An Indigenous Terrain Generation System (TGS) For Gaming Simulators

Abstract

For modeling and simulation of humanitarian operations in a geographical area, the terrain information is of utmost importance. Many gaming simulators/systems such as Pygame or more sophisticated strategy gaming systems such as JTLS (Joint Theater Level Simulation) rely on a terrain generation system (TGS) to obtain information regarding the environment (terrain) for effective simulation. TGS for strategy games are typically provided as an add-on by the software provider or these are obtained from third parties against a hefty fee. To the best of our knowledge, no indigenous solution has been developed for Pakistan. Therefore, in this work, we have successfully implemented an indigenous TGS by taking into account the geographical area of Pakistan. Our work employs data from open-source satellite imagery based on 30m SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission). This data includes elevation values, land cover classification data, and rivers data. For a generic implementation, our technique stores the terrain specifications in a database with latitude and longitude as keys and terrain properties as corresponding values. The terrain generated has realistic specifications which would result in an accurate simulation of any operation. Our work can be integrated with game simulators such as Pygame and JTLS for a variety of use cases ranging from carrying out simulations of humanitarian operations to wargaming.