Friday, September 05, 2008

libtcod 1.4 heightmap tool

The heightmap tool is improving slowly. While the available tools in the heightmap module are still very limited, it's already pretty cool to be able to stack several operations on the heightmap and then dynamically modify any parameter of any operation and see it's impact of the heightmap in real time.
Moreover, I ventured to start to develop a small widget toolkit for the heightmap tool that might join libtcod if it's useful enough.

On this first screenshot, you can see the UI :
  • status bar on the top
  • a small stats panel
  • the tools panel where you can stack a new operation, change the display mode or export the heightmap
  • the parameters panel where you see parameters for the selected operation
  • the history panel, showing the stacked operations
On this shot, I first added fbm to get the landscape base. Then a few hills in the center of the map (thus the visible peak with snow), then a few rain erosion and a last smoothing step. I selected the first operation in the history stack (add fbm) and I can tweak its parameters (noise scale, position, ...).

On this second shot, I moved the fbm to the left (see the sea position). The hills didn't move. They're still on the middle. This shot also shows that when the mouse is away from the UI, it becomes transparent to allow you to see the whole map.