Darwinia-inspired landscape

[martin]

are you going to make this open source?

[CadeF]

Yes

Visual Basic .NET 2005, Visual Studio 2005 Professional
DirectX 9 + HLSL (It's C language)

[Darksun]

Do you think it'd also compile in VS2005 Express? I see no reason why it shouldn't, but Visual Studio can be a bitch sometimes

[CadeF]

It should be able to compile. VB Express has a fully functional compiler.

My next screenshot should be of trees.

[aoanla]

It should be able to compile. VB Express has a fully functional compiler.

My next screenshot should be of trees.

Would you mind if I had a stab at porting it to notWinAPI/OpenGL, once open sourced? (Yes, I know it would be easier to start from scratch, but the experience will be "good" for me).

[CadeF]

No, I don't mind if you port my code, but I won't be releasing the source code until I am further along in development, with fractal trees and per-vertex water waves. If you would like any help, you can just ask me.

[hitm4n]

This is building up very nicely. Look forward to each update

[CadeF]

I would really like more posts here.

Right now, I have a solid idea on how to make waves, I'm just about to implement it, and a fairly good idea on how to do trees, need a bit of more time to do trees.

[aoanla]

I would really like more posts here.

Right now, I have a solid idea on how to make waves, I'm just about to implement it, and a fairly good idea on how to do trees, need a bit of more time to do trees.

Generally, in this kind of thread, you get more posts each time you post a screenshot. It's sad, but true. So, when you post "Landscape + waves", I'm sure that more people will comment.

[CadeF]

I have waves working. I am going to make a settings dialog box (The initial load form is currently just a Start button), make trees (How simple that sounds), and release the source code.

[xander]

You wanted height maps. I am not sure what format you want them in, but there is a great set of DEMs for the state of Nevada that you can find here. I play a little bit with Terragen, and have found that LandSerf is a handy utility for converting DEMs to Terragen surface maps. Perhaps it could also be used to convert DEMs to whatever format you are using.

xander

[aoanla]

I suspect the heightmaps that CadeF is using are just bitmaps. It's the easiest way to integrate them into something like this...

[CadeF]

Thanks, xander

The heightmaps I am using are in this format

Where black is the lowest level and white is the highest level. Water exists over any part of the heightmap under RGB(16,16,16)

[CadeF]

Note, to run this when it is done, you will need the .NET 2.0 Framework, and possibly the latest version of DirectX.

I'm not sure what .dll files do I need to include for DirectX, so could I have a volunteer tester who has the .NET 2.0 framework and no DirectX SDK installed?

[xander]

Thanks, xander

The heightmaps I am using are in this format...

Yeah, I thought it might be something like that. LandSerf is good for that. You can also grab the demo version of Terragen to generate surface maps. I don't think that Terragen uses the format that you are using, either, but, as I said, LandSerf is happy to do the conversion.

xander