WorldBuilder

A procedurally generated map showing the movement of the plate tectonics, leading to land formation.
An example of civilization placement according to genAI parameters and biome scoring.

Inspiration

Geography has always played a pivotal role in shaping civilizations — influencing their agriculture, technology, social systems, religion, and politics. In some stories, the setting is so powerful to be a character in themselves. However, for authors and creatives, building such worlds from scratch can be incredibly time-consuming and requires a deep understanding of real-world systems.

Inspired by the meticulous worldbuilding of authors like Frank Herbert (Dune), who developed entire ecologies and rich political systems, we strived to create a tool that supports storytellers by taking care of the hardest parts—geography, climate, and historical justification—while assuring real-world, scientific basis of the setting and allowing authors to maintain creative control over the process.

What it does

WorldBuilder uses procedural generation based on real-world features that shape geography and climates (wind currents, ocean currents, plate tectonic movement, hotspots, etc.), and uses GenAI that takes in story details to contextualize it within this map.

How we built it

Flask application: HTML/CSS+JavaScript+Bootstrap frontend, Python backend
Python for procedural generation
OpenAI for prototype story context reasoning
Gemini API for proof of concept story context reasoning and civilization placement
Heroku for deployment

Challenges we ran into

Challenges of how to implement GenAI to be able to interpret the map
Simulation of real-world geographic concepts to build realistic maps
Having to switch deployments last-minute

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning how to use LLM APIs for the first time that work in-tandem with other processes to generate meaningful results
Sophisticated and technical procedural generation that has scientific basis

What we learned

More about physical concepts of the world!
How to use API integrations into web applications
Different methods of deployment, such as Heroku and PythonAnywhere

What's next for WorldBuilder

Putting markers around the map that tell the history of that location, or its significance to the story and the environment
Generating a timeline of events that show the fall and rise of civilizations and their relationships to each other
Completing the procedural map generation to account for ocean and wind currents
Further worldbuilding details generation, such as clothing and language by region
Placing characters within their respective civilizations