Date:	1996-01-10
		From:	John
		Subject:	Re: URGENT: Seeking details on "phased" world generation algorithm

Interesting. I must confess that I had also forgotten most of this phase stuff, but it's starting to come back to me now that you describe it. I seem to recall that the mountain phase had something to do with getting a good continuous spine of mountains instead of a random scattering of isolated mountain pixels and the final sea phase was a speed improvement since the basic algorithm took *way* too long filling the final 10% or so of the map with sea water.

I suspect that there is some discussion of this in the log of our e-mail messages which I still have. I'll try to dive in and find a relevant passage ASAP.

Finally got the tape in the mail this morning - should arrive by week's end. I'm now writing my first Visual Basic programs and will have much to report on the next tape.

Yours in haste,

Epicurious