated into the main program, though.
    You can't set a general shape for the terrain and then have it fractalized (though that would be a useful extension to add), you just take the initial shape and add oceans, lakes, whatever. My Edelu map's coastline was generated like that; then I just added in landforms according to my liking.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

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  3. #23

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    Thanks a lot for your input everyone! It's really helpful and I appreciate it a lot!

    Concerning the shape of the continent there's a few things I thought about over the past day:
    First of all, thanks a lot for that sketch Jalyha! Your suggestions make a lot of sense, and yes it does help.
    Despite the fact that all of you are absolutely right and the shape is a problem, I think you won't be seeing any changes on that in this map. It is difficult for me to part with something I've been looking at almost daily for more than ten years… Basically I just need more time to think about what I'm gonna do with the shape. So I will think, and try some stuff and think some more and hopefully come up with a solution for the future. For this mapping project however I'll ignore the issue for now, because this is first and foremost for me to get some experience of how to make a map at all.
    But I'll let you know what happens to the shape as soon as I know (if you're interested, that is )

    So I started to think about how to continue this little project and I'm stuck. I want to add some border outline but I have seriously no idea what kind of border would fit - something artistic? something useful? the normal black/white checkered grid-based border? I have absolutely no idea!
    Or should I do something else first and worry about the borders at the very end? But then how do I continue now? Help please…

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    @Ilanthar: That's an awesome picture! In another life I would probably do it all differently and become an astronaut… I'll probably dream about that tonight

    @Zach: Sounds like a great project! Though it's sad that there's no option of fractalizing custom terrain shapes… I would buy your program immediately if it could do that! The search for something like that was what actually brought me to this forum in the first place *g*


    btw: the main lesson I learned from this project so far is that mountains suck!
    Last edited by Lyrillies; 01-31-2014 at 10:16 PM.
    And that's with great detail like "A COMPASS tells you which direction is north!"

  4. #24

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    The colors are really better now. And for the shape, you could still imagine a giant planet with a powerful sea stream that shapes your continent

  5. #25
    Guild Expert Jalyha's Avatar
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    I only suggested the land-shape thing because you said you wouldn't know how to make it fit, or some such


    I like it as it is, I was just offering.

    I do love the new colors, like Ilanthar said
    Have you "liked" a post today?

  6. #26

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    Thanks Ilanthar!
    sea streams are a great idea! I have no idea how they form or anything really, but do you think something like this would be possible?
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    @Jalyha: Oh nono, don't get me wrong, I really meant that I appreciate it!! I will still have to think about whether to change the form or not, and I'll definitely take your outline as the basis for that process. I just know myself well enough to realize that thinking about this will probably take another 2-3 years - I'm not very good with making decisions…


    Oh and sleep apparently helps in solving problems… probably should have tried that earlier instead of staying up until 6am, but anyway here is what I came up with after some rest:
    Click image for larger version. 

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    I quite like the border, but really this is the absolutely first one I ever did in my life so I guess there's about a hundred things wrong with it.
    As for the labels: Don't pay them any attention! They're just there because I was impatient. I found a great paper on how to label maps here in the forum and I'll read that later and then redo them.

    Oh and yes, the number on the scale is right. I know that this is horribly big, but well, that's the size of the continent… which makes the distance from top to bottom roughly four times bigger than the circumference of the earth.
    And that's with great detail like "A COMPASS tells you which direction is north!"

  7. #27
    Guild Expert Jalyha's Avatar
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    I'm the same way. It takes till lunch to decide what to have for breakfast

    I think the border looks great.

    And the scale... well it certainly makes the continent seem bigger. o.o
    Have you "liked" a post today?

  8. #28
    Guild Member Zach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lyrillies View Post
    @Zach: Sounds like a great project! Though it's sad that there's no option of fractalizing custom terrain shapes… I would buy your program immediately if it could do that! The search for something like that was what actually brought me to this forum in the first place
    You appear to be my muse for these programming endeavors, because when I woke up this morning I had an idea for a way to fractalize a shape defined by the user. I'm just getting started on it now, so it'll still be some time in development, but...for the past week or so I have spent all my non-mapping free time on writing various mapping programs. The results will be interesting.

    I think the sea streams, if you decide to make them part of the world, should be more massive than are shown in that diagram. Like a giant ocean current flowing from the top of the map to the bottom, and curling a little to the left in the process. Of course, continents aren't primarily formed by erosion...but this is a fantasy map; the current could overwhelm any tectonic activity in forming continents.

  9. #29

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    Awesome! You absolutely have to keep me posted on that project! I really want a program that can do this sort of thing… What platform would your program run on?

    As for the sea streams - well to be completely honest this world isn't a planet. The shape is that of a cone and this continent is a little bit, well, big - therefore this giant stream running from top to bottom is a bit hard to do… I think it's best if I show you, it's always so hard to explain:
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Ok so this is the general shape of my world and very roughly the size of the continent in comparison. The other continents are a lot, lot smaller this one is special. The balls are temperature-suns and sit half-way inside the hollow cone. Anyway, you see why a stream that strong from top to bottom would pose a problem?
    So the part about erosion, well to be honest the whole shape problem, is really up to me. I could just go and say "the gods wanted it like this!" but that's not the way I build my world. It does not run on normal physics or laws of nature or anything, but it does have internal logic and its own physics and laws - and it just so happens that this equivalent to water I have on my world works similar to real water.
    So. yeah.
    What was I actually talking about?
    And that's with great detail like "A COMPASS tells you which direction is north!"

  10. #30
    Guild Member Zach's Avatar
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    After some more coding today, the results are promising. It works with SVGs, not raster images, so you can have perfect scalability and do the fractal-y stuff down to whatever level you want. There's still one big problem; I have to find out what's causing it.
    As to platforms...well, the code is in C++ and very portable. I'm developing this on a Mac (which I know you have). The main problem, however, is that I am not at all familiar with how to put a graphical user interface on it...either I have to learn how to use those or you would have to run it from the terminal. This is a one-guy operation, so I can't build it for Windows, Linux, or any other version of OS X. If you actually KNOW how to compile/build C++ code, that's a different matter.

    Anyway. Didn't mean to hijack the thread there.

    So your world is...conical? That's awesome! It does raise a lot of questions about days/seasons/tectonics/what happens to the ocean at the edge of the world. But I'm sure you will provide us with these answers in due time.
    And just because your continent has the general shape of an island doesn't mean that continents can't look like that. It is completely plausible for a teardrop-shaped continent to form without any sort of (significant) eroding forces at work.

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