From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 20: Two steps forward, one step back
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Work on the game has been slow due to lack of time, but worse, I’ve let it drift off in the wrong direction. I need to be more careful about scope creep. But first, let’s talk about the progress that I am happy about.
on Wed, 12PM
From frozenfractal.com
Why my apps will soon be gone from the Google Play Store
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The first real money I ever made from game development was on Android. It was in 2013, when Android was still the underdog compared to the iPhone, and was being touted as a great platform for developers.
on Sep 6
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 19: Constructing languages
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I’m having a bit of an “off” day today, so let’s do something fun, even if it’s rather low priority for the game: generating foreign languages.
on Aug 9
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 18: Charting the seas
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Maps will be an important part of the game. Let’s take a look at how we can draw those!
on Jul 24
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 17: World generation in the prototype
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The code repository in which I’m developing Around The World is called aroundtheworld4. That might make you wonder: what happened to the first three? Today, let’s take a look at aroundtheworld2.
on Jun 28
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 16: A matter of scale
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All else being equal, I prefer games (and books, and movies) to be realistic, rather than making things up on the spot. But of course, all else is rarely equal. Today, I’ll be taking away some of the realism of my procedural world generator to accommodate gameplay.
on Jun 26
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 15: Making waves
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I’ve been investing a lot of effort in the generation of plausible land. But the game is all about sailing, so most of the screen will be filled with water, not land. It’s time to take that smooth blue plane that served as the sea, and make it look better!
on May 31
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 14: Floating the origin
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In the previous post, we got to see our generated world at close range. This revealed some precision problems that I knew I’d need to deal with eventually, but had been putting off for a rainy day. Now I could ignore them no longer.
on Apr 11
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 13: Zooming in
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As mentioned in the previous post, the player will never see our procedurally generated world all at a glance. They’ll be much closer to it, and seeing only a small part at any given time. Let’s see how we can go from coarse, global world maps to something that will actually look good at close range!
on Mar 25
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 12: 2D or not 2D
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So far, I’ve been talking about generating a world at a very large scale for the game. But the aim of the game is exploration, so the player will rarely, if ever, get to see the entire planet at once. Which raises the question: what will the player see?
on Mar 19
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 10: Fixing the climate
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The previous post ended with a cliffhanger: how would we get rid of all the arid zones (pink) in the Köppen climate classification? An alternating game of spot-the-difference and whack-a-mole ensues.
on Jan 2
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 9: Climate
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Last time, I described how I’m generating different weather patterns based on the season. That data is already useful for the game, to decide the weather at one particular place and time, but it’s also essential when figuring out the local biome, which is what we’re doing today.
on Dec 29
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 8: Seasons
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In the last post, we developed some basic but useful algorithms to generate temperature and rain maps for an entire year. However, these assumed that the weather is constant throughout the year. As any citizen of Earth knows, that is not quite true, so let’s fix it!
on Dec 19, 2023
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 7: Temperature and rain
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We now have prevailing wind patterns going, so it’s time to turn to the other two important parameters that define the weather: rain and temperature.
on Dec 15, 2023
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 5: Wind pressure
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Last time, we got some basic wind patterns going. However, there’s still a problem.
on Dec 8, 2023
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 4: Basic wind
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Now that we have a finalized height map of our generated world, it’s time to put something on the surface. But to know what to put there – forest, desert, grassland, ice – we have to know something about the local conditions.
on Dec 4, 2023
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 3: Hotspots and erosion : Frozen Fractal
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In the last post, we added the effects caused by tectonic plates: But there are more forces that shape our land. Hotspots What exactly a hotspot is, is still hotly debated.
on Nov 20, 2023
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 1: Continents : Frozen Fractal
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There’s this game concept that has been on my mind for years, and I can’t seem to let it go. You step into the wet, salt-crusted shoes of the naval explorers of old: Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan, Cook.
on Nov 15, 2023
From frozenfractal.com
Around The World, Part 2: Plate tectonics : Frozen Fractal
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In the previous post, we tackled generation of continent shapes using Voronoi cells and set some base heights using curves and simplex noise: Last time, I already alluded to plate tectonics and how they affect geography.
on Nov 14, 2023