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Sunday 18 August 2019

My terrain generator: A progress report

I've been doing a lot of work devising a terrain generator that will work with my simple campaign system and my PORTABLE WARGAME rules. The basic rules have been written, and now I have to test them. This is going to take some time, as any problems that arise during the testing may require tweaks here and there.

It is my intention to include lots of explanatory diagrams in the rules to show how they work, and this is also going to take time as I am going to have to create them using the meagre resources I have to hand ... mainly MS PAINT. As a result, I hope to be able to upload the rules as a blog entry by the middle of the week.

8 comments:

  1. For a completely random terrain generator I have tried using conditional formatting in MS Excel to position random squares of "hills" or "woods" on an 8x8 grid board. You can end up with some strange battlefields but it is completely random!

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    1. Maudlin Jack Tar,

      That sounds like an interesting idea,

      Back in the 1980s(!) I owned a Sinclair Spectrum and wrote a program in Basic that generated random terrain for tabletop battlefields. The results were variable, but more of the resulting maps were useable than weren't. It sounds like your MS Excel spreadsheet works along similar lines.

      I did think about computerising my terrain generation rules, but I'm way out of practice these days, and prefer to stick with manual systems.

      All the best,

      Bob

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  2. Hi Bob,
    Looking forward to further developments of your Project- which has proved most interesting with the Sudan as an example. I've built my TOY BATTLESHIPS and have Posted the results onto my Blog- thought you'd be interested to view. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. Kev Robertson (Kev),

      So far the results have been very encouraging, and the terrain generation rules seem to be coming together reasonably well. Only testing will show if they work as well as I hope.

      I'll pay a visit to your blog later today as I'm keen to see what your model ships look like.

      All the best,

      Bob

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    2. Hi Bob.
      Thank you for visiting my site and commenting...tomorrow ( Monday) I'll be able to get in a Naval Battle or two and be able to make a report on the action- sometime tomorrow night. Stay tuned Bob. Cheers. KEV.

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    3. Kev Robertson (Kev),

      I look forward to seeing your battle report.

      All the best,

      Bob

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  3. Bob - depending on what diagrams you need, I use Microsoft Visio a lot for work - and my won use (I used it to create a backdrop of the Stadtschloss in Potsdam for my post FP War victory parade display at Salute a couple of years ago) - very happy to help if I can - you have my e-mail address

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    Replies
    1. Ian Dury,

      I used MS Visio when I was working, and it was a very useful program. Unfortunately my version isn't compatible with the latest MS operating system, and nowadays it is an expensive piece of software to buy.

      All the best,

      Bob

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