Who made this landscape generator?

ID:826525
 
Jun 21 2012, 4:31 am
Well, I have kept a collection of interesting libraries for a while, and since the big website upgrade, some things have been lost.

I found this particularly interesting library that seems to use some impressive algorithms to generate landscapes with lots of little dots. It's not very efficient, but I think it's worth not losing. It's intriguing because it will never show you the same landscape twice. It's always a different looking one.

It's an interesting demo, but I don't recall who made it or what the intended purpose of it was, so I'm providing it for download here, in case someone knows. It may just be a demo, but might have useful information.

Here is an screenshot of it, to show what it does:


Here is link to download the source files. Just compile and click Generate Map to render a random landscape.

Pretty cool isn't it? Remember I didn't make this, so let us know if you know who did.
Jun 21 2012, 8:15 am
Didn't Zaltron make this?
Jun 21 2012, 8:45 am
I thought it was Zaltron too but I couldn't find the original post about it.
Jun 21 2012, 8:46 am
In response to Forum_account
Me neither.
Jun 21 2012, 9:15 am
In response to Forum_account
Forum_account wrote:
I thought it was Zaltron too but I couldn't find the original post about it.

Did we lose all of the posts in the creations forum? I can't find any of the ones I remember.

It would make sense if it was Zaltron's, as it uses the same color scheme as his Plasma Fractal Map Generator demo.
Jun 21 2012, 11:51 am
I remember there being at least two plasma fractal map generators. One was 2D topdown, the other was this. Zaltron definitely made one of them.
Jun 21 2012, 11:58 am
Zaltron made the plasma fractal map generator on 2D topdown for sure, as found here: click. As for this one, I don't know, I thought it was Zaltron aswel.
Jun 21 2012, 2:17 pm
It was Zaltron. It's listed in BYOND and Within #12 with a similar picture, but the forum link to his post appears broken.
Jun 21 2012, 2:47 pm (Edited on Jun 21 2012, 3:19 pm)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rxupbc

I uploaded my heightmap generator (my implementation of the same method used to generate the map shown here) if anyone is interested in it. It's simpler, faster, and the code is easier to read than Zaltron's demo.

If you have any idea about how heightmaps work or what they're used for, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to use my code from the demo file included.

You need my DebugDraw library installed (http://www.byond.com/developer/Koil/DebugDraw) in order to run the demo.

I also have a 1D version of this. http://www.sendspace.com/file/gfgknx if you're interested. Also requires DebugDraw for the demo.

These are not intended to be libraries, and I am terrible at explaining things, so I may not be making any sense with my usage explanations. So I hope they're useful to you.
Jun 22 2012, 2:47 am
I guess it would make sense if it was Zaltron. He makes some pretty cool stuff.

Well, the real question here is: What has happened to these posts and where did they go?

Koil, that looks super awesome! It's pixel perfect, and could pass for stormy clouds. Your demo seems to use a completely different method for calculating the heightmaps. If only these things were faster; then we might be able to create particle effects in BYOND.
Jun 22 2012, 4:34 am
In response to Multiverse7
Multiverse7 wrote:
then we might be able to create particle effects in BYOND.

You can already create particle effects, Zaltron has a demo for it, haha. It's not feasible, though.

Jun 22 2012, 4:52 am
In response to Multiverse7
If things were faster, a lot more than particle effects could be done. But slowness is what we get for having a lot of built-in features that lean towards a limited set of genres. Darn DUNG, sabotaging our dreams.
Jun 22 2012, 5:07 am (Edited on Jun 22 2012, 5:17 am)
In response to Multiverse7
Multiverse7 wrote:
I guess it would make sense if it was Zaltron. He makes some pretty cool stuff.

Well, the real question here is: What has happened to these posts and where did they go?

Koil, that looks super awesome! It's pixel perfect, and could pass for stormy clouds. Your demo seems to use a completely different method for calculating the heightmaps. If only these things were faster; then we might be able to create particle effects in BYOND.

It's the same method. I was the one that got Zaltron interested in terrain generation and plasma fractals a long time ago, which led him to make that demo. There are several different ways you could go about implementing it, but they all do the same thing. I used that and a couple other things to generate maps such as http://i.imgur.com/nHbdD.png (added noise to it with Photoshop to make it look a little better.)
Jun 22 2012, 5:19 am
Interesting. As for particle effects, if you don't need fancy collisions, you can just export them from another program as animations and import them to DMI as big icons. In that sense, there wouldn't really be much limitation.
Jun 22 2012, 9:50 am
In response to Multiverse7
Multiverse7 wrote:
Interesting. As for particle effects, if you don't need fancy collisions, you can just export them from another program as animations and import them to DMI as big icons. In that sense, there wouldn't really be much limitation.

Yep. I already do this in Faction Wars 2. This is still limited though, since nicer particle effects would be more dynamic and behave accordingly to newtonian physics.

It's a good idea to render several different versions for the same particle effect to add some variety to the effects. When you do this, however, it's easy to bloat the rsc.