Game Development Community

Fractal World Generation

by Brian Jones · 08/26/2006 (1:10 am) · 3 comments

As time goes on I keep simplifying my 'big idea', which I am sure is a common theme that runs among us Garage Gamer's. I've finally decided to start on a relatively known and small scale, and begin building a psuedo-roguelike using TGB. The plan is to continually extend the world until I have what I've envisioned from a logical standpoint, then consider future options (extension into 3d land, etc.).

To get started, I've been tackling the task of random world generation. I've prototyped my generator using Python, (and if I can get TGB extended correctly with Josh Ritters PyTSE I will just port it right in and let the game player sit back while they generate a world). The results so far look like this: mojobojo.com/junk/world.html.

My next task is to then pick an edge of a generated region, and map that over into a new region iteration seamlessly. I'm also trying to tweak the output values so I get ideal basic terrain features within an acceptable range. After that, I will then post process latitude block sections of the world and map logical terrains to them (i.e. the further north/south you get, the more tundra/snow you see, vs. closer to the equator where it would be more tropical/desert, and so forth).

Once I am statisfied with my world generation results, then I'll actually figure out how to map that into a TGB tile based world. One of my concerns is how a 'level' gets loaded, I don't think a full world could completely load into memory. If that's the case, either I will load levels that directly associate with my generated regions, or come up with some way to load/unload bits of the level as they come into scope. Something to think about at least, I'm not actually to this point.

Other future items of note would be inclusion of flora graphics on top of the basic terrain tiles, dropping in world level features using psuedo-random methods (major cities, points of interest, etc.), and spawning monsters based on good/evil thresholds for each region.

#1
08/26/2006 (4:20 am)
I've actually thought about doing the same thing. Then I reallized I have absolutely no understanding of most of the programming or game logic involved in this endeavour. This sounds like a fantastically handy project. I hope you get this going soon, I'd like to see more.
#2
08/28/2006 (4:46 pm)
Check out "Dwarf Fortress"
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

It has to be the most serious rogue like game I have ever seen. I would love to see something like that developed in torque.
#3
09/27/2006 (4:44 pm)
I second the Dwarf Fortress endorsement... Quite a piece of work (especially for a FREE download). That game makes my head hurt, to be honest. :)