Ultima Ratio Regum's new, rather more realistic, worlds. news

Another quick weekend update, and the last on world generation for a long time. Having finished creating all the areas the player actually walks around - volcanoes, deserts, mountains, forests, whatever - I took another look at the world map, and realized that blob-continents like the one below aren't very exciting.

So, I've redone the algorithms for creating a world. I wanted something that gave continents, and varied ones, but could provide anything from large landmasses to small ones, everything in-between, and allow for oceans to play a more interesting role than just "the edge of the map". A few hours later, and a normal generated map looks like:

I'm still working on adding additional climate-area variation, and that should happen before the first alpha release in the middle of this year. In the mean time, however, all the maps generated look like the above; lots of land, some islands, some seas, some larger oceans, and they also provide much more interesting empires and civilizations when generated. Development is now switching to creatures and combat for the next little while, so I'll be putting up some updates about those in the near future. You can read more on my devblog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. The devblog is updated weekly on Mondays, and the Twitter/FB roughly daily. Plus, those who follow will get updates first, and will likely gain access to the alpha (or particular facets of the alpha) before the general public. Stay tuned, and let me know what you think!