Fractal Generation System

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mkruer
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Post by mkruer »

I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Zeog
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Post by Zeog »

These guys have real time procedural planets:
http://baddoggames.com/planet/gallery.htm
This one comes with BSD license code:
http://sponeil.org/index.htm

Concerning the GUI, I'd recommend qt4, so we can easily use graphical elements on all platforms. http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/index.html
(Try the fist tutorial!) So there shouldn't be a necessitiy to do painful workarounds.

As for creating a library and linking that to VS, I think that's a great way because this allows us to test and tune everything with a separate front end.

As for the generation stages: galaxy - star system - planet. You're currently working on the planet stage right? What do you think would you need as initial data? Certainly the planet's size (radius) and its mass would be needed to model the atmosphere via its gravitation. This together with the effective temperature (determined through its mean orbital radius and the sun's luminosity) should be everything you need, right? (The effective temperature together with albedo, greenhouse effect (for atmospheres only) and internal heat production lead to the mean surface temperature which is essential for the looks of it.)
I'm asking because I did some reseach on the solar system generation stage (planet placement etc.) and from that point of view could only provide these quantities to the planet generation stage.
Zeog
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Post by Zeog »

Whoohoo, I found something!
Check out these tutorials from the libnoise projects (open source noise library for C++). They teach you how to make a fractal aka procedural seamless planet map (in less than 100 lines of c++ code).
http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/tutorials/index.html
This takes care of the fractal part very well. In order to get down to seamless planetary flight and model the terrain the strategies linked to above could be feasible.
mkruer
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Post by mkruer »

Here is a great resource http://www.vterrain.org/

But before all of that we need to start simple. We need a detailed and robust planet generation system yet fast.

The plantgen that I have works on a simple yet decent there are 12 key points on the sphere ± a few degrees it divides that into smaller section and then raises or lowers the terrain, and keeps repeating . This is pretty good, but I have notices from a lot of use that coming up with a decent continents is pretty hard.

The other way is the sphere slicing, this works well to but it has the disadvantage of the planet looking symmetrical. If there is a continents on one side the other side is always ocean.

We possible need a hybrid approach to mask the inadequacy of both approaches. Good news is that we only should need the half the iteration for both. Also if we use the standard 32-bit random seed for iterations for the planet, because there are two processes in parallel we could have a second random 32-bit seed for the second process. This would make it appear that there are 64-bit seed for 18.4 quintillion combinations. This should be more then enough for all the planets in all the system. This is just the raw physical shape of the planet.

The other thing that I would like to do is define the land shape with a simple black white image. Then use the fractal system to use those images as boundary area for figuring out the rest of the planets topology.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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mkruer
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Post by mkruer »

Oh on the QT thing, you would best ask form more peoples opinion. I know that we tried to redo the launcher in VS, and there was a near revolt or something about using it.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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mkruer
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Post by mkruer »

Here is the file for everyone to have. The UI needs to be updated to be cross platform capable either using QT or GTK+

This system generates height maps, temperature maps, rainfall, biomes (where planets grow and what type)

This would be the best startign foundation byfar.
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I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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