Now that I have all sorts of wonky, arbitrary shapes, I need to put them in a comprehensible format.
I chose to throw them into MineCraft, editing the world generation. (Ok. Go ahead. Roll your eyes. Snicker. Out of your system? Good, because this is vaguely interesting.)
For my first pass, I just tossed the system at it, like a heightmap. I instructed MC to read it in, and set the height of the terrain to the intensity of the color blue. This was the result:
I chose to throw them into MineCraft, editing the world generation. (Ok. Go ahead. Roll your eyes. Snicker. Out of your system? Good, because this is vaguely interesting.)
For my first pass, I just tossed the system at it, like a heightmap. I instructed MC to read it in, and set the height of the terrain to the intensity of the color blue. This was the result:
Ok, so, that's pretty weird for terrain. That said, if you look at the overall shapes, it's not too bad.
It needs improvement, though.
Time to visit one of my motivations for working this way: Perlin Noise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise
I'm not a fan of perlin noise. It's vigorously mathematical, and my various past attempts at building it have ended up looking more bizarre than the above screenshots. But, there are some interesting ideas.
The one I'm stealing involves the use of multiple layers of noise (with decreasing magnitude) to create more natural-looking terrain.
Here's an example: (these aren't all of the layers, just a few)
It needs improvement, though.
Time to visit one of my motivations for working this way: Perlin Noise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise
I'm not a fan of perlin noise. It's vigorously mathematical, and my various past attempts at building it have ended up looking more bizarre than the above screenshots. But, there are some interesting ideas.
The one I'm stealing involves the use of multiple layers of noise (with decreasing magnitude) to create more natural-looking terrain.
Here's an example: (these aren't all of the layers, just a few)
So, we stick them into MC, Overlay them, and interpolate height between points. The smallest ones have the greatest effect, the largest ones simply provide detail. This is the result:
...much better. Much, much better. There are some artifacts (you can see 'em in the second image), but I can probably work those out later.