Procedural Worlds - Screenshots

I will keep this thread for screenshot updates.

I've been working on a procedural world generator for a game idea I have. So far I've created a random terrain generator using the well-known diamond-square algorithm. With that I applied humidity and temperature maps with the same technique, overlaying it on the terrain to map out the different biomes, such as deserts, tundras, grasslands, jungles, etc. Humidity and temperature parameters are adjustable by the user.

Since then I've added a random name generator for the world itself (renameable by the user if he wishes) and now I'm currently tweaking the town and city generator. So far I have town and city placement based on reasonable "living conditions." Basically if the place is too cold or too arid for permanent settlements the generator will avoid those locations for town/city placement. Here are some screenshots!

(The number of towns and cities are lowered in the screenshots to avoid cluttering of names. I will be removing the names and placing hoverable dots that will display their names, this will make it look a lot cleaner, I think)

​

Things I'm working on:
1. Name generator for the cities and towns. I want to add a little bit of logic, add "harbour" to the end of a town name for being near the coast, perhaps "oasis" for desert themed towns, etc.

2. Randomly generated city/town parameters. I'd like to give each generated town and city a bit of personality by adding a population count, even go as far as demographics, cultural diets, politics, etc. That will take a lot of work so initially I may not do all that, but perhaps start on the basics and do more later.

More to come later! You can follow my work here or support my work by visiting my page: Bit Breakers

EDIT: One more screenshot of an arid and cold climate. This is BARELY suitable for any sort of civilization, yet if you wished to create a world like this, you can. :]

ALSO, I know these worlds are ambitiously large, those are just numbers that can be changed. These are the largest of large maps. The largest number I've seen my engine produce was a 68,000 square mile map. Yikes!

​

 

How are the town positions picked? They seem to enjoy either water access, or warm climates in those pictures. Some kind of softening could be used though on the edge of the terrain as some parts seem very sharp.

 

Looks very cool!

 

Thank you for the kind replies and feedback Windexglow Mr. Snake. It is motivating to hear! Windexglow, I wanted to add some logic to the placement of the cities and settlements so a few parameters I've set up were the minimum requirements on humidity and temperature for cities and towns. It's natural (in my mind) that the most ideal climates house the bigger populations. The more extreme climates house smaller populated communities. Looking at the world map you'll find that most (if not all) the cities in the world that have a population over 1,000,000 are within the temperate zones above the subtropic and below the subarctic regions. That's the mindset I used when formulating the system to decide what areas are deemed "appropriate" for a town or city.

As far as the "sharp" edges, if you're referring to the broken islands and what not, that is an effect I like. After all, these are supposed to be massive worlds. For example, the first world, Tiurellum, has a landmass of 48,000 square miles (almost 220 miles by 220 miles). Those little islands can be half a mile to 5 miles long. The ultimate plan of these generators is to allow the player to actually run around a fully fleshed out, albeit procedurally generated, world. An ambitious project, but I have ample free time and I've been having much fun with it so far! Does your opinion still stand that it looks too sharp? Even at the scale of the worlds?

 

Yes, but it's probably caused more by the AA compression of the image.

Things like this are immensely cool - and there's so much you can do if you get bored with something. You could add in some kind of climate system that accounts for ocean and land, hooking it up into humidity temperature easily. Or rivers. ectect.

 

Thank you for your feedback, perhaps adding some AA will reduce the jaggedness! I've already worked on replacing the town names with bullets, next step will be adding mouse-hovering functionality to provide a full description of selected town/city.

 

Now, if only you could procedural create terrains for each pixel to make an entire world XD Talk about overkill. Could be fun if you knew how to manipulate terrains at all. An even bigger undertaking would be to then procedurally generate cities and roads, etc. XD Talk about a lot of work, but would be so cool if finished. (not to mention a big money maker if you wanted it to be)

 

Who were you talking to??!?! I guess I have to spill it now. The road I'm going down is in fact one that will sample each "pixel" or 4 vertex plane to in fact render a 1/8th mile detailed version of that location. This will be procedurally generated as the players explore, saving it to the server. Cities, towns, and roads will be procedurally generated. Also I plan on using the "rogue-like" dungeon generation technique for dungeons, etc. I've yet to announce this due to the fact that I'm just one person, it's a big, BIG ambitious project. I'm taking it one step at a time not to get ahead of myself, nor to let the community get ahead of themselves

 

I wish this was on the asset store. I would definitely buy it

 

Cool, procedural generation can be difficult to `make human`, looks like you're well on your way.