What is this?

[Gauteamus]

A nice tutorial to write fractal heightmap generators:

http://gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html

[sabinati]

Frankly I think the whole worldgen routine should be scraped. I wrote half of a better one and I don't even know C++!

yeah i have to agree, something like this would be far superior

[Pacho]

Needs rivers though.

[Yolan]

Yeah, add rivers, and take into account that we only have 'shallow walkable' and 'deep swim' depths, and we got ourselves a map.

Look, considering its alpha, I wouldn't give a rats if the devs nuked this current map. In fact, I'd welcome it if the new one was more like above.

I enjoyed sampling this map, but yeah, its got its issues.

I would support a map reset after:

1) Boats, bridges, and better road transport is in.
2) Several new buildings are in.
3) Village code is extended to be suitable for towns containing more than a number of close personal acquaintances.
4) Forest/grassland tiles are made dynamic, and forest tiles have a mild auto seed rate.
5) Mines are overhauled to be exploratory, multiple level, and even dangerous. Tracks, mine carts, can be made worth while if ore veins when actually found are made much more beneficial in terms of their % chance of turning into bars.

How do other people feel about this? What do you think would be a good reason for a map reset? What would you like to see in a new world, apart from the above, very sweet ocean capable map design?

Myself, I am leaning towards saying that the devs somewhat over compensated in the rarity of mines in this map, but I could be convinced otherwise. I guess it depends on how well future features enable us to connect up distant places.

EDIT: Seriously though, if we get those above five points in, and I think we can expect most of them in the long run, plus a map reset, we have ourselves something approaching a very solid game. Add code for warfare, new monsters, a replacement for the current LP system, and seasons... and my god.... *droool*

[Peter]

I was talking about an improved world-generator here.

Needs rivers though.

This is true. The best solution is to generate the world in segments, then use postprocessing to add rivers, erosion, and gameplay elements like trees, geologic points, and quality points.

The nice thing about my generator, though it wasn't clear in my first post, was that since it only ever processes one tile at a time, it will always be consistent. That is, no matter what order you query tiles in, they will always produce the same result given the same X,Y co-ords. This means that for one thing, landforms could extend from one megamap to the next seamlessly, including SEAS.

Deep blue briny SEAS

Great sloshing SEAS of wind-tossed waves.

Oceans, even.

Neptunian expanses of beautiful water.

Which would make an excellent place to put
BOATS.

[Yolan]

Deep blue briny SEAS

Great sloshing SEAS of wind-tossed waves.

Oceans, even.

Neptunian expanses of beautiful water.

Which would make an excellent place to put
BOATS.

And who doesn't want to set up a Buccaneer's Den on some distant island away from all those pesky rangers, perfect for launching the long boats on coastal raids? =D

[Hamel]

I, for one, would welcome another map reset with open arms if we got a ocean-with-continents world. (Especially if it looked like Peter's map) Like certain people suggested in a particular thread some time ago. ;)

It would definitely make exploring and claiming land much easier. "Thog found island! Thog like island, so Thog claim island. Thog now name island: 'Thog's Island'. You no go on Thog's Island, or Thog smash you into goo."

[sabinati]

how long was the old world in existence?

[Potjeh]

Hell, I'd agree even with a character reset if we got seas in return. Seas are No1 on my most desired features list.

[Devour]

To be honest, I don't like the whole "random generation thing". Maybe random generation INSIDE a defined continent or maybe on the open seas for archipelagos, but I'd rather have an actually constant world so that we can explore the entirety of it and name it etc.

Hell, I'd even draw the map for you guys to plot out.