Around The World, Part 24: Local terrain

▤ Summary

The post explains how the developer improved local terrain generation for an early-stage exploration game. It first shows why simple interpolation and simplex noise create unrealistic terrain and can break coastline and port placement. It then introduces the diamond-square algorithm as a way to preserve global land, sea, and coast boundaries while adding variation. The author tunes the randomness based on local height variation and ensures land stays above sea level and sea stays below it. The update closes by outlining future experiments with erosion and other noise distributions.

▦ Linked Companies

Frozen Fractal

up to $1M

Wikimedia Foundation

$1M to $5M