Project Arcadia

Fictionally Asked Questions

1. What is Project Arcadia?

It's a procedural world generation engine. It its most basic form, Arcadia fractally generates the elevation data for a rectangular landmass. More advanced features of the program fill in much of the world with water and create distinct continents. The program is written in C, and uses what is known as the diamond/square fractal method for most of its definitions. The project is one of the Clarkson Open Source Institute's many student projects. Some Pictures

2. Who are you guys?

Sean Anderson is a Computer Science / Digital Arts dual major at Clarkson University. Sam Payson is a Computer-Science and Mathematics Major. Also at Clarkson University.

3. What algorithms are you using?

As question 1 alludes to, the majority of Arcadia's interesting computations deal with an algorithm that is commonly known as the diamond/square fractal method. Our particular brand of the algorithm uses logarithmically diminishing mid-point offsets.

4. Can I use Project Arcadia?

Project Arcadia is an Open-Source project, meaning that it is available to the public for free use and alteration. We have not, however,

5. Why does everything look so crappy?

As I said, it's a work in progress. And if you think you can do better, go for it. Put your money where your mouth is, punk.

8. Where's all the Pictures?

Due to some serious data loss and the fact that our code is not currently in a working state, we have no purty pictures to show off. As soon as we get some, they will be uploaded to the site.

7. Who is Segmos?

Depending on who you ask, Segmos is either a gremlin who lurks inside your computer, trying to cause segmentation faults, or an artifact of a peculiar bug we found early on in the project. See for yourself: