Terrain Generator Wishlist

[Sigurd]

Honestly, I think Joe has the beginnings of my wishlist in Fractal Terrains & Wilbur.
A nice set of fractal rules to semi randomly build a world. I think you need an experimentation zone where the whole thing is rendered in time short enough for the impatient. I enjoy looking through the random generations to find the world that appeals.

Now the part that hasn't been done. I would like to take any slice of that world and do all of your wishlist to it and still be able to link it back to the overview. As I add detail I want the program to modify that detail to make it appropriate for the zoomed out perspective. I think that ViewingDale is incredible for this potential but I don't want to have to make each zoom level work automatically as far as natural elements are concerned.

Fundamentally I'd like to see a world creation framework that would allow people to realize tiny sections of the globe and have the computer approximate the sections so that they fit together and preserve the sections so they could be revisited. Sort of like the DEM project for Middle Earth, I'd like to see people's inspirations guided into a much bigger thing. Eventually I'd like the model to get complicated enough to generate temperature, water and seasonal changes.

I'd like a real geologist to make a world like an author writes a book. Then I want to read the world. If you must, think of it like a cross between Second Life and Survivor.


Sigurd


I'd get an uber machine with any sort of stats running any sort of operating system if I could keep a world on it like an ant farm. Always tweaking, always growing in detail.