Date:	1993-11-19
		From:	John
		Subject:	Second Smoothing Snapshot

Attached is a screenshot of my second attempt at smoothing. This time I allocated 14% of the initial shoreline space as starting land sparks (line segments along the edges of land-based shoreline coordinate blocks). The results are much better. This time, instead of occupying 59% of the shoreline area, the sea only rose to a level of 37%.

For ease of comparison I did not mark the initials sparks in red this time. Using OracleCard (which is greatly burdened by pushing all available memory limits) it takes me about 15 minutes to define the shoreline area and another 3 hours (!) to generate the coast. This is slow even by HyperCard standards; I would expect that you can reduce this by AT LEAST two (and probably three) orders of magnitude.

Although further fudge factor fiddling can improve the current coastline somewhat, it now seems clear that the micro-continent generation method will always produce a characteristic "lacy" look, a coastline that is not smooth but, rather, torn into powder. I'm not sure whether I like this look or not. I am very eager to hear your reactions!

Yours in haste,

Epicurious J.