Archipelago generator

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stefanstr
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Archipelago generator

Post by stefanstr » Thu Oct 01, 2015 2:11 am

Looking at a world map today, I had an idea. I realized that my maps don't have nearly enough islands and island chains compared to the Earth. Would it be possible to include an "archipelago generator" in OWM? You would select its borders like a landmass or would draw a path and it would fill the area with fractally-generated islands. You could select the percentage of water and the average island size. What do you think?


A lovely KS update, BTW. Can't wait to use that gorgeous artwork.

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Kanchou
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by Kanchou » Fri Oct 02, 2015 3:02 am

stefanstr wrote:Looking at a world map today, I had an idea. I realized that my maps don't have nearly enough islands and island chains compared to the Earth. Would it be possible to include an "archipelago generator" in OWM? You would select its borders like a landmass or would draw a path and it would fill the area with fractally-generated islands. You could select the percentage of water and the average island size. What do you think?
That's a tough one. The not-so-secret secret is that world generation is where we would like to take OWM next. We have a ton of ideas for it, but are concerned about scope creep for the first release.
We'll leave it as a maybe for V1.0.1 and for sure for future versions :)

(Partition tool can help you a bit there, at least it gives nice looking islands that look like they fit together, though I understand is a lot more tedious that way).
stefanstr wrote: A lovely KS update, BTW. Can't wait to use that gorgeous artwork.
Thank you!! And that was only a very small sample, we are very happy with it too :).

- Alejandro
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stefanstr
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by stefanstr » Fri Oct 02, 2015 4:28 am

I fully understand the need to avoid feature creep. Even if you add it in v.2.0, I won’t complain. I can draw my islands manually in the meantime. It’s just so damn time-consuming. (BTW: The partition tool is more useful for emulating rifts between continental plates. Island chains don’t really form that way.)

And the topic of world generation is one that I have a lot of thoughts about. Be forewarned that I won’t be able to shut up once you open it up for discussion. ;)

If I may offer some initial thoughts: please don’t make your world generation algorithms fractal-based. Or at least not exclusively fractal-based. I know going the tectonics route is much harder, but the results are infinitely better. I think the soundest approach is to use tectonics for a high-level outline of the world, and to fill in the details with fractals (or even better: with an erosion simulation, if you are feeling ambitions).

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Kanchou
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by Kanchou » Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:28 am

stefanstr wrote:I fully understand the need to avoid feature creep. Even if you add it in v.2.0, I won’t complain. I can draw my islands manually in the meantime. It’s just so damn time-consuming. (BTW: The partition tool is more useful for emulating rifts between continental plates. Island chains don’t really form that way.)
Good point, this would be volcanic islands like Bermuda?
stefanstr wrote: And the topic of world generation is one that I have a lot of thoughts about. Be forewarned that I won’t be able to shut up once you open it up for discussion. ;)
LOL. We would love to hear your thoughts once we open that discussion, so don't hold back we we do! :)
stefanstr wrote: If I may offer some initial thoughts: please don’t make your world generation algorithms fractal-based. Or at least not exclusively fractal-based. I know going the tectonics route is much harder, but the results are infinitely better. I think the soundest approach is to use tectonics for a high-level outline of the world, and to fill in the details with fractals (or even better: with an erosion simulation, if you are feeling ambitions).
That's part of why we dropped it from this campaign. We did some investigation and testing and realized we needed smarter/more comprehensive algorithms. We figured it would be better to wait for a second Kickstarter if OWM does well(crossing fingers), than do a "half-assed" job.

- Alejandro
Alejandro S. Canosa
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stefanstr
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by stefanstr » Tue Oct 06, 2015 3:01 am

Kanchou wrote:
stefanstr wrote:I fully understand the need to avoid feature creep. Even if you add it in v.2.0, I won’t complain. I can draw my islands manually in the meantime. It’s just so damn time-consuming. (BTW: The partition tool is more useful for emulating rifts between continental plates. Island chains don’t really form that way.)
Good point, this would be volcanic islands like Bermuda?
Yes, that is what I had in mind. Although being able to generate continental islands would be nice also.
That's part of why we dropped it from this campaign. We did some investigation and testing and realized we needed smarter/more comprehensive algorithms. We figured it would be better to wait for a second Kickstarter if OWM does well(crossing fingers), than do a "half-assed" job.
A smart decision. A second KS you say. Would it be for OWM v. 2.0 or a complementary program? (I will gladly support you again provided I have my Mac version of OWM 1 before that.)

