When Bots Create Fantasy Maps...

The Twitter account @unchartedatlas creates automated, bot-generated fantasy maps on an hourly basis. The bot was created by Swansea University's Martin O'Leary using his knowledge as a glaciologist. Adding real physics into the bot's code, its virtual worlds are more coherent than many automated terrain generators. "I wanted to play with terrain generation with a physical basis. There are loads of articles on the internet which describe terrain generation, and they almost all use some variation on a fractal noise approach, either directly (by adding layers of noise functions), or indirectly (e.g. through midpoint displacement). These methods produce lots of fine detail, but the large-scale structure always looks a bit off. Features are attached in random ways, with no thought to the processes which form landscapes. I wanted to try something a little bit different." There's a bunch of information on his website, along with the code itself, which you can use.

The Twitter account @unchartedatlas creates automated, bot-generated fantasy maps on an hourly basis. The bot was created by Swansea University's Martin O'Leary using his knowledge as a glaciologist. Adding real physics into the bot's code, its virtual worlds are more coherent than many automated terrain generators. "I wanted to play with terrain generation with a physical basis. There are loads of articles on the internet which describe terrain generation, and they almost all use some variation on a fractal noise approach, either directly (by adding layers of noise functions), or indirectly (e.g. through midpoint displacement). These methods produce lots of fine detail, but the large-scale structure always looks a bit off. Features are attached in random ways, with no thought to the processes which form landscapes. I wanted to try something a little bit different." There's a bunch of information on his website, along with the code itself, which you can use.




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I like the landmass that it generates, but the names need a better algorithm. Good fantasy names are not just a mishmash of nonsense, but build on existing linguistic rules. For example, if you follow French naming conventions (as some places in my own campaign do), then you get a lot of cities named after mountains, castles, saints or fortifications (Mont, Le Chateau, Petite-Fort, St).

In lord of the rings for example, "Minas" means "tower". So you get places like Minas Morgul, and Minas Tirith. In the fantasy movie Willow, there is a castle called Tyr Asleen. Where again, "Tyr" probably means tower.

And in my own campaign I have a prison tower called "Kule Kaurar", where "Kule" is a Turkish word for tower. Although it doesn't follow correct Turkish naming conventions, because Kule should be at the end. But Kule Kaurar just sounded cooler than Kaurar Kule. But the point is, it should sound like it could be a real place. And it should also have a sort of linguistic flavor to the way it sounds. Names such as Morgul and Kaurar already sound unpleasant, and are thus reserved for evil places.

It's also important for a fantasy map generator to come up with fantasy names that the players can pronounce, spell and remember.
 
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TBeholder

Explorer
Cool!
(starts musing as to whether this will inspire the next worldgen update in Dwarf Fortress)
I like the landmass that it generates, but the names need a better algorithm. Good fantasy names are not just a mishmash of nonsense, but build on existing linguistic rules.
[...]
It's also important for a fantasy map generator to come up with fantasy names that the players can pronounce, spell and remember.
There are several known algorithms. Whichever is chosen, it necessarily would need a proper configuration for each specific task.
Which usually goes better with convenient setup, but that's no big deal, in most cases it could be done on the fly in something like Glade / PyGlade frontend.
But that's not directly related to maps.
What would be (as a part of assigning names to the specific features) is selection of rulesets by regions. And what would be trickier (but awesome) is post-processing with option for "bastardization" of names generated in one language ruleset using another (on borders of chosen regions and major trade paths).
 
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I like that idea. So basically it could be a two-step process. You first generate a land mass that you like, and then define regions within that map. You define which area is The Shire, and which are is Mordor, in a manner of speaking. Each area follows different naming conventions. The land of the big bad has names that sound menacing. And the land that is peaceful, has names that sound like typical rural English town names, for example.

Once regions are defined, the program could randomize the borders, so they are not perfectly straight either. And the user should be able to select specific places, and randomize the name for only that place specifically (so you can get rid of names you don't like).
 

TBeholder

Explorer
I like that idea. So basically it could be a two-step process. You first generate a land mass that you like, and then define regions within that map.

Once regions are defined, the program could randomize the borders, so they are not perfectly straight either. And the user should be able to select specific places, and randomize the name for only that place specifically (so you can get rid of names you don't like).
Since it's processing of a map, most of this can be done automatically too. Very basic feature detection, maybe on the level of "select similar" tool in a raster editor.

You define which area is The Shire, and which are is Mordor, in a manner of speaking. Each area follows different naming conventions. The land of the big bad has names that sound menacing. And the land that is peaceful, has names that sound like typical rural English town names, for example.
Naming map features implies several layers of data, and doing anything beyond connecting two with the third requires extra steps. Something like this:
1. Map (given - generated). Presumably pure raster graphics, vector is possible, but unlikely.
2. Name generator set of rulesets (given - by the user).
2.1 While you are deciding on it, choose which sort of names is fit for mountains, which is fit for towns, etc. You may want to have some way to filter the list.
3. Geographical features - shapes, borders, etc (detectable - created from the map).
4. Logistics difficulty map (may benefit from user input or need tweaking to have desired result) - people used to measure routes in "days of travel", and why wouldn't they? Mostly this means marking possible roads and appraising region borders for how hard it is to run war or trade across them, and how much contact people have in general. Which makes it more important if the "people" steps are automated. It looks like geographical level, but it depends on things like terrain capabilities of animals and seaworthiness of vessels.
5. Regions. (requires some user input or tweaking to have desired result). It's the main "people dependent" layer.
5.1 Basic assignments - that's where "which is The Shire, and which are is Mordor" is set. This finally links the map and toponym list.
5.2 Merging of the major regions - e.g. you decide all those connected valley/low hill lands are "The Shires".
5.3 Divergence and adaptation. The previous steps may suggest various issues, including where the different Shires are and how much they are likely to diverge - i.e. if the North-Western Shire has a border with swampland, it may have to deal with some problems from mosquitoes to alligators to trolls. And if the Southern Shire is stuck in a big river delta and is directly connected only with Green Shire upriver, you may want to consider how life here is going to differ from low hills of the Middle Shire, and how much events in the thrice-removed North-Western Shire can possibly affect it.
6. Exceptional features (requires some user input or tweaking to have desired result).
6.1 There's likely to be a town on that river/coast, or a battle site in that valley, but where exactly?
6.2 Roads and trade routes, since they depend on such point locations, on relations and on warping by logistics difficulty - all the previous steps.
...Repeat 4-6 to reflect participants being wiped out, shrink and fade into obscurity, merge, expand, split to create several new ones. Or just "shaken". This produces various ruins and toponymical anomalies like "foreign" or "bastardized" names - "Elves don't live here, but they used to".
 

Sir Brennen

Legend
These are very neat. One looked surprisingly like my own homebrew world map (which was created tracing the northern coast of Alaska and flipping it upside down.)

Not crazy about the names, and don't necessarily want to tweak that portion of the generator code, either. No, there are plenty of fantasy name generators out there on the web. Also a few free graphic tools that do layers so you can add names as you like (and show/hide them to create different versions of the map.) I like Paint.Net, though I know there's a lot of GIMP fans.
 

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