Map 34 - The Eastern Reaches of Khaluk

[Carnifex]

We, the mighty brain-eaters, would like to inform you that we've employed brain-less dwarves to flatten the land that lies between us. That way, the carts with the yearly brain supply are easier for our skeleton horses to pull.

[Redrobes]

I meant to mention last night, I love what your doing with this.
I enjoyed going through the pics of your process for creating the terrain.

Thanks, I have tried to textually describe this process a few times so this gave me an opportunity to get some pictures of the stages and now I can just refer people to this post in future. It has come up a lot in the past and I did quite of few of these.

Nice - I think the topography matches a lot with what I was envisioning in my head for my area to the north of you. Let's collaborate on this one, eh, neighbor?

Your welcome to steal the map or height map as a basis for your section if it helps you. But I cant go through the process of doing the contours again if I missed a bit.

We, the mighty brain-eaters, would like to inform you that we've employed brain-less dwarves to flatten the land that lies between us. That way, the carts with the yearly brain supply are easier for our skeleton horses to pull.

I should also like to mention that the standard appareil of the Khalukians is a very tight fitting fully encompasing plate steel helmet with double buckled under chin strap. Most difficult to chew through ! Additionally, a declaration has been made this day that any dwarf seen on the western border will be subject to a short maths exam and those that dont pass shall be executed on the spot. Those living dwarves that skipped math class and dont add up good had better start doing extra home work.

I should look at my neighbours and see what the land form looks like. I just stuck in those mountains in those positions just to get the process running. I think the mountain ranges are a bit fat and need to be modified but its all script based so I can move them pretty easily. I may have to write some special brainless dwarf sub routines to my script if theres some unnatural terraforming going on !

Ok - so this is what it looks like around me.

[Carnifex]

Thanks, I have tried to textually describe this process a few times so this gave me an opportunity to get some pictures of the stages and now I can just refer people to this post in future. It has come up a lot in the past and I did quite of few of these.


Your welcome to steal the map or height map as a basis for your section if it helps you. But I cant go through the process of doing the contours again if I missed a bit.


I should also like to mention that the standard appareil of the Khalukians is a very tight fitting fully encompasing plate steel helmet with double buckled under chin strap. Most difficult to chew through ! Additionally, a declaration has been made this day that any dwarf seen on the western border will be subject to a short maths exam and those that dont pass shall be executed on the spot. Those living dwarves that skipped math class and dont add up good had better start doing extra home work.

I should look at my neighbours and see what the land form looks like. I just stuck in those mountains in those positions just to get the process running. I think the mountain ranges are a bit fat and need to be modified but its all script based so I can move them pretty easily. I may have to write some special brainless dwarf sub routines to my script if theres some unnatural terraforming going on !

Ok - so this is what it looks like around me.

I am really looking forward seeing the maps coming together.

[Redrobes]

Been running it up for a while and found a way to get rid of some of the lakes but it leaves these ridges in the landscape. I may try to fix that up but I doubt it. The lighting on this render is poor and I probably will fix that so theres likely to be some more work with labels etc but for now it will have to do.

### Latest WIP ###

[Redrobes]

Very impressive work on the 3D! The way you did the waters and coasts are excellent as well.

These are really nice, I like the way plan view's transition from forest to mountain, really nice feel.

Thanks, both of water, coast, and mountain colour is done by the shader. What happens is that the terrain simulator exports a number of images as parameters. These are the height the water but also the temperature, the gradient, sediment, flow - a whole bunch of stuff. Then I run that through a programmable shader and that says things like, if its just above the sea level then shade it with sand, a bit higher and it has vegetation then put down trees, below the water line we have sea. There are about 50 of those rules and textures so we have sea weed, wet sand, dry sand, sand dunes, right up to moorland, rock, snow and some other odd ones. So I can change the whole look of the map by changing the shader rules and textures but I dont have to draw the colour in by hand at all. So like I said at the top, doing 3D is more work up front but a whole lot less now that I have it.

You may have seen http://codeflow.org/entries/2011/nov...g-and-erosion/ - written in WebGL and runs in your browser. It made me both sad and happy to see it back when.

The simplest way to release something like that to open source is to put a specific "this software is abandoned; do not contact me about it" notification on the download (and/or point the notification system at an abandoned/ignored e-mail address). I used to get pestered about source code for Wilbur a couple of times a day. That almost entirely stopped when I put the "source not available" notification on the page.

I think I had seen that link but its been ages since I ran it. Running it is not too impressive but I think the code and the fact its done in GL shaders is pretty cool. His explaination of how he is doing it nearly matches up with my way. Were both adding rain and then trying to level out the water and the amount of water transferred across pixels forces different amounts of erosion and the amount of eroded material is taken up as sediment which is then dropped out depening on flow rates. I am also tracking temperature and vegetation and a couple of other things but thats essentially how mine works.

I guess it could be released but its not something I have any plans for. If I can ever get this working on the GPU and can find a set of pareters that make for nice terrains given a guided input then I would probably release it as a black box and put a GUI on it to make these terrains. No plans to do that job tho as it would be hard work.

I am really looking forward seeing the maps coming together.

Oh yeah me too. I do have a particular liking and enthusiasm of these community projects. My mapping app was designed to bring a lot of maps of differing resolutions and styles together so since I have it I have historically done the CWBP overall maps. I think ill probably do this guild world as well. Its nice to zoom into the individual maps at full res and then maybe people will also map some of the cities within them too. If you have not seen my infamous "horses ass" vid on you tube then check out... (Edit: I got that wrong you need to look here instead). That was my old section within the first CWBP we all did. Also I rather like the beach on that Galtini Island - thats what it would look like with the shader if run up close enough.