Realistic planetary terrain generation with weights

Posted by Programmdude on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Programmdude
Published on 2012-06-20T09:51:57Z Indexed on 2012/06/20 15:26 UTC
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procedural-generation

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terrain

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planet

I need terrain generation for a planet. The planet will be divided up into several hundred hexes, and I need it to be realistic and based on weights. I have dabbled in terrain generation before, but nothing like this. So I figure it would be a good idea to ask the community for answers, recommended articles or the like.

By realistic, I mean not just random hexes, but continent shaped things with a few islands. More desert around the equator and more ice around the poles.

I also have two weights I need to base it around: ice percentage and water percentage. That means that around XX% of the planet will need to be water.

Does anyone have any advice or places to start? Generating arbitrary terrain is easy, but something a bit more "organic" like this seems rather difficult.

It also needs to be seamless. Should be obvious since it's a planet, but no harm in pointing it out.

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