Top all-time · #3606
Martin O'Leary
Personal blog · mewo2.commathprogramming
Martin O'Leary's personal blog at mewo2.com covers math and programming. Since 2013, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 34 times, most often “Show HN: Generating fantasy maps – an interactive exploration”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Martin O'Leary's mewo2.com for procedural map and terrain generation writing, especially the terrain tutorial with interactive demonstrations of each step, plus a naming-language note.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: Generating fantasy maps – an interactive exploration6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-08-10
- /notes/terrain/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-09-07
- Building a System Like Realtalk2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-17
- Ethical bot-making2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-03-26
- Generating naming languages2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-29
What Hacker News says?
Another developer of interesting generators in this vein is Martin O'Leary (twitter.com/mewo2). Metropologeny: https://twitter.com/metropologeny Uncharted Atlas: https://twitter.com/unchartedatlas https://mewo2.com
Comment linking /
on “City Generator”Submitted Show HN: Generating fantasy maps – an interactive exploration as a story · 1004 points
HN discussionYour http://mewo2.com/notes/naming-language is equally interesting, great work!
Comment linking /notes/naming-language
on “Show HN: Generating fantasy maps – an interactive exploration”Submitted Generating Fantasy Maps (2016) as a story · 175 points
HN discussionI think you would also like https://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Medieval Fantasy City Generator”Submitted A Brief History of Markov Chains as a story · 62 points
HN discussionReminds me of this http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Medieval Fantasy City Generator”Submitted Tomorrow's Eurovision final forecasted with Bayesian statistics as a story · 59 points
HN discussionLooks amazing! Note that the author also has a fantasy city generator: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator And mansion generator: https://watabou.itch.io/procgen-mansion If you're into that kind of stuff, there's a world map generator(by different author): https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/ and this amazing tutorial on generating maps: https://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/ ---- Also, kind…
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “One Page Dungeon Generator”Submitted Markov Chain Monte Carlo and the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest as a story · 53 points
HN discussion"Here Dragons Abound"[0] is another interesting take on this topic. The guy's been working for about a year now to beef up Martin O'Leary's work[1]. Fascinating read through if you start at the first post. [0] https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com [1] http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Crafting Plausible Maps (2015)”Submitted Generating naming languages as a story · 47 points
HN discussionThis might be up your alley: http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Island Generator”Submitted Ethical bot-making as a story · 43 points
HN discussionA slightly older one that produces very nice looking results for certain aesthetics is https://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/ As well as also being open source, the page gives interactive demonstrations of each step that the process takes which is interesting. (edit: clicking round a bit more, Azgaar's project lists the one at mewo2 as on if its inspirations/influences)
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Fantasy Map Generator (2018)”Submitted Bayesian model makes final Eurovision predictions as a story · 9 points
HN discussionIn the same theme, and if one needs some help in seeding ideas, previous discussion about One Page Dungeon Generator: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21362382 Also, Medieval Fantasy City Generator: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17925666 Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21099344 A tutorial on generating maps: * https://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/ And (American-style)…
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Show HN: Dungeon Map Doodler – Free D&D map maker”Submitted Bayesian predictions of Eurovision finishing positions as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI really like them as well. I enjoy them as a digital art form. From what I understand, Scott Turner (Here Dragons Abound) got his inspiration from Martin O'Leary[0]. Lots of interesting reading on his site. Another one in current development but as far as I know doesn't have a devlog quite like Scott Turner's is Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator[1]. He did keep a devlog until 2018 sometime though[2]. Watabou's Medieva…
Comment linking /notes/terrain/
on “Fantasy Cartography: Just Add Something Blotchy”Submitted Eurovision Song Contest predictions from a statistical model as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSince we're sharing links, here's my collection of interactive pages too: Interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms, with motivating examples from computer games. https://www.redblobgames.com/ The world's first linear algebra book with fully interactive figures. http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html The Textbook of the Future. Interactive. Personalised. Free. https://mathigon.org/ Structure and Interp…
Comment linking /
on “Visualization of Common Algorithms”Submitted Haversine is a dialect of Logo based around spherical geometry as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA few days ago I discovered this initiative that I found very interesting and fun: during the month on November you have to develop a program to generate a novel of around 50k words. This is the 7th edition of the event. I started reading the dev-logs (GitHub issues) of the past editions and discovered some great novels both in term of technology involved and also content. Some gems: * MARYSUE ( https://github.com/c…
Comment linking /notes/naming-language/
on “NaNoGenMo - Spend the month of November writing code that generates a novel”Submitted Show HN: Haversine: Logo on a sphere as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes on a month of daily generative sketches as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bayesian Eurovision predictions - revised and updated as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a System Like Realtalk as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a System Like Realtalk as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making Art with a Plotter as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Generating Naming Languages as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