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Kanchou
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by Kanchou » Tue Oct 06, 2015 8:26 am

Yes, anything like that would be once we've released and worked out issues for OWM.
A complex set of new features like that would probably be an optional plugin/add-on. We would want to keep it the same program if at all possible.

However, smaller tools like just the archipelago generator would come from small functional patches, V1.X's. A separate campaign/development would only be needed for something of the scope of full world generation.

- Alejandro
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stefanstr
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by stefanstr » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:00 pm

Makes sense, thank you Alejandro.

If you can get world generation right, I would definitely back you again. The current world-generation tools are rather lackluster. Would you be looking at the “real deal,” i.e., plate tectonic simulation on a sphere + climate simulation + erosion? Or would you be cutting corners?

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Kanchou
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by Kanchou » Sun Oct 18, 2015 10:26 pm

stefanstr wrote:Makes sense, thank you Alejandro.

If you can get world generation right, I would definitely back you again. The current world-generation tools are rather lackluster. Would you be looking at the “real deal,” i.e., plate tectonic simulation on a sphere + climate simulation + erosion? Or would you be cutting corners?
Thank you!

I'm not sure without looking into it a lot deeper than we have to get an idea of the kind of time necessary to make it happen. But, if we do it as a part of another Kickstarter and not just an addtion via an update, we would want it to be something that is better or least comparable to the solutions already there. We know some by name, but we haven't looked into what kind of results they produce.

Any particular programs/implementations we should measure our ideas against? ;)

- Alejandro
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stefanstr
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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by stefanstr » Mon Oct 19, 2015 6:48 pm

Kanchou wrote: Any particular programs/implementations we should measure our ideas against? ;)
Definitely. :)

I am not even deigning fractal generators a mention. They are crap and shouldn’t be used. ;) This is what I was able to find in terms of tectonic-based generators and what I think of them:

1) Tectonics.js http://davidson16807.github.io/tectonics.js/

The good: simulation is on a sphere which leads to good landshapes. You can take screenshots at various stages if you want to also think about the evolution in your world and how the animals migrated, etc. You can also save the view of the map boundaries which helps to understand which areas might have tectonic activity, ie. earthquakes and such.
The bad: artifacts, arbitrary resetting of the continent cycle, generated climate assumes Earth-like parameters.

2) Worldengine https://github.com/Mindwerks/worldengine

The good: an awesome climate simulator, including erosion and rain distribution.
The bad: the simulation is on a plane which leads to unnatural landshapes and makes it necessary for the program to remove any polar landmasses b/c they’d be distorted.

3) Worldbuilder http://experilous.com/1/blog/post/proce ... generation

(I don’t own the software he’s working on, so I’m only commenting on the free demo.)

The good: a reasonable compromise between a real simulation and a tectonic-based pseudo-simulation with good results. Also a reasonable way to approach climate.
The bad: some of the climate simulation has nothing to do with how climate really works. E.g., he basically picks random wind directions instead of working with the model of atmospheric circulation.

***

If I had to choose and pick from the three above, I would take a mix of the landmass simulation from 1 and 3, and add the climate simulation from 2.

My “perfect worldbuilder” would also make it possible to tweak the astrophysical constants: e.g., choose a hotter sun, or another axial tilt, or another orbital eccentricity, and have the program run a simulation to get the right biomes, etc. This would be a monumental undertaking, though, depending on how many options you would want to have. I have a bit of experience in doing this stuff by hand, and a few useful papers I’ve collected over the years.

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Re: Archipelago generator

Post by Jimsocks » Mon Nov 19, 2018 11:37 pm

As for the original request of this thread, I would also super love an archipelago generator. Would save tons of time if implemented well with plenty of tweakable settings. There is another thread in this forum asking for the same thing (island chain tool or something) so I think a few of us have run into the time-sink that is archipelagos.

Start and end points with option of straight line, Bezier curve, or fractal paths- how many islands within the path, island size variant parameters, distance between island variance parameters, and coastline generation options would be a kickass start to a tool for this. Also the option to either move/resize/reshape the path of the archipelago as a single unit, OR to break the islands apart and manipulate them separately. That'd be killer.

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