Songs of the Eons
patreon
Revised version 0.19 now available!
🕑 Added 2019-12-25 14:57:21 +0000 UTC
Alright so it was a bit slap dash because we wanted to wait until 0.2 to add some polish. There also are a few features missing (vegetation, river deltas), but regardless, the new features list is pretty beefy. Version 0.19 has...
---Realistic glaciers and ice sheets, along with their historic influence on hydrology, erosion patterns, and (most important!) soils. Glaciers not only melt to produce water, but they also grind up bedrock through the eons, and depending on the characteristics of that bedrock, can produce deep, rich nearby soils.
---Detailed water bodies (including rivers, wetlands, freshwater lakes, subglacial lakes, periglacial lakes, saltwater lakes, seas, and oceans) with individual, unique characteristics based on their geography, surrounding rock, rainfall patterns and hydro-geology. Each lake and river tributary has a water velocity value (which determines how safe it is to navigate), sediment load qualities (silt, clay, sand, mineral nutrients, organics), water volume, salinity, and more. The characteristics of a given waterbody is determined by the material that is weathered from bedrock upstream, so rivers passing through nutrient poor rock will produce soils on its banks which are inferior, while rivers passing through mineral rich areas will produce rich alluvial soils on their banks. Depending on the length and speed of the water in a river, courser soil material will be worn down into more agriculturally favorable silts, making soil further down rivers more favorable for agriculture. Different water bodies in conjunction with surrounding elevation influence the water table. No two water bodies are identical, and while two rivers might have the same volume of water passing through them, they can be radically different in their implications for civilization.
---Sand Dunes. Most often found in deserts, but can exist elsewhere.
---Soils texture and fertility. This is probably the most important development next to our dynamic water body system. We've captured every major influence on soil. While every soil is ultimately produced from bedrock material, that bedrock material can be broken down and transported in a variety of ways. Soils consist of sand, silt, clay, mineral fertility, and organic fertility. There are multiple forces acting on the soil profile of an area. There is physical and chemical weathering of the immediate bedrock beneath the ground, there is current and historic glacial production of silts and till which can then be transported by wind away from the glacier or transported down river from periglacial lakes, there are wind driven forces that produce silts from exposed sand dunes, and rivers rework material as it flows down river. Soils have a dramatic influence on the farming potential and vegetation of an area.
---Soil Depth. In addition to fertility, soil also has depth, which in a major way influences the longevity of farmable land. Land may be very fertile and productive, but thin soils that erode can render farmland useless until the soils replenish over the eons.
---When all of the above conditions conspire together, a realistic landscape with "pockets" of favorable land exist between what is often tracts of less favorable lands. This will allow us to capture the lopsided population dynamics that existed historically, with dense populations frequently packing into fertile river valleys, along volcanic slopes, and atop loess soils.
---Lots of new map modes to express this data. These include a satellite "true color" mapmode (work in progress) which shows what the world would look like from orbit. There are also numerous waterbody mapmodes, soil mapmodes, and others. The farming favorability mapmodes is a composite of conditions related to farming, and will demonstrate where high population density will tend to exist.
Anyway, there's more to mention, but I'm out of time. Enjoy!
