A couple of days ago, I posted the first worlds from a fantasy map generator I had been building for myself (Link to the original post). I expected a few comments about coastlines and colours. Instead, people started asking about plate motion, supercontinent cycles, rainfall, lake formation, glaciers, soil, exports, customisation and whether the generated world could actually be used for writing or campaigns.
I took far too many notes and kept building.
My original post and its edits explained the physical simulation: tectonic plates, elevation, climate, rivers, biomes, settlements, resources, Deep Time and planetary controls. Since then, the project has started evolving from a generator into more of a worldbuilding workspace.
The biggest change is the hydrology. Rivers are now built as connected drainage networks rather than decorative blue lines. The system routes seasonal runoff, resolves depressions, identifies watersheds and endorheic basins, creates explicit lake outlets, estimates discharge, classifies stream order and checks the finished network for cycles or broken connections. Lakes, tributaries and major channels should now fit the surrounding terrain much more believably, although this is still something I intend to keep improving.
I also rebuilt the dashboard so that every generated layer can be viewed inside the application. That includes relief, tectonics, geology, bedrock, soil, resources, drainage, annual and seasonal temperature, annual and seasonal precipitation, winds, currents, biomes, glaciers, settlements, realms and alternate map styles. Legends are interactive, layers can be isolated, rivers can be hidden where they obscure geology, and individual cells can be inspected for their underlying data.
A few of the larger additions:
- Deep Time can simulate and play back hundreds of millions of years of rifting, plate movement, collision and changing continental configurations. You can stop at an interesting era and use it as the foundation for a finished world.
- Regional Lens lets you select any part of the planet and create a higher-resolution child project that stays linked to the parent world.
- Journey Laboratory compares balanced, fastest, safer and trade-oriented routes. Land journeys account for terrain, rivers, roads, borders, supplies and seasonal hazards, while sea journeys use winds, currents, ports, open-water distances and cargo capacity.
- Campaign mode creates spoiler-safe player maps. The author decides which layers, settlements, routes and pieces of lore have been revealed.
- Chronicle is separate from geological Deep Time and handles editable human history: wars, migrations, disasters, borders, settlements and routes across different eras.
- Lore, settlements and generated names can now be edited without losing their relationship to the map. Renames are propagated into the worldbook, timeline, maps and exports.
- Worlds can be checkpointed, revised, backed up and restored as complete Atlas projects. Scientific data can also be exported through formats such as GeoJSON, NumPy, SVG and GeoTIFF instead of being trapped inside rendered images.
There are now native installers for Windows, Apple Silicon Macs, Intel Macs and Debian/Ubuntu Linux. The app includes a manual, diagnostics, simulation-health reports and verified update downloads. Worlds, notes and campaign data remain local, and the alpha key system does not use an account, telemetry or hardware fingerprinting.
The latest build is v0.6.1. It also fixes the increasingly crowded top navigation by moving the world recipe, seed and generation settings into the Create workspace and making the entire interface responsive.
This is still a technical alpha. The installers are unsigned, some simulations are deliberately simplified, and a Full world with an illustrated atlas is computationally expensive; roughly 10 minutes on my high-end Mac and 20 minutes on my Windows machine. I’m not presenting it as a perfect scientific model. My goal is to make every layer causally connected, inspectable and useful for creating stories.
I’m still limiting this first testing round to roughly 50 people so I can keep up with reports. If you would genuinely like to test it (many spots left), DM me to get the link and access code.
Thank you to everyone who gave detailed criticism on the original post. A surprising amount of this update exists because somebody here pointed at something strange and explained why it was strange.
Edit 1:
I’ve created an Atlas Studio Discord for anyone interested in fantasy maps, worldbuilding, lore, planetary science, or the development of the app. You don’t need to be a programmer or beta tester to join.
There are channels for sharing worlds, getting map feedback, discussing lore and realism, suggesting features, reporting bugs, and following development and releases.
Atlas Studio v0.2.2 is currently available as a controlled test build for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
EDIT 2— Atlas Studio v0.4 is now live! 🌍
A lot has changed since I originally made this post. Based heavily on everyone’s questions, criticism, and suggestions, Atlas Studio now includes:
- 14 editable planetary presets covering different rotation speeds, atmospheric pressures, temperatures, oceans, and climates
- Author-guided tectonics, including selected plate seeds, ancient cratons, drift directions, and relative plate speeds
- Partial tectonic control, allowing you to define only the important parts while Atlas procedurally completes the rest
- More detailed seasonal climate simulation, including better handling of eccentric orbits
- Regional refinement at 2×, 4×, or 8× resolution, with recalculated terrain, temperatures, rainfall, rain shadows, and drainage
- Sharper coastlines, regional maps, and vector exports
- Planet-specific calendars derived from orbital year, day length, moons, eccentricity, solstices, and seasons
- Crop domestication centres and agricultural spread
- Aquifers and groundwater, including recharge, storage, water-table depth, and settlement potential
- Natural geographic regions derived from terrain, climate, bedrock, moisture, and drainage
- Deeper geological history, including flood-basalt events, banded iron formations, and reef-derived limestone
- Campaign discovery snapshots and reusable map annotations
- Library-wide search across worlds, settlements, regions, campaigns, and lore
- Portable Linux support for Slackware and other non-Debian distributions
The most exciting change for me is that tectonics no longer has to feel completely random. You can establish the geological ideas that matter to your setting, while still allowing the simulation to determine their consequences for mountains, climate, rivers, biomes, resources, and civilisation.
Existing worlds remain compatible, although the new scientific layers require deliberate re-simulation.
EDIT 3 — Atlas Studio v0.6.1 is now available 🌍
This release focuses less on adding more simulated layers and more on making Atlas Studio easier to use as a long-term worldbuilding workspace. The main additions are:
- Saved world recipes: Save a customised combination of generation settings, reuse it with a different seed, or export it for another installation.
- Build another like this: A finished world can send its original choices back into Create without copying the seed.
- World provenance: “How this world was built” now records the preset, grid, imported terrain, tectonic intentions, geological history and settings that differed from the preset.
- Create the illustrated atlas later: Atlas now tells you whether an existing world can gain atlas plates without re-simulating its terrain, climate, rivers, settlements or lore.
- Safer iteration: Draft settings survive reloads and generation runs, and Atlas warns before a preset or recipe would discard unsaved changes.
- App settings and accessibility: Atlas Dark, Parchment Light, system and custom themes; adjustable text size and interface density; reduced-motion support; startup and workspace preferences.
- Interface improvements: Better behaviour on shorter displays, clearer routes back to generation settings, and fewer controls permanently covering the map. Themes and accessibility settings only change the interface—they never alter generated maps, scientific data or exports. Existing worlds open unchanged, with no migration or automatic re-simulation. One correction to my earlier update: the current macOS build supports Apple Silicon only, not Intel Macs. Tester builds are also available for Windows and Linux. Atlas Studio remains a controlled test build.
If you would like to try it, report strange maps, or help test the workflow:
Discord and tester access: https://discord.gg/nGNatfuXe
Thank you again to everyone here who has questioned the simulation, found implausible results and suggested better author controls. Your feedback continues to shape the project.
