Sunday, March 20, 2022

Impasse and need for help!

More bug squashing! This included three entirely distinct lake-related bugs that all coincided in a single regional map. I really hate lakes. I've also made a few more refinements along the way that are too minor to detail.

A couple of recent screenshots:




Anyway, what this means is that I've pretty much finished this stage of Undiscovered Worlds. As I said a million years ago, I envisaged a long-term project in three stages:

  1. terrain generation
  2. flora and fauna generation
  3. civilisation generation

I don't know whether I'll ever get to (3) - and really it's the one that interests me the least right now, especially as so many other people have done it so well - but I do think that (1) is pretty much done now. It's certainly not perfect but it's as good as I can plausibly get it, at least in the foreseeable future.

So I'd like to release this now. I'm planning on putting the source code up on GitHub so that anyone can tinker with it and make it better. I'd also like to make executable versions available so that less technically minded people can use it too. However, there are a couple of problems with this:

  1. The project uses several external libraries: NanoGUISFML, and stb_image. Somehow I've installed these in some eccentric way that allows my code to work fine on my computer, but I can't build an executable that will run anywhere else, because it won't incorporate at least some of these libraries. The fact that I can't manage what ought to be a fairly elementary part of development should indicate my skill level at this sort of thing.
  2. This project is written in C++ using Xcode on a Mac. Even if I manage to solve problem 1, I'll only be able to create an app that runs on Mac. It would be nice to be able to make it for Windows and Linux too, but I don't know how to do that.
So I need some help! - from either somebody who can walk me through solving these problems, or, perhaps more plausibly, somebody who can build the executables themselves if I make the source code available. Is there anyone who might be willing to help?

[EDIT] I've put the source code on GitHub - you can see it in all its ghastly glory here.