Nathaniel Inman

Generating Ancient Ruins

Nathaniel Inman -

While creating algorithms for random continent generation, I came across an old algorithm I had worked with called Coupled Map Lattice. Using that to create a continent was hard but I was able to accomplish it doing layers of filters:

  • generate map with noise between -1 and 1
  • apply CML using Spatiotemporal Intermittency settings
    • (a = 1.75, ε = 0.6)
    • I found that using something too chaotic didn't have a noticeable affect compared to just generating noise in general.
  • normalize values to between 0 and 255
  • apply a gaussian blur
  • normalize values to between 0 and 1
  • apply slight height restrictions based on distance to center of map
    • depress to below sea-level and don't raise otherwise we'll end up with one huge mountain
  • apply erosion
  • normalize values again to between 0 and 1 as erosion can eat away depending on how strong it is.