October 2009 Entry - Docklands

[gilgamec]

Curses! After spending far too much time on last month's entry, you have to come up with another good theme! *sigh* I had to make this one something that I can bang out in a weekend. Fortunately, with a long weekend, I can get most of it done.

It's another procedurally generated map; this time, a commercial harbour, with docks and soundings. In order to get it done quickly, I've reused the same workflow as I've used in previous Challenges: create a quick sketch of the coastline (smaller dots indicate shoals)

then add a little fractal noise to get a height (and depth) map. I can then modify the coast (add channels and seawalls) with another sketch

which changes the height map. The points for soundings are created by a Poisson process on the water area, then the depths just read off the height map. The contours are calculated from the original depth map; I tried using the soundings to recalculate them, but the result was only slightly better, and much harder to control.

The map still needs a lot of notation (labels, lanes, buoy markers, cartouche, compass rose, etc.), but the land and sea are pretty much what I want.

### Latest WIP ###