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.

Australia receives Pertinent UK News

I do try to avoid being too political here on my blog, however seeing this in my YouTube feed.... After I read the UK news this morning.... Has infuriated me:

Why mainstream UK Media, why is this NOT front page news here?  Why is not on UK Sky News, why am I having to see it via Australia!??

It really is enough to make you believe the media is somehow controlled & influenced by the government doesn't it.

Project Blackbird Leaks

I won't be linking the content, however earlier today some video of "Blackbird" leaked, it was syndicated on some news outlets, such as the Metro.

I have to say I have no idea from where the files came and it really quite annoyed me.  On a personal level, no-one I know of has nor ever tried to leak anything about that brilliant project; and as one of the first engineers on the task of bringing it to life it really irks me.

I've blogged about my feelings on the brutal cancellation before.

This video leak however is more annoying, not least because that was very old footage, it might even have been from a very early prototype build, and it clearly wasn't using the fantastic all ray traced renderer nor were the assets all the final ones we had (yes, live ray traced engine on an XBox Series X! Or a 2080 RTX min spec!).

People liked what they saw, but it wasn't mind blowing, Blackbird actually was.  Sure we had a ways to go, but the play loop was ace, the scope of the world was massive, the movement systems were top notch, I'm not saying anything others have not already said and I look at the predicted releases for XBox in 2026/2027 (our release window) and honestly I don't see much coming from their own mews.

Indeed, with the RAM shortage & it's costs it's pushing hardware options out into the future too, so it's likely Blackbird might have had 6-8 months added content creation before the next XBox hardware was even announced.

And remember this is Zenimax Online, their track record for live service games and regular content creation is right up there, we knew what we were doing (for the most part), we were realistic in dealing with things, we were moving into a massive tech debt and the tooling was all in place to start churning out the worlds and the stories we had to set in that living world.

Honestly, a gem has been buried, never to see the light, but unlike the Arkenstone the theif didn't come to steal from the dragon, instead the thieves stole our sweat & tears, I believe an unrivalled team.

So this leak, take it all with a pinch of salt, the game, the real game, looked so much better, fast paced and beautifully sultry.