News for July 2003

The site traffic has gone up considerably since the nice folks at vterrain.org listed L3DT on their artificial terrain generation page. If you haven't just come from the VTP you should probably go there next - it is a highly recommended resource.

The 'intro' page has been updated to better reflect the state of progress of the L3DT project. Included on that page are three lists:

1. The features in the current release version.
2. The 'to do' list (features I intend to write / am working on).
3. The features that are implemented in my private build of L3DT and will be coming in the next release.

Some may be interested to note that this last list now includes 'painting' tools for the intermediate map. This means you (or rather I) can now paint what you / I want the heightfield to look like. The result is that it is now very easy to design the heightfield - carving rivers or building mountain ranges is a cinch (compare with news item from 10-Jul-03).

As promised yesterday, there are some new pictures in the gallery that show the water map rendered in 3D. The water map is handled as a 2nd heightfield, which is very wasteful in terms of memory and triangles to render. It was a quick and nasty solution, but I think the results look pleasant.

I'm working on L3DT again after a 2-week break (damn work always getting in the way!). I've made a fair bit of progress but there is still much to be done before the next release (ETA: TBA / NFI). I'm mostly working on improving the functionality of the intermediate map so that you can design the heightfield, put lakes where you want, etc. I've added more 'specials' in the intermediate map: In addition to mountains (in release 1.5), there are now volcanos and plateaus, and I'll add atolls soon. More specials will follow if / when I think of them (any suggestions anyone?).

Water! I almost forgot - L3DT now saves water maps that the L3DT Viewer can load (many thanks to Stuart Gooding for his work on the viewer). The new version is not available for download yet, but will be soon-ish. I'll put up some screenshots of the water tomorrow.

Release 1.5 is fine for making random heightfields. It is, however, very difficult to 'design' the heightfield using the intermediate map - you can do it, but it takes a lot of patience. It took me about half an hour yesterday just to make a river go between two mountain ranges. It should be easier than that, and it will be soon…

The solution: Last night I re-wrote the start of the HF algorithm and changed the contents of intermediate map - now when you specify in the intermediate map that you want an altitude of, say, 300m - that's exactly what you get. I'll release the new exe when I've finished the 'painting' tools for the intermediate map.

It's much faster. It's slightly easier to use. It has progress bars. It can be downloaded for free. You can edit the intermediate map, which means you can now define how you want the heightfield to look before it's generated. The gallery has been updated, but the tutorial is now a little out of date.

Why another release so soon? SPEED!! Inspiration struck last night and I got the hybrid geometric/fractal overlay height-field generator down to 30 seconds / megapixel (from over 5 minutes). There was no loss of quality. I expect to make release 1.5 available on Monday or Tuesday. The 'tech info' and 'tute' pages will be updated then.

• The executable for L3DT release 1 is now available on the downloads page (finally!).
• There's a tutorial of sorts on the tutorial page.
• Screenshots have been updated.
• Minor corrections have been made here and there.