[crossfire] weather, lattitude, town location, and the world

[Mark Wedel]

Brendan Lally wrote:
>
      On 11/12/05, Mark Wedel <
      mwedel at sonic.net
      > wrote:
     >>
       Crossfire
     >>
      is somewhat limited by only 1 aspect of terrain is available (we don't have
     >>
      forested mountains for example).
     >
     
     >
      Forested mountains could exist in principle, it just requires someone
     >
      to be able to draw alpine trees.
     >
     
     >>
        All that said, if we were to create another continent and wanted to start with
     >>
      an automatic process, there are many improvments I can think of:
     >>
     
     >>
      1) Create altitude map (with different seed of course) like did before.
     >
     
     >
      Actually, I think it might be preferable to create tectonic plate
     >
      boundaries, and then generate heights from that, it would give a much
     >
      greater concentration of mountains, without having them scattered
     >
      everywhere (and impeding movement)
     
  I believe there are other projects out there (not related to crossfire) about 
mimicing a planet creation process.  If we were really serious, we should look 
at those.

>
     
     >
      It would also be more realistic.
     >
     
     >>
      2) Based on that altitude map, run weather on it for a long time (elevation <0
     >>
      is of course see).
     >
     
     >
      The problem with that is that the same results aren't guarenteed, so
     >
      if this is done once, and a mistake is made with a heightmap somewhere
     >
      (a big mountain in the centre of navar, say) it could be difficult to
     >
      run the weathermap to the same effect again after fixing it.
     
  My point was that this would be done for a new continent.

  If that is the case, you start with a heightmap that looks reasonable (land 
mass about right shape, desired distribution, etc).  You then run the weather on 
that, and with that, fill in the terrain.

  Then with that, you use that as the blank slate to start putting towns, 
dungeons, etc on.  Having the above info actually makes some of that process 
easier - towns wouldn't be in the middle of a mountain range, but likely along 
the rivers, and most typical, at the river/sea junction.

  But point here is that this is still creating a map with actual forest spaces 
and whatnot - you use a dynamic process to create a static map.

  That said, if the same weather process is used to create this static map as 
that used in the game, then at least as the game runs, the weather would be 
consistent with the terrain.  For example, right now, there are desert areas on 
the map, but with the weather code, I have no idea what level of rainfall they 
get, since the location of the desert was rather arbitrary set (lets put it here).

  Same for jungle & forest.

>
     
     >>
      Water has to go somewhere, so that determines rivers,
     >>
      lakes, and marshes (lakes would basically be formed when the total water flowing
     >>
      into a set of spaces is above some amount and that set of space(s) is
     >>
      constrained by higher objects around that would hold the water.
     >
     
     >
      This would also be limited by temperature, at lower temperatures, the
     >
      amount of inflowing water needed is less, because less evaporation
     >
      occurs. (this is a major part of the reason why there are so many
     >
      lakes in scandinava).
     
  True.  And if really clever, analysis of the rivers would lead to other 
terrain.  Terrain that is very close to river/sea elevation would typically be 
swamp (river elevation in this case being the elevation of the river space 
compared to neighboring spaces).

The amount of water flowing from the river relative to the number of spaces the 
river flows into would determine how big a lake gets (you could basically 
determine the depth of the lake).  If it isn't very deep, or once again, 
relative to spaces next to the lake the altitude is about the same, you'd get 
marsh in those neighboring spaces.

  In geological terms, rivers will carve out valleys.  So in those cases where a 
river flows into what would form a lake, see where the water would flow out and 
make some random determination if the ground in that area is hard (rock) or soft 
(earth/gravel/whatever), and thus a gorge would get eroded away to let the water 
out, and you don't have a lake anymore.

>
     
     >>
        Mountains should probably be determined if the elevation is above some height.
     >>
        But low mountains are also possible, but that should be done based on
     >>
      different of elevation of neighboring spaces - if a space is say 1000' different
     >>
      in elevation from its neighbors, it is a mountain.
     >>
     
     >>
        similar for mountains, but no height - just height difference (in the 250-500'
     >>
      range?).
     >
     
     >
      Well, if the surrounding area is high, and there is a line of low
     >
      altitude, then you get a canyon, if the surrounding land is low, and
     >
      there is a line of high altitude, then you get a mountain ridge.
     
  Right, I mistyped in my second paragraph, I meant hills there.  Hills would be 
terrain that changes altitude but not as drastically as mountain.  Which makes 
sense - lots of mountain ranges have hills at the base of them