Map generation: Procedural vs ... ?

Unity Engine
1

Hello, new to Unity. This is my first post.

For TL;DR just scroll to the bottom.

My background for general interest’s sake: I’m an ‘expert’ in programming, having done so professionally for decades (I’m old, haha), so that’s my strong point. However, I have little knowledge of graphics programming (or of tools such as Photoshop, 3dsMax, etc). So that’s my weak point.

At any rate, I have decided to make a game (have already started), and am in serious ‘learning mode’ along with doing some playing around and prototyping. One of my first orders of business is learning how to make a map. I’ve run across some tutorials on youtube where some guy is generating them procedurally (these are 2d tile maps I am referring to). My question is whether or not it is also possible, practical, etc. to do this non-procedurally, i.e. using some kind of tool like 3dsMax.

TL;DR

  1. Is it possible, practical, advisable, etc. to somehow create 2d tile maps using some kind of tool like 3dsMax along with Photoshop or Gimp or whatever, or are these things generally only produced procedurally?

  2. If answer to 1 above is ‘yes’ (possible, practical, etc), what are the advantages and disadvantages to doing it one way or the other, and what are the circumstances or reasons why you would do it one way or the other?

  3. Again, assuming 1 above is ‘yes,’ could you describe generally how to go about doing it? For instance, would you create a mesh in 3dsmax (or other tool) and then import it?

Thanks.

2

In Max, no…that’s for creating 3D models. For tile maps I’d recommend some kind of tile map editor. (I happen to have one available…) I also have a project here, which is quite old at this point and outdated in a lot of ways, but could still give you an idea of how a tile editor would be done.

–Eric

3

Interesting. It seemed to me as if maps use the same things as 3d models (meshes and what not). I guess I have more study to do.

Thanks. But I don’t plan on buying anything to do this for me. I absolutely have the skills to do it programatically… I just wondered if I had to or not.

Thanks again.

4

You could technically create a tile map in Max, but it would probably be the most inefficient and painful way to go about it. So possible yes, practical and advisable no.

–Eric