If you’re interested in adding these, take a look at the source code, and feel free to email me. There are lots of things that could be added on top of the underlying delaunay+voronoi structure, like towns, trees, biomes, seasons, nations, watersheds, etc. See an animated version of the map, but no longer paintableĪlso see my project from 2010, where I started developing these techniques.River representation with binary trees.Rendering with an oblique projection, not the standard rotate+translate+scale.Revisiting distance fields, which didn’t work out like I hoped.Multithreading to make it run acceptably fast.Elevation to match the desired look instead of tweaking the look to match the elevation.I have a series of blog posts about how I made these maps: I made some code changes in Apr 2023, with slightly higher resolution maps, but the maps won’t exactly match previously generated maps. Status of the project: Finished, source code available, but the project is mostly inactive.

Making the map paintable also meant I needed to make it fast. Maybe in a future version also let you paint the biomes. I wanted to generate something (mountains, valleys, oceans), then let you change those things, and then generate the rest (biomes, rivers). With procedural generation we usually let the system generate everything.

Being able to paint your own features on the map.

The map above is rendered in full 3D (try the rotate_deg and tilt_deg sliders!) but I used a custom projection and outline to more closely match a hand-drawn map. If you look at maps from Lord of the Rings and other fantasy settings, you’ll see the rivers and coastlines are top-down but the mountains and trees are side view. Download high resolution image (doesn’t work on all platforms).

Everything you create with it is yours to do with as you please. For example, try decreasing raininess slider to see how reducing rainfall will make rivers dry up, or try decreasing lg_min_flow to see more small streams. Play with the sliders to change the simulation and style.

Map fantasy creator