LGJ:
Yep, maybe I should introduce some of these ideas into the code for my next test.

Hmmm, it's four o'clock in the morning, I think I need some sleep.

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Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning.

The address is:
http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~sirukell/

I hope it works.

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C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.

The height is saved per map tile, each map tile corresponds to one continental plate. The plate centers are more like plate handles at the moment. It can even happen, that the "center" is completely outside of the plate itself.
I don't know much about geology myself, but I know that my map generator is extremly simplyfied at the moment. And unfortunately the results aren't very good yet.

All:

I'm soon going to update the source code on the page. I made some small improvements, but I fear I have to start again with a better concept.

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Whenever hot spots are under the ocean, they tend to generate island chains, like Hawaii. I think that would be good to add, since the oceans tlook a little bare now. Islands can be extremely important in warfare and exploring, as WW2, showed.

I made a Java applet, but I can't get it to run in my Browser (IE5.5). It always says: "class XYZ not found". XYZ is something like package.classname, for example "mapgen.MapGenApplet". All my source files are in the mapgen package, MapGenApplet is my Applet class. Whatever I tried, it always claimed "class not found". I even tried not to pack my files into packages, but it doesn't help. The worst is, I have found some examples which work just perfect and if I try to copy them 1:1 for my own code, nothing works! The applet tag I use is the following:

[APPLET
CODEBASE = "."
CODE = "mapgen.MapGenApplet.class"
NAME = "MapGenApplet"
WIDTH = 400
HEIGHT = 300
HSPACE = 0
VSPACE = 0
ALIGN = top
]
[/APPLET]

I exchanged the "<" and ">" braces with "[" and "]" braces, to not confuse the forum. I have used "<" and ">" in my HTML files, of course.

The code is in a "mapgen" subdirectory of the directory the HTML file is located in. In the mapgen dir is the "MapGenApplet.class" file. The funny thing is, JBuilder, the IDE I use, can automatically generate a HTML file to test an applet, and in the IDE it works! But as soon as I try to launch the exact same HTML file in IE nothing works, just "class not found".

So if you know what I am doing wrong please tell me! I tried the whole day, and nothing worked. Don't forget, every applet I found, which wasn't made by me, did work in IE!

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I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.

I found it at: http://geography.about.com/science/geography/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fao.org%2FWAICENT%2FFAOINFO%2FSUSTDEV%2FEIdirect%2Fclimate%2FEIsp0002.htm

There are even potential biomass maps. Maybe this can be included in the ecology model?

I made a 20kb physical map generator in Qbasic (shame on me). If anyone wants to see it, let me know and I'll mail it through. It doesn't work by moving plates about, but it looks fine (for 20k).

Remember that the land mass of this planet started as a supercontinent, was torn apart, formed a supercontinent again, was torned apart, formed a supercontinent (Pangaea) and forms the current continents after being torn apart for the third time. This shouldn't be generated, of course, but the initial supercontinent has to have quite some texture right from the start.

In passing, I have my own domain name. "Takaro" is the Maori word for "Game". Go figure where my priorities are...

I certainly hope that RL starts heading in the right direction for you soon!

Best Regards,