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Ask HN: How to generate random terrain

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Re: Ask HN: How to generate random terrain

#31
post #19

You can take a look at my master thesis (Charack: Pseudo-infinite 3D virtual world generation). It's in a pre-alpha stage, but I think you can find something useful (besides the wide range of similar tools and works I found during my research). Project link: http://code.google.com/p/charack/

Oooh, beautiful...

Thanks! :)

Re: Ask HN: How to generate random terrain

#32
post #19

You can take a look at my master thesis (Charack: Pseudo-infinite 3D virtual world generation). It's in a pre-alpha stage, but I think you can find something useful (besides the wide range of similar tools and works I found during my research). Project link: http://code.google.com/p/charack/

This really is a wealth of knowledge and practical code. I know what I'll be spending my evening reading now. ;-] Thanks!

Thank you for the nice words. About the reading, at http://charack.googlecode.com/svn/ you can find my thesis text and a full paper. Unfortunately the master thesis is available in Brazilian Portuguese only (I really had no time to translate it to English), but the paper is written in English ;)

Re: Ask HN: How to generate random terrain

#33
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These look great - what method did you use to define the borders on the risk-like map?

You mean the border between the hued territories? Roughly: 1) Randomly pick center points of territories, guarantee a minimum distance for best looks 2) Compute the Voronoi raster, i.e. for each pixel find the nearest territory center 3) Figure out which territories border which, based on the Voronoi raster 4) Compute borders for each territory by taking the midpoints of edges in the territory neighborhood graph. Use…

Thank you so much for the detailed response!

Re: Ask HN: How to generate random terrain

#34

I did some work on random terrain once. You can see the results here: http://steveasleep.appspot.com/pyworldgen If this is what you're looking for, I can try to explain it.

Cool. I made these: http://flywheel.be/wouter/maps/ Similar in concept, I guess. What technique are you using? I always start from fractal + voronoi but I think that's fundamentally flawed; going from raster to vector is silly when you could have gone straight to vector.

I'm starting with a triangle and expanding random sides with triangles or trapezoids, filling in tightly acute angles as well.
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