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prostheticknowledge: “ Generating fantasy maps Coding project by Martin O'Leary who explains how his Twitter bot Uncharted Atlas generates imaginary maps: “ I wanted to make maps that look like something you’d find at the back of one of the cheap...

prostheticknowledge:

Generating fantasy maps

Coding project by Martin O'Leary who explains how his Twitter bot Uncharted Atlas generates imaginary maps:

I wanted to make maps that look like something you’d find at the back of one of the cheap paperback fantasy novels of my youth. I always had a fascination with these imagined worlds, which were often much more interesting than whatever luke-warm sub-Tolkien tale they were attached to.

At the same time, I wanted to play with terrain generation with a physical basis. There are loads of articles on the internet which describe terrain generation, and they almost all use some variation on a fractal noise approach, either directly (by adding layers of noise functions), or indirectly (e.g. through midpoint displacement). These methods produce lots of fine detail, but the large-scale structure always looks a bit off. Features are attached in random ways, with no thought to the processes which form landscapes. I wanted to try something a little bit different.

There are some interactive sections in the essay, which you can find here

(Source: mewo2.com, via fleshcoatedtechnology)

Aug 11, 2016

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