Not a river in a forest; a forest of rivers. That makes sense, right? In this post, we’ll cover the first algorithm within Demiurge that can answer real questions about the map. How many major rivers are there? Which is the longest? What are the major watersheds? These and other similar questions all depend on …
This is going to be, by far, the most technical and least prosaic post I’ve yet written for this site. Following up on the overview of Brownian trees I presented in Part 1, this post will be dedicated to enumerating and explaining the modified Brownian tree used in Demiurge. In other words, we will be …
In the last Demiurge post, I concluded by noting that the first step of a hydrology-first terrain generation system must be river system generation. Today, we get to take that first step. At last the real journey begins. Of Grammars and Triangles Almost every problem has been tackled before, and river network generation is no …
Geology and hydrology are the two great demiurges of the real world. Geological forces, we believe, war endlessly underground with unfathomable power, their eons-long struggle crushing mighty mountains toward the sky. Amidst these eons, hydrological forces sculpt the landscape granule by granule, each scratch a tiny victory in their endless endeavor to shave the mountains …
I avoided the term procedural generation in my first post about Demiurge because I didn’t want to define it. However, since Demiurge itself is most accurately described as, “a procedural terrain generation engine,” I should probably clarify what that means. Procedural generation broadly refers to the creation (generation) of some form of data by means …
It’s a very good word; I was quite pleased when I learned of it. The idea of demigod whose responsibility is to shape the world — not as a creator, or at least not an absolute one, but as a craftsman — was exactly what I needed. You see, I discovered this word while I was looking for a good name for my newly-created “world building” software. The more I thought about the name Demiurge, the more perfect I realized it was.