Zach that sounds amazing, I can't wait for the beta
But you'll have to explain to me what SVGs are, I don't know the topic that well actually - I never worked with fractal images or terrains before I came here. But high scalability sounds seriously awesome! So what is the problem?
As for developing it on mac: YAY! I was worried it would be for windows, cause while I do have a virtual machine i don't really like running things on it, especially not stuff for art or graphics.
The program does sound a bit complex though to run it solely from the terminal… How do you know what part of the terrain you're working on then? or does it have a visual output and just not a user interface with buttons and stuff to click on?
Also, don't worry about hijacking the thread, I am really interested and as far as I know there's no other place do discuss software development in this forum, right?
@world: It is, and yes it does seasons are easy as in they don't really exist as such. The balls you saw in the picture above emit temperature streams -cold and warm- which are relatively stable in their strength and intensity. The effect is that the further south you go, the warmer it gets. Of course there is variation and there are temperature storms but they are mostly irregular.
I could say a lot about the other stuff as well, but beware: I've been working on this stuff for over ten years, still don't have all the answers and this is not a world building forum so I kinda don't want to give book-long explanations that don't really belong here…
But I'm always happy to explain more in PMs or something like that if you really want to hear it.
As for the shape: Does anyone actually know why Africa is shaped that way? Would be interesting in light of this problem!
Oh and as for the map in general: I'll have to cut back the time I spend on this for the next week, I have to write five papers and as good as I am at denial, I probably should get something done. I'll be in trouble as it is already. So I apologize in advance for not updating as frequently next week
edit: One last thing that I just can't keep to myself right now: i just bought a graphic tablet! I'm very excited about this, wanted one since I was 13 or so but then I turned to oil painting and forgot about it - but the past few days here really got me back to drawing, especially stuff from my world… The website has way too few illustrations and scanning them and then reworking them into usable digital images is just a real pain. Sooo I'm SO excited right now!