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

[Chris Gray]

[quzah:]

 >Does anyone know a link or quick formula I could look at to do
 >something along these lines? I can just toss out random +/- to
 >a given coordinate, and check its neighbors to make sure there
 >is not too big a jump, but I think that would be inefficient
 >and or ineffective in the long run. Any suggestions?

No specific links or formulas, but fractal terrain generation
is fairly standard stuff, I think. What I found with my playing
around with it is that if the average random adjustment is smaller
than you would normally have for the midrange of the bisections,
then you tend to get a final result that is a lot of small islands
or small hills. Larger than normal random changes tend to yield
a smaller number of larger continents. For example, for a 256 x 256
grid, you might use random modifications that go like:

    32, 32, 32, 22, 14, 8, 4, 2

So, for the first 3 division of the square, you modify by rnd(32). For
the next rnd(22), etc. Its the middle numbers of this set that seem
to change the nature of the terrain. Its not terribly controllable,
however, so I suggest trying out various random seeds, and using
one that gives a good result.

 >After finally generating a world mass, I need a way to "see"
 >what it looks like.

How about just writing a binary file and then reading that in with
a Java program or something? Then you should be able to stuff them
into an Image somehow, and display it directly.

--
Chris Gray     cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA