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Programming terrain from scratch using C++ and OpenGL by Shamus Young (2006)

107 points by pathless 2y ago

ricree 2y ago
I also enjoyed his similar series on generating a procedural city: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940
- m_eiman 2y ago
  I ported his code to a macOS screen saver back in the day, but I see I haven't updated it since macOS 10.6… I guess the chance of it working on a Apple Silicon Mac isn't anywhere near 100% :P https://emage-software.com/ https://emage-software.com/
  - muth02446 2y ago
    A sort-of port for the wab can be found here: https://art.muth.org/pixelcity.html https://art.muth.org/pixelcity.html
- pathless 2y ago
  That was an amazing read as well. I really wish the internet had more game-programming-for-beginners or whatever you might call them style microblogs. Shamus will be missed! RIP.
  - cptnapalm 2y ago
    I didn't know he had passed away. While not what's being discussed now, DM of the Rings remains one of the funniest comics I've ever read.
- rkachowski 2y ago
  Oh wow, that came out when I was in university. I often think about that series of articles and the little tricks and techniques he used to simulate the feeling of a city at night - almost entirely via artifice and very little intentional design. I always found these dirty little tricks in graphics super interesting.
- ozarker 2y ago
  Man that’s a blast from the past
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Simon_ORourke 2y ago
I remember being blown away by something similar on the venerable Commodore Amiga in the early 90s. Can't remember the name of the app, but you'd adjust a few parameters and line by line a terrain may would appear.
- unwind 2y ago
  Perhaps it was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro ?
- ramses0 2y ago
  `mars.com` - voxel terrain demo? https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662 https://youtu.be/_zSjpIyMt0k https://youtu.be/_zSjpIyMt0k ...1993
  - ElCapitanMarkla 2y ago
    I had that or something very similar on our old Windows 95 machine. I spent quiet a bit of time flying around
tombh 2y ago
I just finished watching a live-coding session (from 2 years ago) by Inigo Quilez (ex Pixar), where he constructs an entire ray-marched landscape using only maths (mostly SDFs) in pure GPU shader code. The stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFld4EBO2RE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFld4EBO2RE The demo: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttSWf https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttSWf
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  iq is a genius. So is Fabrice Bellard (ffmpeg/qemu/tcc) and Nick Black (notcurses).
herodoturtle 2y ago
This reminds me of NeHe’s OpenGL tuts. That, and a little earlier Denthor’s mode13h tut, changed my life. Good times.
- taneq 2y ago
  Ahh, the old days! I learned a bunch of OpenGL off NeHe. I even won one of the demo competitions. :) Another great one for general graphics/demo/simulation coding was "The good-looking textured light-sourced bouncy fun smart and stretchy page" (https://web.archive.org/web/20031218105827/http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/ https://web.archive.org/web/20031218105827/http://freespace....) And for landscapes in general, Ken Musgrave did some awesome work although I'm having trouble digging up the more technical stuff he used to post. And then there was software like Terragen and Bryce could produce some great rendered landscapes. It's getting me all nostalgic. :)
zootboy 2y ago
Yet another "Hey, this reminds me of a similar thing" contribution: Sean Barrett (of the STB header-only libraries fame) has a series of coding livestreams going over his OpenGL voxel rendering library and sort of turning it into a game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD93nsghj9A&list=PLMkT-w6m06QvQaGJKw7vRuPlnYJWczvPj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD93nsghj9A&list=PLMkT-w6m06...
jheriko 2y ago
its interesting... but i do wonder how we went from planet scale and infinite terrains in the earlier 2000s and late 90s down to "lets just do one little square". granted this looks a lot prettier...
- drekipus 2y ago
  First make one little square, ...then draw the rest of the owl
- thom 2y ago
  Story and dialogue heavy games did well in the market, and work-intensive art assets like voice acting made it so these couldn’t scale through procedural generation. Ultimately there’s less call for big empty spaces.
fredthedeadhead 2y ago
I really miss reading new blog posts and series from Shamus :(
baruz 2y ago
I loved this series and his procedural city. His death was a great loss for the recreational programming and gaming community.
- ElCapitanMarkla 2y ago
  Oh I just clicked who this was. I followed that tutorial through years ago, it was fantastic.
layoric 2y ago
I don't think it was this tutorial, but something similar I did around 2006 after completing a year of games programming study. Generating noise as height maps, mapping height ranges for texture blending and creating these terrains had me hooked on programming. Sadly, web development was just a lot more lucrative, so I dropped C++ for C#, and only done games dev as a hobby every now and then. I love these kind of tutorials though, same with Open GL NeHe, Game Programming Gem books, GPU Gems, etc. Good times!

107 points by pathless 2y ago

I also enjoyed his similar series on generating a procedural city: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940

m_eiman 2y ago
I ported his code to a macOS screen saver back in the day, but I see I haven't updated it since macOS 10.6… I guess the chance of it working on a Apple Silicon Mac isn't anywhere near 100% :P https://emage-software.com/ https://emage-software.com/
- muth02446 2y ago
  A sort-of port for the wab can be found here: https://art.muth.org/pixelcity.html https://art.muth.org/pixelcity.html
pathless 2y ago
That was an amazing read as well. I really wish the internet had more game-programming-for-beginners or whatever you might call them style microblogs. Shamus will be missed! RIP.
- cptnapalm 2y ago
  I didn't know he had passed away. While not what's being discussed now, DM of the Rings remains one of the funniest comics I've ever read.
rkachowski 2y ago
Oh wow, that came out when I was in university. I often think about that series of articles and the little tricks and techniques he used to simulate the feeling of a city at night - almost entirely via artifice and very little intentional design. I always found these dirty little tricks in graphics super interesting.
ozarker 2y ago
Man that’s a blast from the past
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Simon_ORourke 2y ago

I remember being blown away by something similar on the venerable Commodore Amiga in the early 90s. Can't remember the name of the app, but you'd adjust a few parameters and line by line a terrain may would appear.

unwind 2y ago
Perhaps it was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro ?
ramses0 2y ago
`mars.com` - voxel terrain demo? https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662 https://youtu.be/_zSjpIyMt0k https://youtu.be/_zSjpIyMt0k ...1993
- ElCapitanMarkla 2y ago
  I had that or something very similar on our old Windows 95 machine. I spent quiet a bit of time flying around

tombh 2y ago

I just finished watching a live-coding session (from 2 years ago) by Inigo Quilez (ex Pixar), where he constructs an entire ray-marched landscape using only maths (mostly SDFs) in pure GPU shader code. The stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFld4EBO2RE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFld4EBO2RE The demo: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttSWf https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttSWf

ranger_danger 2y ago
iq is a genius. So is Fabrice Bellard (ffmpeg/qemu/tcc) and Nick Black (notcurses).

herodoturtle 2y ago

This reminds me of NeHe’s OpenGL tuts. That, and a little earlier Denthor’s mode13h tut, changed my life. Good times.

taneq 2y ago
Ahh, the old days! I learned a bunch of OpenGL off NeHe. I even won one of the demo competitions. :) Another great one for general graphics/demo/simulation coding was "The good-looking textured light-sourced bouncy fun smart and stretchy page" (https://web.archive.org/web/20031218105827/http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/ https://web.archive.org/web/20031218105827/http://freespace....) And for landscapes in general, Ken Musgrave did some awesome work although I'm having trouble digging up the more technical stuff he used to post. And then there was software like Terragen and Bryce could produce some great rendered landscapes. It's getting me all nostalgic. :)

zootboy 2y ago

Yet another "Hey, this reminds me of a similar thing" contribution: Sean Barrett (of the STB header-only libraries fame) has a series of coding livestreams going over his OpenGL voxel rendering library and sort of turning it into a game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD93nsghj9A&list=PLMkT-w6m06QvQaGJKw7vRuPlnYJWczvPj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD93nsghj9A&list=PLMkT-w6m06...

jheriko 2y ago

its interesting... but i do wonder how we went from planet scale and infinite terrains in the earlier 2000s and late 90s down to "lets just do one little square". granted this looks a lot prettier...

drekipus 2y ago
First make one little square, ...then draw the rest of the owl
thom 2y ago
Story and dialogue heavy games did well in the market, and work-intensive art assets like voice acting made it so these couldn’t scale through procedural generation. Ultimately there’s less call for big empty spaces.

fredthedeadhead 2y ago

I really miss reading new blog posts and series from Shamus :(

baruz 2y ago

I loved this series and his procedural city. His death was a great loss for the recreational programming and gaming community.

ElCapitanMarkla 2y ago
Oh I just clicked who this was. I followed that tutorial through years ago, it was fantastic.

layoric 2y ago

I don't think it was this tutorial, but something similar I did around 2006 after completing a year of games programming study. Generating noise as height maps, mapping height ranges for texture blending and creating these terrains had me hooked on programming. Sadly, web development was just a lot more lucrative, so I dropped C++ for C#, and only done games dev as a hobby every now and then. I love these kind of tutorials though, same with Open GL NeHe, Game Programming Gem books, GPU Gems, etc. Good times!