Comments for SagaSim Development

Comment on The Origin of Species by gorzek

gorzek — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:21:45 +0000

I promise I’m not dead! In fact, I am rebuilding this server right now so it can better serve the needs of this project. More details to come (so no blog update right this second.)

Comment on The Origin of Species by legendman3

legendman3 — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 22:10:00 +0000

It is December 26th 2012, two months after you posted this comment, four months after you made this post, are you dead or just not enough time? Just make a one sentence post saying your not dead or show off some uncompleted creature reaction. It does not matter how small the update is or how buggy, it matters if the thing is still alive and kicking.

Comment on The Origin of Species by gorzek

gorzek — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:05:31 +0000

It is, actually! I’ve just been busy. I am currently working out how to model the species’ interactions, and what the species actually look like in terms of data, attributes, etc. The DNA system was just the first part of that work.

I’m hoping to have another entry up soon. This project moves along in fits and starts.

Comment on The Origin of Species by Dave

Dave — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:03:43 +0000

Haven’t seen any updates for a while. Is the sim still in development?

Comment on Hot Air About Water by gorzek

gorzek — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:03:26 +0000

You are correct, of course. My approach is to build these things up iteratively, and in a modular fashion. I want the river generation to be “good enough” at the start, and then go back to it later. One step I’d like to add to the generator at some point is to simulate erosion and actually have it carve drainage paths through the landscape.

Another approach would be to take every region I’ve identified as rainy (based on the climate) and simulate the effects of rainfall on it. As before, water would run from high ground to low ground, taking the quickest path possible, and in instances where there’s more than one path (that is, multiple adjacent pixels are tied for lowest), the river would fork and continue its downhill path in multiple directions. I actually had that in the code originally, but it created a huge mess and covered most of the map with rivers, so clearly I need to constrain it somehow.

One thought I had was to allow the length to be variable based on the river generation. Generation 1 would be where the river began at its highest point, then when it forks, those would become subsequent generations. Since a fork means the river now has half as much water flowing along each of two paths (simplifying here), its maximum possible length should also be halved, and so on until we’ve “run out” of water to flow or hit an ocean, whichever comes first.

So, yeah, I know my current model is very simplified and leaves out a lot of important factors. Luckily, I can go back and change any part of the generation process independently, and re-run the subsequent generation steps as needed. In the case of rivers, I’d only need to re-run the biome generator after that. (Well, and the species placement algorithm, which I haven’t done yet.)

Comment on Hot Air About Water by Crazylibrul

Crazylibrul — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:39:47 +0000

A few comments regarding the river generator: You are placing a lot of emphasis on the spring. This does of course make sense but aren’t you underestimating the importance of drainage basins and drainage divides? Most of the water flowing in a river doesn’t originate from the spring but is surface overflow of the area the river runs through. To correctly predict a river’s size and flow you would need to simulate drainage divides for your world to make sure you have consistent drainage basins.

Any plans for this?