Skysphere clouds and Perlin noise

[begla]

Just a quick question: Why did you write a separate noise function used for the generation of the clouds, Anton?

 

[Adeon]

Cause I wanted to find how Perlin noise works.

 

[begla]

Cause I wanted to find how Perlin noise works.

Okay, that's a good point. But we should rely on the generator class in the final result to reduce redundancies and local code complexity (given your noise function does nothing extremely fancy).

 

[Cervator]

Hint hint, this might be a great time to put a little page in the wiki on how Perlin Noise works inside Blockmania for future reference / for mere mortals

 

[begla]

Hint hint, this might be a great time to put a little page in the wiki on how Perlin Noise works inside Blockmania for future reference / for mere mortals

Planned for this evening. I'll start with a explanation how the terrain is generated in general and how Perlin noise comes into play there.

 

[Cervator]

Cool - looking forward to it!

My Saturday is nice and open, tho it might get gobbled up by AI class homework (boy, Stanford is no joke, online or not). So much stuff I want to do, so little time, argh

 

[begla]

A first version is up: http://wiki.movingblocks.net/Blockmania ... Generation

Have a look at it and give me feedback. I'll write all the missing parts you are interested in. Man this topic is complex... Tried to explain it as easily as possible and leave out as much unnecessary stuff as possible.

 

[Cervator]

Neat! I think I get most of it, will have to read it a second time from home while also looking at the code

I figured there was something about generating a 2D thing first, then using something 3Dish for fancier stuff like caves and overhangs. Are the biome definitions generated separately, so that "map" can be used to amplify/decrease density? I recall seeing a colored map somewhere.

Interested in more for sure, especially on caves and rivers. I'm imagining using existing density/biome info to generate another map for geology. Although there you get into veins of different materials, instead of block or not, along with a desire to geographically separate some rare materials, hmm.

 

[begla]

Are the biome definitions generated separately, so that "map" can be used to amplify/decrease density?

Exactly. This map is generated using two additional multifractal noise functions to simulate the change of humidity and temperature (this is really close to the algorithm currently used in Minecraft). Biomes are mapped to areas where humidity and temperature equal specific range of values.

Interested in more for sure, especially on caves and rivers.

Noise functions can be put in a vast amount of different forms just using some well known math functions. The rivers are (again) generated using 2D multifractal noise functions. But the final result is shaped using

Math.sqrt(Math.abs(noiseValue))

which finally creates these river-like structures (visualized as a 2D heightmap for example). Using more octaves of noise would result in more detailled structures and more branchings. The values provided by this function can be used to determined the areas where there rivers should be generated. The depth etc. relies on the current block position within the chunk and the distance to the topmost block.