Generating fantasy maps

Creative

procedural map generation

SHOW HN2016

1,004points
64comments
#4of 2,264 in 2016
Top 1%of 2016 by points

How HN took it

LovedMost comments that take a side are positive

26 positive, 7 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 0 critical, out of 34 comments about the project. Thread score +0.70.

Idea: 9 for, 0 againstExecution: 3 for, 0 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Interactive map generator is impressive and fun to explore

    From 4 comments
    • I have nothing super valuable to add except to say: this is totally awesome. Good for you for exploring this and sharing it with the world. I just emailed it to 3 non-techy…
      aarondf on HN
    • This is amazing! This motivates me to do so many things... alas, none related to my day job.
      yawz on HN
    • This is sooo cool! Thanks for sharing!!
      kaik on HN
    • This is very neat, I hope I will have time to dig into this at some later date. Great job!
      TDL on HN
  • Useful for hobby worldbuilding and RPG adventures

    From 3 comments
    • This is such a great tool for hobby world designers. I know for sure that I will use this when I create adventures. I made multiple tools for random world generation but never…
      abelhabel on HN
    • This is an amazing use of Python. I'm OK with .py but terrible with images so this random generation amazes me. I will be passing this into my DM!
      jscardella on HN
    • This is really cool. I'm going to bookmark this and look in to it more in-depth. I've always wondered about how to generate maps for a game. Good job.
      vblord on HN
  • Source code shared openly under MIT

    From 1 comment
    • He gives you his source on github. I think that's enough right there. EDIT - Oooo and it's MIT...
      andrewclunn on HN
  • Convincing islands and natural-looking results

    From 1 comment
    • very cool. tried to see if it could make sense of islands and such, and the results are extremely convincing: https://i.imgur.com/LXNtZLH.png
      LoSboccacc on HN

Objections

  • Mountain rendering looks off

    From 1 comment
    • Everything looks great except the rendering of the mountains.
      moultano on HN

Requests

  • Add roads, forests and region-specific name lists

    From 1 comment
    • This is truly fantastic, both the project and the interaction. If you want to continue with it, it seems there's so much more you could do, too: roads, forests, altering…
      bbctol on HN
  • Add terrain types such as deserts and tundras that affect city placement

    From 1 comment
    • This is insanely cool! I'm totally making a conversion of this into Elm my next pet project. One nice thing to see would be generation of terrain types (such as deserts or…
      michaelscott on HN
  • Generate higher resolution maps directly on the page

    From 1 comment
    • Well done, thanks! BTW, this is a quick way to generate an higher resolution map on the site. Open the developer tools, remove the width from .note (it's the container of the…
      pmontra on HN
  • Use real topographic data to test town placement

    From 1 comment
    • Would be neat to give it real topo maps and then have it generate the towns and see how well it matches reality. Great work!
      stephenmm on HN

Questions

  • Can it produce town- and city-scale maps for existing settings like Forgotten Realms?

    From 1 comment
    • It's great for creating your own world. However if you play D&D, chances are you play in Forgotten Realms. In that case you already have the large-scale map, and you want town-…
      bartvk on HN

Alternatives named

  • Amit Patel's polygon map generation

    From 1 comment
    • Very cool! This reminds me of Amit P's polygonal map generation project, which you should look at if you're interested in this kind of stuff.…
      loeber on HN
  • Open Geo Fiction

    From 1 comment
    • If you like making fiction maps by hand (but not fantasy maps) - have a look at this great mapping project: Open Geo Fiction: http://www.opengeofiction.net From the about page:…
      chippy on HN
  • Donjon fantasy world generator

    From 1 comment
    • Wow. I might need to spend some time making a clone of this but geared towards worldmaps like https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/world/
      eximius on HN
  • Dwarf Fortress terrain generation

    From 1 comment
    • That is super sweet. It looks sort of similar to how Dwarf Fortress generates its geographies. You should look at how that game does it because it also involves creating a whole…
      kylepdm on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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