[MUD-Dev] Wilderness

[Nathan F. Yospe]

John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> said:
> Sean Kelly writes:
>> From: "Freeman, Jeff" <jfreeman at verant.com>

>>> First, obvious solution was to allow the players to convert
>>> wilderness to explored terrain, and then just dynamically create
>>> some more wilderness.  That also has a negative aspect to it, in
>>> that exploring randomly generated terrain is boring and
>>> pointless ("the more things change, the more they stay the same"
>>> - once you've explored one bit of randomly created terrain,
>>> you've explored them all.

>> Agreed.  Randomly generated wilderness is no fun.  Though fractal
>> terrain is quite realistic and discovering interesting areas
>> might lead to settlements and other community-forming
>> opportunities.  Perhaps if the players were provided with
>> sufficient ability to permanently shape their environment it
>> would work well.

> Algorithmic generation of terrain produces perfectly wonderful
> results.  You just have to work on the algorithm.  You don't stop
> with fractal generation.  You alter the algorithm in different
> areas and at different fractal levels.  You make the vegetation
> type dependent on latitudes, altitudes, inclines and general
> locations.  The same with the wildlife.  Run a simulator to
> produce an expansionist empire that then collapses and leaves
> ruins here and there.  Run batch generators to produce individual
> features that fit into the world terrain matrix, like caves, ruins
> and such.  To be honest, I haven't figured out an efficient way to
> handle flowing water.  I think it'll boil down to a batch
> simulator.

Nope.  Least energy gradient simulation with random reseeding for
flood overflow.  Easiest way to do it is with an n-propogated GA
during basic terrain generation.  What gets tricky is handling *air*
flow for cooler and warmer regions relative to mountains and lakes,
wind eroded deserts and valleys, and, once the terrain is generated,
maintaining it for the reduction-to-regeneratable of player effects,
for runtime wind and rain patterns, and for scent propogation.

Using an n-propogating genetic algorithm for fluid flow, with seeds
for replication on speed and volume in a given node, gives a
near-enough to work with, faster than vectorized, almost congruent
with known behavior due to surface tension (you can adjust the
random reseeding radius with a near constant relative to boiling
point to get correct behavior for a number of other fluids; eg
ammonia or tar flow... doesn't work with too much organic
composition, though.  Tar is less-than-perfect, and has at least a
degree of added viscousity relative to its boiling point that I
attribute to organic interactions of polymers) and simple to
implement, if conceptually complex, solution.

HTH.

--
Nathan F. Yospe - Physicist, Artist, Programmer, Writer, JOAT with a SAK


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