XVE - Terrain Systems - Random Noise & Influence Mechanics

Well, politics aside I thought I'd talk about my game engine and some of the new terrain systems I'm working on.

There have been a couple of images and videos on the old YouTube channel with some of the examples, but here's a still for your enjoyment... See the MASSIVE tree remains on the peak it was to place trees (of the correct scale) into a natural pattern I then turned.

I started with the same noise algorithm I'd used for the peak itself, but that tended to give me slices of trees or uncanny looking placements.

Off to CImg I started to play with some noise algorithms and after a while I got an appearance for the groups of trees I liked; at least in 2D.

 

This being me though I went to bed and got distracted with horses and so only just came back to this very late on a Sunday evening, and the first thing I did was NOT the tree placements at all, no I started with the above set of points and wanted to check my "Area of Control" system.

This basically sets up the influence from each island, as you capture them the idea being that you improve them and they become stronger nodes, more loyal maybe, and that gives you bonus points towards your various activities and influence over neighbours... Whom you might conquer.

The trick however was how to set this up by default, so I decided to play a map up into individuals, and create a sort of area influence and then depending on the range you can travel that will build networks of connections to "who you might influence" or be influenced by.

However, that got quite complex quite quickly and my world still needs to be persisted on the server/back end, soooo.....

I got distracted again and made the initial influence a voronoi diagram pattern.

 

Sometimes you just have to let your mind wander, this weekend, the little computer time I had, was definitely just letting my mind wander.

I was quite tired after the latest release at work.... And to be honest, I kind of love Jason Voorhees.

 

 

People of Makerfield

Here I am again, being political, I watched Question Time last night... And I have to say I wasn't impressed with very many of the members of that panel.

The standout moments being the childish faces the Green Candidate pulled when members of the Green Party were quoted back to them.

The Liberal Democrat candidate and Reform candidates coming across as very nervous, or certainly not as confident as the others on the bench.

And then the Labour and Conservative candidates.... Often trying to bounce off one another as if they were jovial colleagues "We've had conversations at length".  To use a very English turn of phrase, they all piss in the same pot.

Really, people of Makerfield, you have an opportunity here to avoid voting for the current "mainstream" parties, those parties whom have hog tied and destroyed our democracy, spent our money and left this country a husk of itself in just a quarter of a century the decline in this country is unfathomable.

You Makerfield, you have the opportunity to simply null and void this party political shenanigans in the Labour party.

You Makerfield, have the opportunity to agree with many of the voices in that audience and indeed the candidates, that politics needs a root & branch reset.

That means simply not voting for the parties whom have proven themselves full of self-serving, lying, traitors.

I'm not telling you who to vote for.  I am however suggesting whom not to vote for.