So, while toying around with the excellent
PerfectWorldDF trying to create a reasonably believable map of Europe to embark to, I inevitably had an experiment to test out how realistic results the DF worldgen creates. So after importing a heightmap of europe and fiddling with the rainfall, drainage, volcanism and savagery maps in order to create worldgen settings that would output a playable, yet mostly realistic world, I let toadys programming do its magic.
To elaborate a little bit, while elevation, rainfall and drainage are set via PerfectWorldDF, temperature, erosion, running rivers, placing civs, etc. are all done by DF.
When I looked at the final map I was quite surprised about how many of the major real world rivers are present in the DF world. Compare the attached maps with the one shown at
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/euriv.htm.
Worldmap
large version:
Worldmap
small version:
The interesting thing is that all the major rivers draining big parts of the continent (Rhine, Danube, Po, Loire, Rhone, Tajo/Tagus) are there. They are even taking pretty much the same routes as their real counterparts. I think that shows how well the rainfall/drainage/rivers mechanism of DF works.
I think it's really fascinating how the DF worldgen generates results like that. It's things like that that keep the science nerd in me hooked to Dwarf Fortress. The inner child is then kept in by all the murdering kittens and whatnot.
Thanks for the great work Toady.
Author
Topic: How realistic worldgen really is (Read 42333 times)