Tiny Isles
I have a vested interest in island generators, so I was already interested in the Tiny Isles Twitter bot by Paul Newton and
Chris Beard.
But then one of them sent me a link to a write-up of the development process, and the one thing I like better than talking about a procedural generator is talking about how it works and the process the developers went through to put it together.
It’s a peek at the drama of making a generator, which feels very familiar to me. I especially like that it doesn’t shy away from describing the frustrations and dead ends along the way. These are a part of every generative project, but they usually get glossed over. I think it’s important to sometimes acknowledge them, especially for people who are just starting out and don’t realize how normal it is to run into frustrations like that.
The generator itself is quite interesting: though small, the eventual result is a simple but effective application of noise and shading to create convincing-looking relief maps of tropical islands.
https://plaxdev.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/procedurally-generating-islands/
fishyfishyfishtimes