
The label placement, as cartographers will tell you, can be one of the trickiest parts about making a map.
Fantasy world map designer code#
But it’s really difficult to write code to make something out of nothing, so O’Leary’s code first produces a scattering of random points (as shown on the left below), and then uses a standard algorithm to keep them from being too clumpy (right). In the real world, landscapes evolve from previous landscapes, which in turn evolved from previous landscapes, and so on.
Fantasy world map designer generator#
The generator starts off by sketching out a rough outline of a terrain. And as a glaciologist, he is very familiar with how landscapes form and evolve, so he started adding some real-world physics into his code. By day, he studies the effect of meltwater that collects on the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. O’Leary wanted to make something more realistic. Valleys just start and disappear, and you have no sense of how the landscape connects to itself.” “If you look at it as someone who understands where valleys come from, it doesn’t make any sense. “It works well on the small scale, and if you’re not paying attention,” O’Leary says. But this process has some major limitations. The result is something that has the same sort of texture as a real landscape. This method starts with some smooth bumps on the landscape and then adds more bumps at smaller and smaller scales. Most automated terrain generators used to create virtual worlds are based on a technique called fractal noise, a standard 3D graphics approach that’s been around since the 60s, O’Leary says. And so I was thinking about these fantasy novels, and they always had these maps inside the cover,” O’Leary says, “So I started thinking, well could I make one of those maps?”

“You're trying to make a computer write a novel, so you're looking for the most formulaic novel you can think of. Instead of writing words, NaNoGenMo participants write code that generates a 50,000-word “novel.” It’s a twist on National Novel Writing Month, which since 1999 has challenged writers to complete a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. The map bot, created by glaciologist Martin O’Leary of Swansea University in Wales, combines imaginary place names with fake terrain to produce fantasy worlds, tweeting a new one every hour from the Twitter account came up with the idea in November when he participated in NaNoGenMo, or National Novel Generating Month.

Nimrathutkan is the result of an automated map generator that was inspired by those novels. If these sound like places out of a fantasy novel you read as a teenager, you’re not far off. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īs you travel northeast along the shore of southern Nimrathutkam, the first town you’ll encounter is Ak Tuh, followed by Nunrat and Nrik Mah before you reach the coastal city of Tuhuk, the largest urban area in the region of Mum Huttak.

This is how it works: you can click any settlement on a map in FMG (and then a tiny button with a map icon on it) and MFCG will build a plan of that settlement taking into account its size and location. The main feature of this update is integration with Azgarr's awesome Fantasy Map Generator.
