Fractal Terrains 3 - Useful for smaller, regional maps?

[swammeyjoe]

Hello,

I'm writing a fantasy RPG hex-crawl, and as such have as map detailed at the 1-mile-per-hex scale of a region about 70x70 miles.

I've downloaded the FT3 Demo and Wilbur, but am unsure if either of these programs have the capacity to add detail on such a small scale. What I'd ideally like to do is get a very high resolution look at altitude changes and climate patterns, if for nothing else than my own reference. I thought I could start with the plain map and add from there, but everything is focused on doing big. I tried to generate a normal earth sized world and then zoom in and edit a small part but the brushes didn't seem to shrink to the size I needed.

Thoughts?

[waldronate]

As you observed, FT3 is focused on world-scale to regional things, which is why use of map projections is an important part of its user experience. It has a constant-size editing setup, which means that you can't just add detail where you need it, but have to have the same editing resolution everywhere, even in the middle of the ocean. To get better editing resolution in FT3, you need to use Map>>World Settings:Editing page and set the resolution to something higher. The default world editing resolution is 256x128, which is about 157 miles per sample on an Earth-sized world. The resolution will go up to 8190x4095, which is about 5 miles per sample on an Earth-sized world.

FT3 has a horrible climate model because it doesn't take into account heat movement via wind or ocean. It does take into account a number of useful things, and the rainfall/temperature models do take into account the underlying terrain, so it has some useful features. It definitely won't generate the kind of detailed microclimate things that you seem to be looking for.

Wilbur works reasonably well for smaller areas (100 mi on a side is about its sweet spot for normal editing). Wilbur is not particularly plausible for whole-world areas, but it's usually good enough for visualization purposes. Wilbur doesn't have anything resembling a climate model at all, so it can't help you there.

As far as software that would work for the microclimates present on a 70x70 mile area, I don't think that I've seen any. Temperature and rainfall models require global (or at least fairly large-area) effects for things to be particularly meaningful. If you want local-area things, then you need to provide information that would be derived from such a global model such as wind patterns and rainfall schedules.

[Confutus]

When started working with FT3, I noticed such a serious discrepancy with temperature, rainfall, and climate patterns it provided for earth compared to the reality that I lost faith in it. Heat movements due to oceanic and atmospheric circulation affects temperature, which in turn affects rainfall, which in turn affects vegetation, and then there are seasonal variations and possible feedback effects. I'm not meteorologist, oceanographer, or astronomer enough to account for these. But then, neither is FT3. It seems the best that can be done is to estimate those effects and edit them by hand. I've found FT3 most useful at handling the topography.

[waldronate]

The purpose of the temperature and rainfall features in FT3 was to allow the user to edit in their desired values and then have FT3 calculate approximate climates based on those values. It used to be explicitly clear in the documentation exactly what the limitations were (it even gave the equations used in the model), but I'm not sure if that was ever done in the advertising copy.

[johnvanvliet]

Badlands might be what you are looking for
https://github.com/badlands-model/badlands

see the documentation
https://badlands.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

it is a simulation / research program and not very user friendly

but with some time ( and practice) it can be used

though it has been some time ( a few years) since i last used it