Generate Terrain in runtime

Now I know that this kind of question have been asked several times before, though I haven’t been able to find an answer that suits my needs…

I’ve just dropped jMonkeyEngine because I wanted to test my idea of a game in a .Net suited engine.

So, on to the question.

I am in need of an engine which can simulate the the basis of games like SimCity and Transport Tycoon… This being both in the tile/plot based terrain (which I know can be easily simulated by a simple grid + snap-to-grid)
And also, I need to be able to generate the terrain in runtime, most likely based of gray-scale heightmaps.

For the last part, the saving of a map. The maps I’m thinking of would need to be huge, like Civilization 5 Huge. So my last question is, does Unity involve some kind of saving mechanism or would I been in need to work that out myself? If the last is true, could you perhaps give me your thought of how to save such a large map?

You can do whatever you want in Unity. For saving, use the System.IO.File functions, and come up with some kind of format for the data. It’s not possible for Unity to know what you want to save, that’s up to you.

–Eric

Let me give you a followup on my question about the runtime generator, because your answer can pretty much be applied to what ever question that involves programming…

A hint in what direction I should be looking would be much appreciated?

If as you suggest your terrain is generated from greyscale images, wouldn’t it make sense to just save these?