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[inteuniso]

Oooo this is shaping up to be good. I can't wait until you get a working demo out.

[Lord Dullard]

I'm slogging deeper into history gen day by day. It's a bit hard to figure out the best approach - to decide whether to first generate villages then populate them with original inhabitants, or to first create the inhabitants and have them found villages. I feel like it's a bit of a 'chicken and the egg' situation to code. I think I'm going to go with the 'original settlers found villages' plan, though, merely because it is more logically appealing to me.

Also, the island-finding/lake-finding algorithms have been improved to the point of being an order of magnitude faster, mostly because I discovered a more efficient way of calculating their positions completely by dumb luck. So the time to find lakes/islands has been reduced (on my PC, at least) from an average of ~30 seconds or so to an average of ~3 seconds or thereabouts - and it's far more accurate, to boot (I haven't seen an incorrect label yet).

[Mephansteras]

I'm slogging deeper into history gen day by day. It's a bit hard to figure out the best approach - to decide whether to first generate villages then populate them with original inhabitants, or to first create the inhabitants and have them found villages. I feel like it's a bit of a 'chicken and the egg' situation to code. I think I'm going to go with the 'original settlers found villages' plan, though, merely because it is more logically appealing to me.

Might be interesting to have different groups have different ideas on 'proper' places to settle. Let them wander a bit to find an acceptable spot. Might make for some interesting world-gen effects if you can have them interact at this stage. Old grudges, mixed tribes, that sort of thing.

[Bricks]

I think either method should be fine.  You could spend a few thousand years in world gen evolving human brains and culture so they get up to feudal or classical civilizations, but the end result will probably look exactly the same.  On the other hand, simulating all of that would allow your active gods to have more of a direct influence in the shaping of society, which would be very unique.  For example, an expansive desert civilization makes very little sense in our world, but if a god granted them some means of creating potable water (like a magical urn), you would now have a scenario where taking the civ's artifact would basically force them to collapse.

Thinking about that brings back bad, Civ-related memories.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

IF I TURNED OFF ALL THE OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, WHY AM I STILL BEING CONQUERED BY PIRATES?  AHHHHHHHHHHH!

[Outcast Orange]

Thinking about that brings back bad, Civ-related memories.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

IF I TURNED OFF ALL THE OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, WHY AM I STILL BEING CONQUERED BY PIRATES?  AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Pirates can spawn from your own people.
You think they are their own civilization?
They had to come from somewhere.

[Lord Dullard]

I took a little detour from history gen to experiment with generating rivers (I know, I keep saying terrain gen is over then going back and changing things).

It was more complicated than I thought, because essentially it required writing a simple pathfinding algorithm. I don't quite have it finished yet, but I've got it nearly-working and I'm going to plan on adding a few more complex details so that the rivers generated are more natural looking (since an ideal pathfinder tends to take the very shortest route possible, which more often than not ends up looking rather boring).

I'd probably have it done by now, but I went out with coworkers last night and had a bit too much 'Dwarven Ale'... oi. Now I understand the need to constantly stay underground... blasted sun...

[Willfor]

This is where the height map can help you a lot. Have the rivers always flow downhill from their source, and they will always eventually find a body of water. Or make one themselves.

[Nadaka]

This has a few river running resources,
http://pcg.wikidot.com/pcg-algorithm:fractal-river-basins

The last link caught my eye, but I am not sure if it can be adapted to your terrain generation.
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/mountains.gi93.pdf

[Servant Corps]

Thinking about that brings back bad, Civ-related memories.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

IF I TURNED OFF ALL THE OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, WHY AM I STILL BEING CONQUERED BY PIRATES?  AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Pirates can spawn from your own people.
You think they are their own civilization?
They had to come from somewhere.

Actually, I believe they are their civilization. You can generate new barbarian units by finding those "huts" for example.

[Outcast Orange]

Actually, I believe they are their civilization. You can generate new barbarian units by finding those "huts" for example.

Nope.
Barbarians are definitely not a civilization.
Neither are pirates.
They are fun little side features to make the game interesting.

[Djohaal]

Certanly sounds interesting. Will your deities perform miracles on your behalf? This reminds me a lot ol' good actraiser! 

Try using monte carlo approaches to those worldgen parameters as they are one-shot solutions, while monter carlo is a slow method it often produces good results...

[Rafal99]

This has a few river running resources,
http://pcg.wikidot.com/pcg-algorithm:fractal-river-basins

The last link caught my eye, but I am not sure if it can be adapted to your terrain generation.
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/mountains.gi93.pdf

Oh nice. I was just looking for something about river generation for my own project. Thanks!


Edit: This whole site is awesome! So much great stuff to learn there. How could I not find it earlier.

[Avaris]

Awesome! When we can expect new update?

[Lord Dullard]

Now.

Rivers/streams are finished. The  algorithm that determines whether they're a tributary of another river (and consequently whether they should be a river or a smaller stream) took me a few days to sludge through. Trust me when I say that it made writing an A* pathfinder seem like making a 'hello world' program. In fact, at this point it barely resembles what I'd originally envisioned its format would be - but it does seem to eliminate just about all of the visual artifacts and errors.

Here are a couple of sample maps, one with a larger continent and several islands and one that's a vast landmass with many mountains. I've also included the named versions of the maps so you can all see how the final phases before history gen are going to end up looking (remember, even though some names overwrite one another this isn't an issue since in gameplay you'll be able to switch types of labels on/off).

Warning: These files are all quite large (1-2mb):
Sample World 1
Sample World 1 (with names)
Sample World 2
Sample World 2 (with names)

Edit:
It's probably worth noting that rivers are named discreetly like caves to avoid cluttering up the worldgen screen.

Edit no. 2:
And here's what happens if the number of rivers to be generated is cranked way up (from ~150 to ~350). This will never produce an error even in maps without enough mountains to create more rivers, since after a while the algorithm will realize it has no more possible river source locations and give up. However, creating this many rivers does take a while (20-30ish seconds for my PC, probably a LOT longer on a laptop). Eventually things like this will probably be determined by an init file so that individual users can choose whether or not they want to bother.

[Mephansteras]

Most impressive!