[MUD-Dev] Re: Terrain/Landmass & GIF/BMP

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 7 Oct 1998, quzah [sotfhome] wrote:
> The first is this: I am developing a world generator of
> sorts, that with a few parameters will generate the entire
> mud world. It will take into account the following info:
>    sizeX (width of world west to east)
>    sizeY (length of world north to south)
>    clustering (continents/small islands/large islands/etc)
>    "hillyness" (flat/small hills/mountains/etc)
>    mineral richness (frequency of mineral deposits)
>    temperature (over all cold/mild/warm/hot/etc)
>    on land water supplies (rivers/lakes/etc [amount of])
>    wetness (over all very dry/dry/moderate/damp/very wet/etc)

Sounds like what you're interested in is terrain fractals.  There's a ton
of literature on this topic, unfortunately I don't have any references
handy.  Check your local science bookstore or do a web search for
fractally generated terrain (Vista Pro might be a cool package to play
with) for a start.

> at the world. I was thinking that if there is a simple way to
> output to a GIF or BMP, then I'd be able to just open up the

I'm lazy and just use libgif/libjpeg/whatever.  If you don't want to use
the actually libraries, you can always go into the source and rip out the
relevant parts.  Or, if you *really* want to get down and dirty, you can
get exact file formats from:

http://www.wotsit.org

Adam W.