3 ms·

Back in 1996/1997 I worked on a CD-ROM game that simulated movement of the tectonic plates, as well as temperature, elevation, and precipitation, over millions

by kmoser 2y ago

Back in 1996/1997 I worked on a CD-ROM game that simulated movement of the tectonic plates, as well as temperature, elevation, and precipitation, over millions of years. Amazing to see how evolution (heh!) of computing hardware and software have come so far in 28 years: https://www.kmoser.com/evolution/ https://www.kmoser.com/evolution/

fersaysrelax 2y ago
I think you are the first person I come across that knows that game and you were an actual dev on it! So thank you! I played it when I was around 13(I think) and I loved it. The whole concept of simulating a planet and the animals on it was pretty much mind blowing for me at the time(it still is). I should have kept the poster that came with it...the different sapien evolutionary branches were really interesting.
- kmoser 2y ago
  Cool! It's admittedly an obscure game. My main contribution included the random generation and movement of the cratons. This involved mapping Cartesian to spherical coordinates but harder because each row of tiles was offset by half a tile's width from the rows above and below, like a brick wall. We wrote an in-house editor that let us create and animate the different cratons, starting with the Pangaea configuration (basically all cratons stuck together as a giant continent) all the way through to how they are arranged now, to simulate how they moved historically. That was also difficult! I also worked on the initial placement of some visual elements that dotted the landscape, and the serialization of the different data structures for loading/saving games. After it shipped they gave each of us devs a couple of shrink-wrapped copies of the boxed final product but weirdly they were not the US version. I still have an (unopened) Portuguese version that probably has the poster.
jonah 2y ago
This is rad! I recently read Assembling California by John McPhee[1][2] - highly recommended BTW. Anyway, I was musing that I'd love to see a 3D globe with a time slider that I could play around with and visualize the (projected of course) movement of the plates to get us to where we are now. Do you know of anything like that? [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19898.Assembling_California https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19898.Assembling_Califor... [2] excerpt: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/09/07/assembling-california-part-i https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/09/07/assembling-cal...
- kmoser 2y ago
  Googling "pangaea animation" gives you many video demos of just that.

by kmoser 2y ago

fersaysrelax 2y ago

I think you are the first person I come across that knows that game and you were an actual dev on it! So thank you! I played it when I was around 13(I think) and I loved it. The whole concept of simulating a planet and the animals on it was pretty much mind blowing for me at the time(it still is). I should have kept the poster that came with it...the different sapien evolutionary branches were really interesting.

kmoser 2y ago
Cool! It's admittedly an obscure game. My main contribution included the random generation and movement of the cratons. This involved mapping Cartesian to spherical coordinates but harder because each row of tiles was offset by half a tile's width from the rows above and below, like a brick wall. We wrote an in-house editor that let us create and animate the different cratons, starting with the Pangaea configuration (basically all cratons stuck together as a giant continent) all the way through to how they are arranged now, to simulate how they moved historically. That was also difficult! I also worked on the initial placement of some visual elements that dotted the landscape, and the serialization of the different data structures for loading/saving games. After it shipped they gave each of us devs a couple of shrink-wrapped copies of the boxed final product but weirdly they were not the US version. I still have an (unopened) Portuguese version that probably has the poster.

jonah 2y ago

This is rad! I recently read Assembling California by John McPhee[1][2] - highly recommended BTW. Anyway, I was musing that I'd love to see a 3D globe with a time slider that I could play around with and visualize the (projected of course) movement of the plates to get us to where we are now. Do you know of anything like that? [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19898.Assembling_California https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19898.Assembling_Califor... [2] excerpt: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/09/07/assembling-california-part-i https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/09/07/assembling-cal...

kmoser 2y ago
Googling "pangaea animation" gives you many video demos of just that.