These tools where the “easy” ones to make since they required just to split the world generation process into separate steps that could be executed on their own. The next three: Altitude, Temp and Rainfall brushes I predict will take quite a while to develop since they require heavily modifying the world generation code to make it work only in small regions at a time and do it while the brush is being moved across the map by the user.

Beside all that, I also spent some time working on splitting the game into two modes, Editor and Simulator. While on Editor mode, the player won’t be able to place populations nor allow the simulation to run but can use the map editor tools. Additionally, none of the overlays will be available except for the terrain specific ones (temp, rainfall, arability, etc). There’s no point in letting the user activate the population density overlay for example if there are no population groups on the map.

Simulator mode, on the other hand, will let the player do everything that could be done in previous versions of the game except the new editor tools won’t be accessible in this mode; Once the simulation starts it won’t be possible to modify the map anymore since making map modifications while there’s active populations can potentially break the simulation in terrible ways.

Next week I’m going to start working in the remaining tools starting with the altitude brush. It might take a while before I can show any results but hopefully I can have at least one of the brush tools in working state before the end of January.

By the way, I posted again one day earlier than usual given that New Years’ eve will be kinda busy. Next week I’ll probably be back to posting blog updates on late Mondays/early Tuesdays so that I can fully use Sundays to keep plowing ahead on the code.