Development Update - August 2025

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well. This last month I've been working an update to the layout of castle districts, as well as some new map rendering effects, so let's talk about that!

Castle Districts

I've updated how castles are generated (reminder - castles are only generated if a king/queen feudal government is added), to generate with more realistic shapes and internal layouts, and more interesting surroundings. For example, a park around the castle walls:

Or a plaza with a moat:

Or surrounded by buildings and a cliff:

These generation options can be configured in the castle district settings of the create settlement form.

The algorithm

The new castle algorithm essentially works by creating a random wall layout, and then fitting it inside the large distict lot assigned to the castle. We then add a gatehouse area, then place the keep and other buildings inside, and connect them with paths. At this point any cliffs and moats are placed, and then a road placed to connect the castle to the road network, and the surrounding area found. We then decorate the surrounding area based on the decoration option. The most interesting one here is the park option, where we try to create a perimeter path around the castle, and then add other random paths, and then decorate the resulting areas with trees and grass.

Map Rendering Effects

I discovered that the rendering library I use for the map had some easy-to-add extensions that would add some interesting rendering effects to the map. These include:

Greyscale

Sepia

Green tint

Pixellation

Dot screen (+ greyscale)

Scanline (+ green tint)

I also discovered that I could write my own rendering effects (as a post-processing shader), so I tried my hand at a crosshatch shading effect, and this is how it turned out:

Zoomed in, it looks like:

This screenshot also has some noise on the crosshatch enabled, which makes it look a bit more like a pencil line.

These effects are done within the normal map render, so the map is still fully interactive, and can also be used in the 3D render mode - and are also applied when taking a PNG screenshot.

You can find these effects in the render settings:

Conclusion

Well that's about everything for this update! Next on my list are university districts - which should be much simpler than castle districts, I just want to support creating parks and other campus areas. I might also look into creating dedicated park districts. After that, we'll see. On my radar are more climates, as well as more options for races - to support things like warforged and other non-traditional family structures. Once again, thank you for all of your support, it really does mean a lot, and if you have any questions or other feedback, please let me know!