Terrain

A few years back I wrote a handful of posts about faking water on top-down maps: generating 2d rivers, cliffs, and an exhumed river channel. Those one-off experiments eventually grew into a proper map library I’ve been maintaining called compass. Revisiting them now is fun because real-world geology already solved the “make it look natural” problem ages ago. I just borrow the names and loosely approximate the process. Here are three of the fluvial generators and how they actually work. ...

I’ve struggled with the concept of merging the roguelike turn-based system with a FPS. Having a turn based on when you fully leave a cell makes the monsters seem jumpy which doesn’t make for very nice gameplay. Because I believe turn-based systems are core to roguelikes and first person shooters can’t be turned based in a cohesive way, I’ve dropped the FPS perspective altogether and pulled the camera above the player. ...