Claude Code – JC Eberdt

Worldbuilding Total War #1

This is a general update on the efforts to make a system that I can easily create visual material to promote the Total War Setting with. For anyone who has missed the past few weeks, I’ve always wanted to bring as much of the world as I can into a 3D game engine. If it’s only ever good for screenshots, that’s fine, but obviously I have fever dreams of a game one day when I grow up.

RFS, New Shawbury, loading landing barges — Autotrucks loading at New Shawbury on Athena

The autotrucks are the EUAF’s do it all cargo movers. Five axles, hub motors, four steered, hydro-pneumatics suspension, emdrives and pressure sealed crew comparments for shelter though they’re mainly intended to be remote driven or slaved to something like a utility vehicle.

Autotrucks into landing barges at New Shawbury — Loading operations on Athena

Loading operations at New Shawbury — Loading operations on Athena

A landing barge can carry up to 12,000 tonnes at a pinch. It takes forever to climb to orbit with that load, but fortunately, the plan is that it’s the way down where you’re taking fire. Just hope you never have to evacuate a planet.

Flight line at New Shawbury — A flight line on Athena

Dusk at RFS New Shawbury — Dusk on Athena

Landing barges at New Shawbury — Landing barges on Athena

Landing Barges somewhere on Athena — A small exercise strip on Athena

All sorts of things happen at training fields. Not sure if this Droopy pilot ever got his wings.

An unsanctioned low pass by a training Droopy at New Shawbury — An unsanctioned low pass by a training Droopy at an Athena training strip

These are the first baby steps into the 3D world, but I’m already very happy with it as a means to give a sense of the feel I want. Proper fidelity might be nice, but even with Claude Code’s help I don’t think I have the time budget to bring it where I’d want it. But I will keep developing it and see how far I can get. In any case, this one page has more imagery than I’ve had in total until two weeks ago.

I’ve also made a few animations, including a 20 second announcement video for Dropship Down. Coming soon ™.

Wormhole Layout in Godot 4

Parallelto my project to get Tales of Vatan worldbuilding data into Godot 4, I’ve been doing the same with my Total War setting. Top level here is a map of the wormhole network. Goals are more or less the same as for Vatan, with the addition of Wormholes and a means of working out travel times through wormholes and systems.

Below is the top-level overview, the wormhole network in the Milky Way. Early days, but I’ve wanted this kind of graphical representation for a very long time. I never had the time to teach myself proper Godot, but with Claude Code assistance it’s far less time consuming.

Vatan in Godot 4

I’ve long wanted to get a lot of the data from my settings into a 3D engine. Ideally I’d eventually like to edit maps directly on a globe, including things like defining elevation roads, rivers, towns and whatnot. When I grow up, who knows, I may have a bunch of the work done for a game already too.

I’ve chosen to work in Godot 4, it’s open source and I’ve supported it in the past. Guess the idea of leaving the IP of the basis for you 3D program in the hands of someone else just never seemed like a good idea to me.

Since I have never had time to actually sit down and learn everything I needed to build something in an engine like Godot, Claude Code is somehting of a godsend for me. I know what I want and how I want it, and I do have some experience programming. I’m finding that with that basis, getting Claude to do the drudge work is saving me massive amounts of time.

Below is the first thing that I might call a result. My master map of Vatan projected onto a globe of the dimensions I defined for the planet. Vatan is very hot round the equator and very cold at the poles. It’s far larger than earth, but it’s core is less dense than Earth’s Iron core, so gravity is about the same. There’s about an Earth’s worth of habitable climate in each of the hemispheres.

I’m going to put the moon in, and simulate rotation which will give me time differences and all sorts of other detailed goodies.

Someday I’d like to release a RPG setting for Tales of Vatan, and to me personally a tool that will tell you when sunrise and sunset is something that would make a setting feel far more alive. To me, using these kinds of tools to get the physics of a world right makes it much more alive.

Next step is analysing all the other materilal I already have getting it into the engine, and building mapping tools to be able to extend the map detail in the 3D engine. I also want to give things a live link to the database, so that sites described there are linked to places on the 3D globe. Godot is a game engine of course, so I’m also trying to make a scene for Thetwick, just as a test. Not nice enough to show anyone yet, but something else interesting to explore.