Worlds

Behold!  For I am the creator of worlds!   …well, at least world data.

I’ve been working on the world map generation for Fief with some amazing results.  The random map generator creates a mostly square island continent 256 x 256 “manors” in size.  With the assumption that a “manor” is about a 2 x 2 mile square.  That creates about 65536 game world tiles (although ocean and mountain ones won’t be very habitable).  Here are a few things included in the model:

Height map generation using midpoint-displacement (diamond-square) algorithms.
Temperature map that generally goes from warmer in the south to colder in the north.
Rainfall map that uses height-map topography to find land shadows for rainfall using a random wind direction.
Waterways flow map that generates rivers based on high rainfall areas and has them connect to create larger waterways (also carves the terrain with realistic erosion).
Vegetation map that uses the elevation and rainfall data to populate the land with vegetation.

Here is one example:

Here’s is a combination heightmap/rainfall map.  Color indicates the amount of rainfall (red=dry, blue=wet). And brightness of the pixel indicates the elevation with higher elevations being brighter (like typical height maps).

Combination elevation map (lighter is higher) and rainfall (redder is dry, bluer is wet).

Here is the resulting biome/vegetation map with rivers left out for now.

Vegetation map without rivers.

Here’s the color key for biomes.

Biome index.

Here’s the water flow map, brighter waterways have more water flowing through them and are larger.

Map of the water ways (lighter is larger waterway).

Here’s the biome/vegetation map with the waterways included, the darker the waterway the more flow it has.

Vegetation map with rivers.