Thread by @ptychomancer: "I love maps & their promise of fractal discovery. I love procedural generation and the aesthetics of the unauthored. Where do these two […]"

31 tweets 3 days ago

Embed Jason Grinblat @ptychomancer Follow Read on Twitter

I love maps & their promise of fractal discovery.
I love procedural generation and the aesthetics of the unauthored.
Where do these two loves intersect? Generated maps.

I am the procgen map admirer. These are my favorite map generators and the folks who create them.

👇THREAD👇

To start with, you can't talk about map generation and not mention @redblobgames. His HTML5 generator is the gold standard.

The quantization of the map into hexes. The beautiful terrain iconography. They partition the gestalt into something explorable in discrete steps, one story at a time.

.@redblobgames's generator's pencil sketch style (which was stumbled upon accidentally) produces the most visually stunning generated maps I've seen.

Here's his map generator.
redblobgames.com/maps/mapgen2/

And here's his wonderful blog post about map generation.
redblobgames.com/maps/terrain-f…

Really just check out his whole blog.
redblobgames.com

Next: the continents of Dwarf Fortress (@Bay12Games) were the first generated maps that truly blew me away. They're the most artful use of ASCII I've seen and the biggest influence on the visual style of Caves of Qud.

The rich ANSI greens evoke unbounded lushness. The landmasses teem with jungles that ride right up to the coasts. These are wild, untamed worlds.

Absolutely support @bay12games for their lush jungle continents and a hundred other reasons.

Bay 12 Games is creating Dwarf Fortress and other video games | Patreon Become a patron of Bay 12 Games today: Read 34 posts by Bay 12 Games and get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership … https://www.patreon.com/bay12games

Next up is the amazing work of @mewo2. Here's his fantasy mapmaking bot that reproduces the whole atlas aesthetic.

Those imaginary place names are abnormally good, right? Martin wrote a generator that produces names from a consistent set of generated morphemes.

His writeup on the language generation is wonderful.

Generating naming languages An interactive exploration of how the bot @unchartedatlas generates langauges and placenames. https://mewo2.com/notes/naming-language/

A "real" fake map aside: as research for @unchartedatlas, Martin collected maps from across fantasy and science fiction and made a bot that tweets them out every couple hours.

twitter.com/mythicmaps

Now we get to city maps and @mewo2's equally stunning @metropologeny. I love how tiny neighborhoods of rectangular order are concatenated along the sinuous paths of nature.

Support @mewo2's work:

Martin O'Leary is creating bots, generative art, and other internet stuff | Patreon Become a patron of Martin O'Leary today: Read 6 posts by Martin O'Leary and get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership … https://www.patreon.com/mewo2

Follow @unchartedatlas
Follow @mythicmaps
Follow @metropologeny

Let's do more city maps. How about @watawatabou's crisp, clean medieval fantasy city generator. I love the sense of urban concentration these produce.

His interactive generator is the best I've seen. It feels like playing a city simulator.

Medieval Fantasy City Generator by watabou Not a game https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Of course Oleg built a 3D visualizer for his medieval cities. Of course it's just as stunning.

Toy Town by watabou Toy Town is a 3d-visualizer for Medieval Fantasy City Generator. https://watabou.itch.io/toy-town

Support Oleg's medieval cities: watabou.itch.io/medieval-fanta…
Support Toy Town: watabou.itch.io/toy-town/donate
Check out Olelg's

itch.io itch.io is a simple way to find, download and distribute indie games online. Whether you're a developer looking to upload your game or just someone looking for something new to play… https://itch.io

itch.io page:

watabou https://watabou.itch.io/

watabou.itch.io

We're back to the world-scale and @Enichan's generated pixel continents for her game Shards of Immortality. I dig the use of lighter blue to indicate shallow coastal waters.

.@Enichan's pixel maps really illustrate the allure of fractal discovery. Like: I want to learn about the politics of the prosperous river kingdoms in <img1>, but I also want to read about sheep lineages on the island meadow of <img2>.

Support Eniko:

'Shark Hugs' Eniko is creating games, gamedev articles, and open source software | Patreon Become a patron of 'Shark Hugs' Eniko today: Read 8 posts by 'Shark Hugs' Eniko and get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership … https://www.patreon.com/sharkhugseniko

Buy her possession-based roguelike, MidBoss:

Save 40% on MidBoss on Steam Kill your enemies, possess their bodies, and take their abilities as your own in this turn-based procedurally generated death labyrinth. http://store.steampowered.com/app/561740/MidBoss/

Check out the progress on Shards of Immortality:

Shards of Immortality Shards of Immortality: A fully randomly generated sandbox RPG using Ultima 6/7 as a style guide, featuring huge, expansive worlds. https://kitsunegames.com/games/shards/

.@ESAdevlog's generated islands almost look like meteorological maps. I haven't seen another generator that imparts such a sense of dynamism.

Here's the (open-source) generator with height, temperature, and rainfall sliders.
hempuli.com/blogblog/archi…

Visit Arvi's site: hempuli.com
Wishlist Baba Is You:

Baba Is You on Steam Baba Is You is a puzzle game where the rules you have to follow are present as blocks you can interact with. By manipulating them, you can change how the game works, repurpose things you find in the … http://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/

Finally, I want to shout out @GridSageGames and the research he did for Cogmind's map tech. There's a certain juxtaposition of order and chaos that emerges from long-lived human edifices, and these maps really nail it.

Josh also uses cellular automata to produce natural, cavern-like maps, which envelop the more ordered spaces.

In 2014 he wrote a wonderful series of blog posts about map generation:

Procedural Map Generation - Cogmind / Grid Sage Games An overview of roguelike procedural map generation techniques, including BSP trees, tunneling algorithms, cellular automata, and more. http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/06/procedural-map-generation/

Follow @GridSageGames's blog: gridsagegames.com/blog/
Buy Cogmind:

Cogmind on Steam Cogmind is a sci-fi roguelike epic in which you play a robot building yourself from components found or salvaged from other robots. Explore a living, breathing world through turn-based tactical comba… http://store.steampowered.com/app/722730/Cogmind/

That's it! That's all the procgen map admirer has to share... for now. Reply with your favorite map generators and creators and I'll rt them.

Embed Jason Grinblat @ptychomancer Follow Read on Twitter

This content can be removed from Twitter at anytime, get a PDF archive by mail!
This is a Premium feature, you will be asked to pay 30$/year
for a one year Premium membership with unlimited archiving.