Medieval Fantasy City Generator

Devlog

• 0.7.1: Editable district names
  July 22, 2019 by watabou

  11

  #update

  This update is very small. Probably the only noticeable new feature is an ability to edit district names - just click one and enter a new value. It looks a bit odd when curvilinear labels are enabled, but I wanted to keep it consistent with the way how a city name is edited. Please note that in contrast with a city name, district names are not "saved" in the url (in the non-itch version ). It is... Continue reading

  
• 0.7.0: Districts
  June 11, 2019 by watabou

  18

  More refactoring The second figure of the version number has increased again (from 6 to 7) and this means I consider this update as a major one. The reason is not a new "districts" feature, but serious inner changes in the generator. As before, these changes are not visible. Well, at least I hope they are not visible. In case you are interested in technical details I've migrated the whole project... Continue reading

  
• 0.6.0: Custom colors, scale bar, elevation
  February 09, 2019 by watabou

  16

  Major refactoring This is not something users normally should care about, but it's really important for future development and I've spent a lot of time on it, so I mention it here as a number one item. Right now it just makes the generation process a bit faster and more robust; later it will allow me to implement some features, which seemed too complex before. Elevation The maps are still 2D, but... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.5: Farm fields, rotation tool and city names
  December 12, 2018 by watabou

  14

  Farm fields To fill the emptiness of the space outside city walls, a random number of farm fields is now spawned. You can disable them in the Layout submenu. If you think they are drawn incorrectly, then you are not alone :P More on the subject here and here . Rotation tool It's now possible to rotate a map as a whole. For that, while in the Warp mode shift+click any point and drag. It can be usef... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.4: Integration with Azgarr's Fantasy Map Generator
  September 01, 2018 by watabou

  9

  The main feature of this update is integration with Azgarr's awesome Fantasy Map Generator . This is how it works: you can click any settlement on a map in FMG (and then a tiny button with a map icon on it) and MFCG will build a plan of that settlement taking into account its size and location. And vice versa: you can click the "Overworld" button in MFCG and for the current city FMG will generate... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.3: Neighbourhoods, alleys and buildings
  May 15, 2018 by watabou

  8

  #update

  Neighbourhoods Neighbourhoods are groups of adjacent wards of the same type. The idea is to reduce amount of labels on a map: if there is a cluster of 3 "craftsmen" wards, for example, labelling each of them is overkill. Instead, a single label can be placed somewhere close to the center of the cluster. The placement of labels is far from perfect and it can be easily improved, but I'm going to ref... Continue reading

  
• Experimenting
  April 20, 2018 by watabou

  4

  Here I'd like to share the results of my recent experiments with a more traditional way of settlement generation. In contrast with MFCG's "block-centric" approach the traditional one is "road-centric", i.e a settlement is defined by its roads which are grown kind of organically like veins. If you interested in algorithms, check the "Publications" section here . My code is loosely based on Proced... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.2: Warp tool
  February 01, 2018 by watabou

  6

  I was going to make this update a little later and it was meant to be about different stuff, but a couple of weeks ago I posted on Twitter a video of “mesh distortion tool” , which caused some unexpected amount of positive feedback. It was nice, but at the same time it put much pressure on me. Actually this tool even wasn’t intended for MFCG, it was a proof of concept for a new desktop appli... Continue reading

  
• Future plans for MFCG
  January 31, 2018 by watabou

  12

  As you probably know, the first versions of this generator were a small exercise in procedural generation without much purpose (here is my first post about it and the earliest screenshots). Over time it has found its audience of users, which affected the direction of development and made the whole activity much more rewarding - thank you all who supported the project and provided much-valued feed... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.1 and Merry Christmas! 🎄🎄🎄
  December 23, 2017 by watabou

  1

  I wanted to release something before the Holidays, but didn't have enough time to implement anything epic. So there is nothing epic in this update, just small improvements :) Labels . Checking this "style" option makes ward labels visible without holding the spacebar. Also when it's checked, all the labels get exported along with the rest of the map (works both for PNG and SVG). More roads . That'... Continue reading

  
• Toy Town
  November 11, 2017 by watabou

  2

  Toy Town is a 3d-visualizer for MFCG. It is a prototype of something that one day may become a separate native application or a part of the generator itself, or both. Continue reading

