mewo2

A few days ago I discovered this initiative that I found very interesting and fun: during the month on November you have to develop a program to generate a novel of around 50k words. This is the 7th edition of the event.

I started reading the dev-logs (GitHub issues) of the past editions and discovered some great novels both in term of technology involved and also content.

Some gems:

* MARYSUE (https://github.com/catseye/MARYSUE), which aims to create an interesting novel with a plot and everything else (and the related write-up "A story compiler" (https://git.catseye.tc/MARYSUE/blob/master/doc/Overview%20of%20a%20Story%20Compiler.md))

* LIFE OF THE AZAR (https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/39), an archive/enciclopedia of some sort of an imaginary city of a couple of thousands of citizens describing the people, their relationships, events that happens in the city and much more

* THE DESERT OF THE WEST (https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2015/issues/156), a generated guide of imaginary worlds together with a map generation alghoritm with rivers and erosion (http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/) and a generator for city names based on natural language theories (http://mewo2.com/notes/naming-language/)

* MEOW (https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/50) meow meow meeeooow mew

Some projects are based on Neural Networks, some on Markov Chains, some on simulations, some on Tracery grammars (https://tracery.io/), some on Prolog, some on "plain" text processing and…

Since we're sharing links, here's my collection of interactive pages too:

Interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms, with motivating examples from computer games.
https://www.redblobgames.com/

The world's first linear algebra book with fully interactive figures.
http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html

The Textbook of the Future. Interactive. Personalised. Free.
https://mathigon.org/

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Interactive Version
https://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/

An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms
http://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/index.html

Clear, intuitive lessons about imaginary numbers, exponents, and more.
https://betterexplained.com/

An Interactive Introduction To Quantum Computing
http://davidbkemp.github.io/QuantumComputingArticle/

The website of Martin O'Leary artist, designer, teacher, researcher.
http://mewo2.com/

A Visual and Interactive Guide to the Basics of Neural Networks
https://jalammar.github.io/visual-interactive-guide-basics-neural-networks/

Interactive demos on network theory, game theory, trust etc.
https://ncase.me/

An interactive explanation of curves and surfaces
https://ciechanow.ski/curves-and-surfaces/

Introduction to geometric algebra — an invertible vector product and the implication of having one.
https://mattferraro.dev/posts/geometric-algebra

Interactive visualizations for different topics from physics and mathematics. Includes trigonometry, polynomial regression, and Bézier…

Looks amazing!

Note that the author also has a fantasy city generator:

https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

And mansion generator:

https://watabou.itch.io/procgen-mansion

If you're into that kind of stuff, there's a world map generator(by different author):

https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/

and this amazing tutorial on generating maps:

https://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/

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Also, kinda relevant - awesome talks about modern procedural generation techniques(with AI, Houdini, etc):

How AI will change 3D industry

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FlgLxSLsYWQ

Procedural world generation for Far Cry

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NfizT369g60

Procedurally generating Manhattan for Spider Man

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4aw9uyj9MAE

Mindblowing talks by Anastasia Opara (using cool math, deep learning, and a lot of creativity to create crazy cool stuff)

https://www.anastasiaopara.com/talks

She is the author of the most impressive procedural generation project I've ever seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7J_9Xf_h_U

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Also, I myself have made a little tutorial about procedurally generating a 3D landscape in Houdini:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=o3mbIRZhv20

I really like them as well. I enjoy them as a digital art form.

From what I understand, Scott Turner (Here Dragons Abound) got his inspiration from Martin O'Leary[0]. Lots of interesting reading on his site.

Another one in current development but as far as I know doesn't have a devlog quite like Scott Turner's is Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator[1]. He did keep a devlog until 2018 sometime though[2].

Watabou's Medieval Fantasy Map Generator[3] is really good.

I'm sure I've seen more over the years but these are the ones I can remember.

[0]: http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/

[1]: https://github.com/Azgaar/Fantasy-Map-Generator

[2]: https://azgaar.wordpress.com/

[3]: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator/devlog

In the same theme, and if one needs some help in seeding ideas, previous discussion about One Page Dungeon Generator:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21362382

Also, Medieval Fantasy City Generator:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17925666

Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21099344

A tutorial on generating maps:

* https://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/

And (American-style) City Map Generator:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901242

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734208