This isn’t much of a big suggestion, but it’s obvious what the suggestion is from the title. Later on in the development or now, if anyone has the time, should create a world painter for StoneHearth maps.
What do you mean by a world painter? 
Something like paint where you use a paint brush choosing certain colours from a colour palette and then it/stonehearth converts it to a map?
Yeah, like the Starcraft/Warcraft map creator. I would assume the world painter would generate a seed for the map, or if it’s compatible with StoneHearth you could just upload it from your computer.
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It’s definitely possible as i think the Stonehearth map gen uses similar algorithms like Perlin Noise etc but i don’t think they would open up this side of the game at the current stage of the game as i think they have much bigger things to work on.
From the map gen work i’ve done for proof of concepts for my own projects/games it’d be fairly simple to engineer the current tech to convert a picture to a map but i think the time and effort and continued support/effort would take up too much time to introduce now.
I think its quite possible after release though or beta stages once modding has been further implemented.
/My thoughts
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Any particular reason that you want to convert a picture into a map instead of just having a map editor mode where you could sculpt the terrain in 3d?
I’m afraid generating a seed from a picture is quite impossible. At least if you mean the type of seed that is used for the world generator now. You can very easily paint shapes that the world generator isn’t able to create and even if it can create the shapes, finding the seed for it would mean something like finding all the right values for all the parameters to recreate the shape, find the order in which they would be generated and then find the seed that would make the random number generator return all those values in the right order.
To use the picture directly should be a lot easier. There may already be support for it in the engine. I don’t know if they apply the noise algorithms directly on the voxels or if they generate a texture first. If they generate a texture it shouldn’t be hard to just look at your picture instead. You probably need more than one picture though, since the world (as far as I know) has layers of rock, soil and grass on top of each other.
I do however think that the best way to do it would be to generate a world with a seed like you do now, but instead of embarking with your hearthlings you go into a map editor mode in 3d, just like the game, but you have tools to add and remove voxels/trees/bushes/water/enemies, instabuild buildings and so on. The functionality needed to change the map is already there. We just need the tools to do it manually and instantly instead of telling our hearthlings to do it for us.
IF this happens, I would also like to build on this and suggest an OBJ export feature. If this exsisted I would never stop using it. Even if it was just a Stonehearth to OBJ exporter. Still be awesome.
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A bit like what happened in Sim City which once you picked the area you would go into edit (sculpt) mode then once confirmed you went in to embark mode…
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I’m pretty sure that Stephanie actually mentioned wanting to make a world editor mode for the game during one of the more recent streams, but i could be wrong…
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Ah i love remembering i have streams still to watch, makes my day! thanks for reminding me 
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Twitch stream 125
At 24:25 she mentions that she’s for instamine and instabuild and that she and Chris had been talking about a diorama mode where instamine and instabuild is always on, so that you can set up a scene, like a city with a bunch of goblins outside, that you can send to friends so that they can play it.
Things like this would probably also be very useful for moders that want to do things with pre made maps, like tower defence, rpg or a moba.
Personally, I just want an easy way to shape and epic cliff where I can build my castle. 
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Just to avoid potential confusion, this is something that is being “talked about,” and there have been nothing finalized at this time, nor a decision if something like this will even occur.
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