Release Note: Fantasy Planet Painter v1.1

Introduction

Fantasy Planet Painter is a creative software tool designed for building planet-scale world maps. Users can sketch out major planetary features - mountains, valleys, and oceans - and let the software's procedural generation engine fill in realistic terrains.

The program is built on the original open-source algorithms by Torben Mogensen, which were ported to C# by Charles Zhang. Commercial use of the software is permitted to Methodox by the original author.

Methodox is responsible for cross-platform builds, documentation, GUI updates, code modernization, performance optimizations, and the addition of extended features.

Motivation

Torben's original command-line interface (CLI) exposes many technical parameters for fine-tuning terrain generation. While powerful, this approach is daunting for non-CLI users. More importantly, the original tool lacks an intuitive editing interface for shaping custom fantasy maps.

Previously, Charles developed several custom CLI utilities for tasks like scaling and shifting map cells. However, the lack of immediate visual feedback made this process slow and inefficient.

Fantasy Planet Painter changes that. With direct visualization, users can iterate quickly, adjusting and refining shapes without worrying about typing commands or guessing results.

The software also supports saving sessions, as well as importing and exporting various components for easier collaboration and workflow integration. Even more advanced editing tools are planned for future releases.

Original Release

The initial v1.0 release introduced core functionality such as interactive rendering updates and different projection options. While many CLI options from the original program remain unavailable in the GUI, v1.0 laid the groundwork for a more user-friendly, visual approach.