Epic of Thalia Map/Terrain Generator

• Overview
• Sample Maps
• Screenshots
• Manual
• Darcs Repository

Overview

The terrain generator uses a simple fractal algorithm to generate terrain to help ignite our creavity when creating the geography of the world of Thalia. The color output can be customized through a user-specific configuration file, so the possibility exists for us to use it in the future for terrain bitmaps to be used directly in the Epic of Thalia engine.

Sample maps

Here are some maps that were generated using the program:

Screenshots

And here is a screenshot of the program itself:

Manual

This is kind of a makeshift manual that I'm writing at the last second, but it should explain the basics of operation for the map generator.

The Basics - After starting the program, you'll notice a set of inputs. This section explains each.

No. to generate

This is pretty self explanatory - it's the number of maps that will be generated when you click "Generate!" If you give it no input, it defaults to 1.

Seed

The seed to be used for the random number generator. If you don't know what this means, read this article for a clarification. Defaults to the system time.

Factor

The first input to the terrain generation algorithm, which you can read about here. The factor is the number of times that the algorithm recurses, meaning that the size of the generated map is (2 ^ factor) + 1 pixels in both width and height. Defaults to 9.

Roughness

The second input to the generation algorithm. This is the amount that neighboring terrain values can vary by. This value must fall in between 0 and 1, and defaults to 0.65. Try experimenting with different values to see the different results.

Save Location

This input must be a folder if you are generating more than one image. Otherwise, it should be a single PNG file. You can select an existing file, or you can manually type in a new file name.

Advanced Usage - Currently, the map generator doesn't support a good deal of customization. I plan on changing this in the future, but the only thing you can customize right now is the coloration of the generated maps. In order to do so, you need to define a method getColor in the file ~/.eot-mapgenerator/config.py. getColor takes a single parameter (a double, ranging from -1 to 1, representing the altitude of the given map cell) and returns a 3 element tuple, in the form of (red, green, blue). Red, green, and blue must all be integers between 0 and 65535, inclusive. If you are not familiar with Python, try searching for a Python tutorial.

Darcs

The source code for the terrain generator is in a Darcs repository, located at http://darcs.hoelzro.net/map-generator.