Well, I lost internet for a few days (2 i think) but it's back. I have cities, trees, planets, et. al. up and running, integrated. I had to change some scaling factors in the game, I think that is just something that will need constant tweaking. Maybe just the planets were too big/small or something, i don't know. At any rate, it looks/feels about right now. I may have to limit the sizes of planets a bit more so they don't get too big or too small, since I changed the size. Anyhow that's a minor concern.
@p
Remains to make the trees clump together more nicely. This is semi-easy, basically i just need an algorithm to generate a set of points in 2D that are clumped in the way I want, and that are seamless. Right now I'm using a simple algorithm that is kind of slow, and doesn't give great results. I need to be able to cache the organics data (clumping, impostors, etc.) as well, since there is a delay when you enter the planet. Finally I need a small tweak to make the trees rotate on the impostor, that is minor however.
@p
Okay, what else huh? I am going to add oceans I think today. I miss them, and I need to figure out a little better way to integrate them with city/tree/monster placement etc. before I get too far along. Trees and cities will be easy, making monsters not walk in the water is going to be a bit harder so I really need to get oceans in before I add much monster AI.
@p
After this, I think I will work on the model framework for flying monsters, and get those in. So, all goes well!
2004-03-25