I thought the tools in this article were fascinating - and may be of interest to some here:
http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/
Wow, that is a very interesting map generator; with the simutrans climates as additional input (or output) that could go closer to the idea of worlds made by erosions (especially for larger maps). There was a thread somewhere in the extension or patches sections only focussed on water erosion (Here http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10042 but I did not find the world based on climates and precipitation one).
Wow, that's awesome!
what's the best way to get a complete map, or a proto-map imported, so i can experiment with this? I'd like to write some programs in Perl to output not just a height-map but city locations, rivers, and so on.
There is a link to an early Python source. But since it works best with random grid points, I think it isnot too compatible with the current perlin maps. Also the current perlin maps rarely produce double height slopes, even for mountains.
Since the map generation algorithm needs non-uniform grid points, sampling would be needed to translate them into the uniform grid. How good the end result would be after this I do not know, however it might be sufficient for a reasonable Sumatrans map. The city locations can be used as hints where to place appropriate cities. The region mechanics can probably be ignored, however they could possibly be used for different climates, an industry spawning model or even just eye candy.