

That said, we don’t always have the time to lovingly handcraft a new planet, which is where random generators come in handy. One day I might work on a mapgen5 that explores some more ideas on top of this.I prefer to roll my planets the old-fashioned way: with dice and beautifully detailed tables (I’m looking at you, Stargate RPG). 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.


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.
