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Fractals
Java Fractals
Geocities
Fractal Islands are areas bounded by infinitely long, infinitely detailed coastlines. The above applet will randomly generate one.
The Idea is simple. Start with a polygon. Take each segment on the polygon and make a circle with the segment as the diameter. Choose a point in or on the circle, and use it to replace the segment of the polygon with two segments. You now have a more complicated polygon with a longer perimeter. If you do this an infinite number of times, you will get an infinitely detailed coastline.
Choose a polygon to start with. The end result may or may not resemble the polygon it started with.
Click Generate to generate an island.
Click on the island to zoom in. Shift-click to start the zooming all over again. Due to limiting how much island is stored in memory, the island will look different every time you zoom in. (The initial island won't change, but the details it generates as you zoom in will.)
Click Options to bring up the options dialog box. This allows you to change the colors and the maximum line length.
The maximum line length allows you to control how detailed the island is drawn. It is the length in screen pixels the segments of the island have to be before the program stops subdividing them. (Refer to above.)
If wierd things start happening to the island when you zoom in far, I know. I am trying to figure out how to make this work.