  
• 0.5.0: Rivers and basic house shapes
  October 06, 2017 by watabou

  14

  A month and a half have passed since the last release - I know it's long. There were several reasons for that. First of all right after releasing 0.4.3 I took a bit of rest :). Then I played with 3d stuff just to keep myself motivated (you can see the resulting images here ). And then it was time to get back to the real development, but rivers turned out to be a little more complex task than I ex... Continue reading

  
• Some progress on 3D view
  September 14, 2017 by watabou

  7

  Continue reading

  
• 0.4.3: Export
  August 23, 2017 by watabou

  6

  Export to PNG You can now save a map as a hi-res PNG file. In most cases its resolution will be higher than you can get by taking a screenshot unless you are using one of those 4k/5k monitors. The exporter supports all the visual options including hatching, block view etc. Export to SVG You can now save a map as an SVG file, which may be useful if you intend to edit or print it. If you open an exp... Continue reading

  
• 0.4.2: Shanty towns and more options
  August 09, 2017 by watabou

  7

  Another small update. List of changes: Shanty towns. In the " Options->Layout" menu you can check " Shanty towns " (unchecked by default) and get a lot of extramural wards. Probably not all of them should be shanty towns, maybe I'll interleave them with more respectable craftsmen wards in future versions. It's kind of experimental feature and sometimes it produces weird results. More options are n... Continue reading

  
• Source code
  August 03, 2017 by watabou

  2

  For those who interested, here is the source code of the generator: link . Continue reading
• 0.4.1: Options
  July 31, 2017 by watabou

  7

  List of changes: Options added Yes, it's quite a short one. You can now define what features you need in your city - citadel, walls, plaza, coast. Also you can change some cosmetic parameters, namely colour scheme and hatching. All these parameters get saved locally and restored on startup. There are very many parameters, which are not exposed through this new options menu yet, they will be added... Continue reading

  
• 0.4.0: Coastal cities
  July 13, 2017 by watabou

  14

  List of changes: Cities/towns on a (sea/lake) coast Nicer map labels (Merriweather TrueType font with outlining) Slightly modified UI which auto-hides after a short timeout Some old bugs and glitches are fixed, some new ones are introduced - same as usual Coastal cities The new version of the generator is now able to place a city on a coast or to be exact it can place a coast next to a city. There... Continue reading

  
• 0.3.0: Wall-less layouts, city outskirts, smooth roads
  June 17, 2017 by watabou

  9

  List of changes: Central plaza, citadel and city walls are now optional. You can't switch them on and off yet, these parameters are chosen randomly. Later I will add a proper UI (checkboxes) for them. City outskirts get spawned for walled cities. Right now only regions next to the gates get populated, in the future I'm going to enable generating as many extramural wards as needed. Improved layou... Continue reading

  
• 0.2.2: Temples, wards overview
  June 01, 2017 by watabou

  1

  I keep working on adding water bodies and shantytowns or rather an infrastructure for them. Meanwhile here is an update with some small features and bug fixes: Main temples (cathedrals). These are big structures similar to castles usually overlooking the plaza. Wards overview: press and hold the SHIFT key to see all the wards labels. It's just a helper function, not an attempt to implement proper... Continue reading

  
• Some answers and comments
  May 25, 2017 by watabou

  4

  Yesterday something has happened and suddenly the link to this generator got shared and retweeted all over the internet (twitter and reddit mostly but still)! The page was visited more than 100k time in one day - it's very exciting and motivating :) There were many comments, questions and suggestions and here I'll try to answer the most frequent of them. In some cases it will be a link to my answe... Continue reading

  
• Tiny fixes and preview of hatching
  May 22, 2017 by watabou

  2

  This update includes 2 tiny fixes: Zooming with the mouse wheel is disabled, because I've got many reports saying it causes a crash (works fine for me though). I think it's something about the way how OpenFL handles scaling graphics and I hope to properly fix it later. Don't forget that you can switch to full screen by pressing a semi-transparent button in the bottom right corner to get a better v... Continue reading

  
• The First Post
  May 19, 2017 by watabou

  4

  I was not going to start blogging but since itch.io now has this nice devlog feature it would a waste not to use it. At least I can post lists of changes here, but if you guys have any questions/suggestions regarding the generator please feel free to comment. Continue reading