need help writing a map application

[abishekgopal]

I want to code a simple appln in c++ (windows) which generates it's own map of the world including coastlines , rivers etc. how do u do it? i tried googling with the keywords gis data coastline,etc but no use. pls help. i understand it needs a database of some sort but how exactly and can anyone point out some free coastline data.

 

[tblaxland]

I can't help you out with the data you are looking for but I thought you might be interested in this site: http://www.evs-islands.com/. This guy makes vector maps in his spare time.

 

[tomek]

Writing a world generator is not what I'd call a "simple program". Using things like plasma fractals would probably be your best bet for generating the bulk of the terrain. To make it realistic, you need to actually understand the processes that shape the continents, make rivers flow the way they do, etc... in other words, you need to at least understand geology on an intermediate level.

http://projectrho.com/smap11.html#worldbuilding

 

[cjp]

Please tell me if you have success in making such a program. It sounds like it's going to be useful as a top-level planetary algorithm for libProcTer.

 

[abishekgopal]

guys there is this "shapefile" format which defines the shapes(outlines) of landmasses, water bodies,etc in terms of an array of points or a group of points in a bounding box, but i think the files are in binary and use big and little endian stuff and i'm not sure how to program it, here's the specification for the shapefile format

www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf

anybody heard about this before .pls help.

 

[tomek]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile might be a good place to start. Endianness is not as scary as it seems, too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness