Ruin networks

[Headshotkill]

According to the lore the world used to be inhabited by an advanced civilization which collapsed as a result of the rust. 
Currently what remains are scattered unconnected ruins without any relation to each other. 
It would be cool if these ruins formed a rough network of ruined villages, castles, harbors, ... all connected with roads.
Of cours many roads would also be in terrible condition or have long stretches missing so it would remain a challenge to go out exploring for ruins. 

BTW THIS ART IS AI GENERATED, I'M NOT A GOOD ARTIST I JUST WANTED TO AD A VISUAL SKETCH. :(

Edited February 14 by Headshotkill

[ifoz]

Canonically the world also got scrambled around a bit geographically, so locations from the old world are no longer where they once were. Still, it could make sense to have roads connect things closer by on occasion, especially underground. I think it could add a bit of variety to caving if every now and then you'd find a section of man-made tunnel connecting a few ruins together.

[Thorfinn]

I like the idea, though agree with the caveat @ifoz mentions. I would not be averse to seeing stretches of road or bridges in appropriate states of disrepair.

That's AI generated? Huh. Very HOMM3. It even looks kind of like the Castle town and the Necro town with elements of Rampart and Fortress mixed in. Not even that different for the 25 years since that game came out.

Edited February 14 by Thorfinn

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, ifoz said:

Canonically the world also got scrambled around a bit geographically, so locations from the old world are no longer where they once were. Still, it could make sense to have roads connect things closer by on occasion, especially underground. I think it could add a bit of variety to caving if every now and then you'd find a section of man-made tunnel connecting a few ruins together.

Given the lore, it would be really cool to include man-made tunnels as part of the cave generation algorithm, whenever if ever it gets overhauled (Tyron has said that he would like to revisit it eventually), which would allow to save points of interest at the ends of these tunnels, at junctions or at other key points, that could be later utilized when placing structures. Tying all these systems together in the right ways could result in some very immersive cave and tunnel generation that actually looks like it was made with a purpose and not just plopped in randomly by a random generation algorithm.

This kind of also ties into this other thread, with the idea to generate more clustered structures near natural points of interest.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, ifoz said:

Canonically the world also got scrambled around a bit geographically, so locations from the old world are no longer where they once were. Still, it could make sense to have roads connect things closer by on occasion, especially underground. I think it could add a bit of variety to caving if every now and then you'd find a section of man-made tunnel connecting a few ruins together.

This kind of ruin complex seems like it would a prime way to add in the procedural dungeons.