rplacd

By “world generation” we mean natural landscapes - not because we’re not interested in urban landscapes, but because we have a larger margin of error with the former. It’s not the “cities aren’t actually that interesting” effect - isn’t raw nature just as repeating? It’s the problem of simulating, in a way that isn’t trivial, all the possible ways humanity can both inhabit an environment, and shape it to its structures - determinism in both directions.

A high-level view. We’ll use Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, Sir, You are Being Hunted, and The Witcher 3 (that is, the REDengine 3) as our prototypical examples. Be familiar with the first two. (TW3 isn’t meaningfully procedural - but substantially procedural enough to work on, and high-detail.)

We also refer to Morrowind as a source world we intend to model.

We begin with concrete analyses, work out the design space, and then try to locate ourselves within it - although you can read it backwards if you want to see choices before justifications.

A concrete exam

rplacd

Enabling Optimus support for your desktop GPU

Windows 10 users: you won't need this guide. NVidia has made signed drivers available with the modifications outlined here, although it's been said you'll have to get them from third-party vendors - distributing them like they do with notebook GPU drivers. I use drivers bundled with the Razer Core enclosure.

rplacd

; Setup packaging...
(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives 
    '("marmalade" .
      "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/"))
(add-to-list 'package-archives
  '("melpa" . 
      "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/"))
(package-initialize)