I started working on some straw-man options screens, but they're at home and I'm at work (on lunch hour) so I'll try to summarize. I see five basic stages, and a unique set of options for each stage. I realize it's asking a lot, and the perfect, deam program would be even more complicated; it would use the same five stages in more complex ways.

  • Planet Stage:
    • Size (diameter) of the planet, which can be expressed in miles/km or relative to Earth. The user can give a specific value or a range in which the program will randomize.
    • % land vs. ocean. Again, either a specific value or a range.
    • # of continents. Value or range.
    • # of mid-ocean islands. Choice of none, few, moderate, or lots.
    • The world is generated on a globe, with one or more flat map projections available. I've only ever found one world generating or fantasy mapping program that does this. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/hex...-games.156601/

  • Geography Stage:
    • Check box to generate mountains. Enter a value for maximum size, few-moderate-lots, and a subordinate check box to include mere hills.
    • Check box to generate lakes and inland seas. Enter a value for maximum size, few-moderate-lots, and a subordinate check box to include mere ponds.
    • Check box to generate rivers. Enter a value for maximum size, few-moderate-lots, and a subordinate check box to include mere streams.

  • Climate Stage:
    • Check box to generate regional climates.
    • Average planetary temperature in degrees C/F or relative to Earth.
    • Average planetary rainfall in inches/cm or relative to Earth.
    • Degree of regional/local variation from planetary averages as a slider from highly uniform to insane.
    • Climates should be generated based on sound (I'm not asking for perfect) principles of climatology using data from the planet and geography stages.

  • Terrain Stage:
    • Check box to generate regional terrain.
    • Subordinate check boxes to include or exclude various terrain types, e.g. desert, grassland, forrest, etc.
    • Generated based on geography and climate stage data.

  • Population Stage:
    • Check box to place population centers, i.e. mega-cities, cities, towns, and vilages in realistically likely locations.
    • Choices for nomadic, agrarian, or industrial lifestyle.
    • Choices for tech level.
    • Subordinate check box(es) to generate roads (and maybe railways.)

After all that, the resulting globe/map has to be compatible with a "regular" mapping program that lets me add city-level maps, dungeons, etc., or have that stuff built in as another stage.

The deam program would allow a mix of manual creation and random generation at each stage. So I could, for instance, place two continents that I want at a certain distance from each other, force ocean for some distance around the two of them, and then let the program generate and place the rest of the continents. Then pick a big area of ocean and change the number of islands from the base value used in the original planet stage generation. I could put some mountains here and there, an Amazon size river just so, but have the program generate the rest. The thing is here, the features I place manually would have to become what we call boundry conditions in math and engineering applications; the generation of other features would have to take the manually placed ones into account so that everything in the end works together and makes sense. Change the various none-few-maderate-lots choices for regions of land. Place a mega-city and have all the other population placements done accordingly. Etc. This is probably way beyond what you had in mind. I'm asking for one program (or a suite that uses one common "planet file" format) that has smarts in geology, climatology, and sociology, not just the geometry you probably started out to write.

Spoiler: Where this all is coming from
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I'm currently working on a world for a campaign I hope to run some day. It will center, to start, on a mega-city which sits at the confluence of a big river and a really big river, about 70 miles upstream from the mouth. The city is the biggest on the western half of the continent. The whole continent is about the size of Europe plus 1/2 of Asia. The really big river runs east to west, out of the north-south mountain range that cuts the continent in half. It's about 200 miles from the continent's southern coast, so its mouth is on the southern west coast. The big river enters it from the north, flowing out of a northern mountain range.

Now, what I'd dearly love to do is enter the planet stage parameters (very similar to Earth) then sketch in the approximate outline of the one continent I know about, then run the planet stage. Next, I'd sketch in the two rivers and two mountain ranges I need for the setting, set a large area around the mega-city where hills and plains are allowed but no mountains, and run the geography, climate, and terrain stages, probably making some changes after to adjust land in cultivation vs. grassland and forrests. Finally, I put in the mega-city and its sister city accross the really big river then let the population stage run.

In short, I do as much or as little of the work as I want, and the program does the rest.