The Forest

The Forest is both a training aid for the sport of orienteering and a game in the form of a treasure hunt* in a huge area of wooded terrain.

A major aim of The Forest, from its earliest version around 1982, has been to help people interpret the contour information in maps. That enables orienteers to navigate without just following roads or streams, it helps hill walkers to avoid getting lost, and more generally it helps anyone reading a map to get the most out of it.

Note: the parallel black lines on the map point to magnetic north and they are 300 metres apart.

This program includes some non-trivial games and diversions for those who are not orienteers; we will call them explorers, which relates to another version published in the 1980s.

For programmers The Forest also demonstrates a technique for generating vast terrain by an algorithm rather than by storing it in memory or having to download it as a huge amount of data. It is written in JavaScript for an HTML5 web page and the program occupies only just over 200 kilobytes, so it downloads and runs very quickly. Nevertheless it has more than 1,000 sq km of forest to explore (very much more!). The file TerrainGeneration.pdf describes in some detail how the terrain is generated (and more detail is added to this PDF fom time to time).

*About the treasure hunt: there are at least 5 stages (levels, if you like). First you need to assemble the clues and find Treasure Island. There is a treasure chest there but you may need to think a bit about exactly where it is. What you find in it will tell you what to do next.

New version 24.8.16: control card and engineering menu may be repositioned, some new images, several minor improvements.

Keys no longer repeat when held down. This is to avoid a problem with repeating keys in some browsers. More details in the "What's new" file within the program.

New version 24.2.28 shows details of an O-training leg, including graphical profiles of the direct leg and of a route navigated. The new "role" of "O-training" makes it very easy to pick any 2 point features on the map to form a leg with controls that can then be navigated on the ground as an exercise. Your route can be seen on the map afterwards. A red box on the page guides you step by step through this.

The "Full Details" PDFs for download below contain my original design documents and source listings from 1983. They are freely available for use.

I have written a detailed set of pages on "How to start creating graphical browser games".

A Java version of the Relf Terrain Generator is available on github - may be easier to understand because Java structure is clearer than JS. github.com/grelf-net/forest