Polygonal Map Generation For Games

This is very cool. I recognized the website right away, because I've used Amit's excellent resources on pathfinding in the past while working on games.<p><a href="http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/" rel="nofollow">http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/</a>

This is cool, but my big problem with games using techniques like this is that they tend to end up feeling soulless. I guess it would be fine for a game where the players create the soul of the game during the course of play (something like a Civilization game, or maybe an economic-focused RTS or MMORTS). But for games where timescales are short and you're not going to build anything yourself, map designers are better off, you know, designing.

I did a talk on the random level generator in Path of Exile if anyone is interested: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcM9Ynfzll0" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcM9Ynfzll0</a><p>I'm not a great public speaker, so I apologise for the "Um"s and "Ah"s all the time.<p>We have two different generators and this video talks about both of them.

Brilliant handling of rivers. Everything I've seen in the past is either error-prone (rivers flowing uphill) or computationally expensive (needing to simulate erosion &#38; deposition)

Would love to see this applied to generate much larger, more expansive worlds.<p>To me, "an island is an island is an island" and they all feel the same (mountain in the middle). More expansive landscapes with larger biomes and geologic process would be awesome.

Some of the most fun I've had writing code in a long time was doing something similar, but much simpler. My basic approach was to start with an existing coastline shape and just make more-or-less evenly shaped polygons inside of it. Example:<p><a href="http://victorsunited.com/map/South%20Pole/board_game_rules" rel="nofollow">http://victorsunited.com/map/South%20Pole/board_game_rules</a><p>I didn't do any biome coloring or similar because the game displayed colors on the map to indicate which player was occupying it.

You can interactively play with a basic Voronoi diagram at <a href="http://mbostock.github.com/d3/ex/voronoi.html" rel="nofollow">http://mbostock.github.com/d3/ex/voronoi.html</a>. The yellow polygon on the mouse shows the polygon that would be there if there had also been a point underneath the mouse cursor. That demo helped me get a feel for how they work.<p>If you're skimming, don't miss this article's Flash demo linked at the bottom, <a href="http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/mapgen2.swf" rel="nofollow">http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/...</a>.

saw this the other day on Open Processing's Twitter feed "procedural dungeon generator" <a href="http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/44400" rel="nofollow">http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/44400</a> (requires Java)

Be sure to not miss the final Appendix section, even if his Voronoi approach might not be the best approach for your particular map-generation needs (it really depends on your game IMO), there's a TON of links to great resources on various map-building topics: Technical things on Voronoi/Delaunay comp.geometry, general map building stuff for RPG/geofiction, Biological tables for determining plausible biomes, Geology references for plausible terrains and even a site on how to do pretty relief shading like is done on classic topographical maps!

A fantastic write-up, thank you.<p>&#62; <i>For the coastline, I wanted to make island/continent maps that are surrounded by ocean, so that I don’t have to deal with people walking to the edge of the map. For the mountains, I started with something simple: mountains are whatever’s farthest from the coastline.</i><p>You mention in "Impassible borders" that there are no cliffs yet. I'd be interested to see how that gets implemented.<p>I'd also love to see someone code a Roguelike for this - one polygon per move, maybe?

I needed something like this for a project I am hacking on!

This is unbelievably cool. That is all.