Check out Ken Musgrave. He makes whole planets with fractals. It's cool. 
Twisting knobs is a lot less work than manual 3D modeling and such.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1558608486

On Jan 16, 2012, at 7:31 PM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/16/2012 6:47 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote:
>> 
>> Top post. Heightmapping can go a really long way. Probably not news though:)
>> 
> 
> I am still not certain, since a lot of this has a lot more to do with my own 
> project than with general issues in computing.
> 
> 
> I had messed with a few technologies already.
> 
> height-maps (long ago, not much used since then, generally randomized).
> 
> the issue was mostly one of being "not terribly interesting", but it makes 
> sense if one wants terrain (and is "fairly cheap" in terms of memory use and 
> performance impact).
> 
> a more advanced variety would be to combine a height-map with a tile-map, 
> where the terrain generator would also vary the texture-map to give a little 
> more interest. I have considered this as a possibility.
> 
> also tried randomly generated voxel terrain (similar to Minecraft, using 
> perlin noise). issues were of being difficult to integrate well with my 
> existing technology, and being very expensive in terms of both rendering and 
> memory usage (particularly for storing intermediate meshes). one may need to 
> devote about 500MB-1GB of RAM to the problem to have a moderately sized world 
> with (with similar specifics to those in Minecraft).
> 
> I suspect that, apart from making something like Minecraft, the technology is 
> a bit too expensive and limited to really be all that "generally useful" at 
> this point in time and on current hardware (I suspect, however, it will 
> probably be much more relevant on future HW).
> 
> 
> I also tried randomly generated grid-based areas (basically, stuff is built 
> from pre-made parts and randomly-chosen parts are put on a grid). I had also 
> tried combining this with maze-generation algorithms. the results were 
> "functional" but also "nothing to get excited about". the big drawback was 
> that I couldn't really think of any way to make the results of such a grid 
> based generator "particularly interesting" (this is I think more so with a 
> first-person viewpoint: such a structure is far less visually interesting 
> from the inside than with a top-down or isometric view).
> 
> it could work if one were sufficiently desperate, but I doubt it would be 
> able to hold interest of players for all that long absent "something else of 
> redeeming value".
> 
> 
> the "main maps" in my case mostly use a Quake/Doom3/... style maps, composed 
> mostly of entities (defined in terms of collections of key/value pairs 
> representing a given object), "brushes" (convex polyhedra), "patches" (Bezier 
> Surfaces), and "meshes" (mostly unstructured polygonal meshes).
> 
> these would generally be created manually, by placing every object and piece 
> of geometry visible in the world, but this is fairly effort-intensive, and 
> simply running head first into it tends to quickly drain my motivation 
> (resulting in me producing worlds which look like "big boxes with some random 
> crap in them").
> 
> sadly, random generation not on a grid of some sort is a much more complex 
> problem (nor random generation directly in terms of unstructured or 
> loosely-structured geometry).
> 
> fractals exist and work well on things like rocks or trees or terrain, but I 
> haven't found a good way to apply them to "general" map generation problem 
> (such as generating an interesting place to run around in and battle enemies, 
> and get to the exit).
> 
> the "problem domain" is potentially best suited to some sort of maze 
> algorithm, but in my own tests, this fairly quickly stopped being all that 
> interesting. the "upper end" I think for this sort of thing was likely the 
> .Hack series games (which had a lot of apparently randomly generated 
> dungeons).
> 
> 
> it is sad that I can't seem to pull off maps even half as interesting as 
> those (generally created by hand) in commercial games from well over a decade 
> ago. I can have a 3D engine which is technically much more advanced (or, at 
> least, runs considerably slower on much faster hardware with moderately more 
> features), but apart from reusing maps made by other people for other games, 
> I can't make it even a small amount nearly as "interesting" or "inspiring".
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jan 16, 2012, at 8:45 AM, David Barbour <dmbarb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Consider offloading some of your creativity burden onto your computer. The 
>>> idea is:
>>> 
>>>   It's easier to recognize and refine something interesting than to create 
>>> it.
>>> 
>>> So turn it into a search, recognition, and refinement problem, and automate 
>>> creation. There are various techniques, which certainly can be combined:
>>> 
>>> * constraint programming
>>> * generative grammar programming
>>> * genetic programming
>>> * seeded fractals
>>> 
>>> You might be surprised about how much of a world can be easily written with 
>>> code rather than mapping. A map can be simplified by marking regions up 
>>> with code and using libraries of procedures. Code can sometimes be 
>>> simplified by having it read a simple map or image.
>>> 
>>> Remember, the basic role of programming is to automate that which bores you.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Dave
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 4:18 PM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I am generally personally stuck on the issue of how to make "interesting" 
>>> 3D worlds for a game-style project while lacking in both personal 
>>> creativity and either artistic skill or a team of artists to do it 
>>> (creating decent-looking 3D worlds generally requires a fair amount of 
>>> effort, and is in-fact I suspect somewhat bigger than the effort required 
>>> to make a "passable" 3D model of an object in a 3D modeling app, since at 
>>> least generally the model is smaller and well-defined).
>>> 
>>> it seems some that creativity (or what little of it exists) is stifled by 
>>> it requiring a large amount of effort (all at once) for the activity needed 
>>> to express said creativity (vs things which are either easy to do all at 
>>> once, or can be easily decomposed into lots of incremental activities 
>>> spread over a large period of time).
>>> 
>>> trying to build a non-trivial scene (something which would be "passable" in 
>>> a modern 3D game) at the level of dragging around and placing/resizing/... 
>>> cubes and/or messing with individual polygon-faces in a mapper-tool is sort 
>>> of a motivation killer (one can wish for some sort of "higher level" way to 
>>> express the scene).
>>> 
>>> meanwhile, writing code, despite (in the grand scale) requiring far more 
>>> time and effort, seems to be a lot more enjoyable (but, one can't really 
>>> build a world in code, as this is more the mapper-tool's domain).
>>> 
>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> fonc mailing list
>>> fonc@vpri.org
>>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> fonc mailing list
>> fonc@vpri.org
>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
> 
> _______________________________________________
> fonc mailing list
> fonc@vpri.org
> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
_______________________________________________
fonc mailing list
fonc@vpri.org
http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc

Reply via email to