Nation Builder Engine (working title, but currently on hold)

Procedural 2D world generator / scuffed custom engine that might one day turn into a real-time Hearts of Iron 4, Civ 6-style nation builder.

Right now, it mostly generates cursed planets, lets you zoom around them, and then your GPU cries. My house hasn't burned down (yet)

Author: Coverfish
Role/Abilities: Human supervisor / button-presser / Special moves: ctrl+c, ctrl+v
Actual coder: ChatGPT (I don’t know a thing about syntax, I just yell at ChatGPT)

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Screenshots

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TL;DR

• C++ + SFML full-screen 2D world viewer
• Worlds generated from a seed (noise + tectonics + climate)
• Height map, moisture map, tectonic plates, mountain ranges
• Moisture shadows along mountain lines, heat map (hot at equator, cold at poles)
• Basic biome system with rivers, lakes, deserts, swamps, beaches, etc.
• Chunk-based rendering and texture loading depending on zoom level
• Its own tiny engine with camera, caching, rendering, and map generation
• Poor optimization by design for that authentic indie dev suffering vibe
• Free to steal, fork, ruin, fix, commercialize, or turn into your own weird game (The rivers especially drive me insane)

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Features

🌍 Procedural World Generation

Each run generates a new world using a big pile of noise and questionable math:

• Height map with:
  • Multi-octave noise for terrain detail
  • Low-frequency “continent” noise for big landmasses
  • Radial falloff so edges tend to be ocean
• Moisture map with blended noise layers so forests aren’t just one big blob
  (still are just one big blob, (dark green) lol that happens if you let AI create your readme based on the code comments XD)
• Tectonic plates:
  • Several plates with warped borders
  • Plate boundaries get uplift → mountain belts
  • Separate tectonic debug mask for plate overlay
• Climate shaping:
  • Temperature based on latitude (equator hot, poles cold) + elevation
  • Moisture adjusted by latitude and mountain rain shadows

🏜️ Biomes & Tiles

Tiles are chosen from elevation + moisture + temperature + tectonics:

• Water, Beach, River, Lake
• Grass, Forest, Hill, Mountain
• Desert, Jungle, Tundra, Snow, SnowHill, Swamp
  (The rivers especially drive me insane)

Status:

• Deserts: exist, kind of patchy and chaotic
• Swamps: show up near warm wet coasts / rivers, sometimes cursed
  (never seen a swamp tile myself, probably bugged right now)
• Beach tiles: appear along coasts (when they feel like it)
• Rivers & lakes: generated by flow accumulation → very buggy, which is part of the charm

All “art” is self-drawn. Blame the artist, not the engine. XD

🔍 Debug Overlays

Press keys to switch between different map nerd modes:

• H – Height overlay
• M – Moisture overlay
• T – Tectonic belts overlay

Normally tiles use biome-based colors (grass green, water blue, deserts yellowish, etc.).
Overlays blend colored gradients on top:

• Height: yellow → deep red
• Moisture: pink → dark purple
• Tectonics: red belts at plate boundaries

🎥 Camera & Controls

The whole thing is an SFML fullscreen window called "Nation Builder Engine".

Movement & input:

• W / A / S / D – Move camera
• Mouse wheel – Smooth zoom in/out
• Edge scrolling – Move camera when the mouse hugs the window edges
• ESC – Quit
• H / M / T – Toggle overlays (height / moisture / tectonics)

The camera:

• Starts zoomed out and centered
• Smoothly lerps towards the target zoom level
• Clamps view so you don’t fly into the void
• Moves faster when zoomed out so you can cross continents without crying

🧱 Rendering & Caching

This is technically its own mini-engine:

• Uses tile textures when zoomed in (grass, mountains, etc.)
• Switches to a color-only pixel map when zoomed out for performance / clarity
• World is split into big cached chunks:
  • Only visible chunks are rebuilt
  • Caches are invalidated and re-rendered on demand

Optimisation status:

“It runs on my machine™.”
Expect frame drops, stutters, and fans taking off at some zoom levels.

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Controls Summary

In-game hotkeys:

• W A S D – Move camera
• Mouse wheel – Smooth zoom
• H – Height overlay
• M – Moisture overlay
• T – Tectonic plate belts overlay
• Esc – Quit
  
  (That's the third time ChatGPT told us about the hotkeys btw.
  Must think we are stupid (probably right about that one as well lmao)

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Long-Term Dream (aka totally not scope creep)

The vague, unhinged goal:

A real-time nation builder where you guide your nation from rocks & sticks
to modern geopolitics, on a fully procedural world.

Think a weird child of:

• Hearts of Iron
• Civilization VI
• Some real-time grand strategy

Planned (in my brain) but not implemented yet:

• Nations, borders, cultures, population
• Tech through ages
• Resources, trade, conflicts
• UI that doesn’t scream “programmer art”

Right now this is just the world / map engine.

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How to Build / Run

Rough outline:

• C++ compiler (MSVC/Clang/GCC)
• SFML installed / linked
• Clone repo
• Build the project / solution
• Run the executable; it launches in fullscreen and starts generating a world

Assets are expected in something like assets/tiles/*.png with names like:

• grass.png
• water.png
• forest.png
• mountain.png
• desert.png
• swamp.png
• etc.

Feel free to replace them with your own art or programmer rectangles.

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License / “Steal This”

You are officially encouraged to:

• Steal this code
• Fork it
• Use it in your own game
• Sell it
• Break it
• Fix it
• Learn from it
• Meme it

No warranty, no support, no guarantees.

If you want to be nice, credit Coverfish somewhere.
If not, that’s also fine. The code was mostly generated by an AI anyway.

Treat this as basically public domain / “do whatever you want” territory.

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Credits

• Coverfish – Human supervisor, idea haver, button clicker
• ChatGPT – Actually wrote the Code
• SFML – Rendering, windowing, input

If this somehow turns into a real game one day, nobody will be more surprised than me.