World Forge Playtest now available!

I am pleased to announce that the first playtest, dubbed "World Forge", is ready for action! What can you do in this playtest? Basically, you create world maps.

The devil is in the details though, so here is a breakdown of things you can do:

• Create world maps procedurally using a number of parameters, such as landmass preset, humidity and temperature

• Observe the distribution of the biomes in your world: Abyssal sea, sea, shallows, freshwater, grassland, forest, jungle, swamp, savannah, tundra, desert and barrens.

• Optionally use images (colors or just transparency information) to guide procedural world map generation

• Create cities and road networks procedurally

• Be able to edit procedurally generated maps, or start from an empty water map

• Place cities, and assign arbitrary properties to them

• Create or destroy road networks, or procedurally generate them based on city locations

• Use brushes to change temperature, humidity, elevation, water type (river, lake, sea or land), vegetation density or directly paint desired biomes (12 to choose from)

• Use brush sizes, shapes and a gradient brush mode for more editing flexibility

• Save and load an editing session

• Export small images of your map (without details such as vegetation and mountains)

• Export really big and detailed images of your map (with details such as vegetation and mountains)

• Export map and city information to a structured text file (JSON)

• Change various settings: audio, graphics, controls and interface

Here's a short video example of usage:

Some Q&A:

I've made a map... Now what?

In the future, such maps can be used as world maps for the main game. But right now, you can also export them (see above options) for your own use

If I make the map I play, isn't exploration effectively over?

No, because:

• only landscape, routes and cities are shown in world map - there will be a lot more, like dungeons, portals, and other places of interest, and even NPCs

• editing and viewing the world map that you will play will be optional. In the map generation screen there will be an option "make me a completely random map" or "make me a similar map to this"

• how this will be handled might very well be changed in the future

I hope you enjoy!