Procedural Generation - Additive or Subtractive?

Unity Engine
1

So, I’m working on scripting a procedurally generated 2D labyrinth. I’ve considered both of the following options, but am curious which would be the most efficient from a resource perspective. Any insight would be tremendously helpful.

Option #1 - Generate an area, subtract backwards from an endpoint to the startpoint and wall off areas accordingly.

Option #2 - Generate the successful path, adding iterative paths for additional dimension, and build additively throughout.

In other words, in option one it would be similar to starting with a solid block of stone and carving the path from end to start, with some additional side paths to flesh it out.

The second option would be to start with a blank slate (a void), generate the solution path, build out form there, then enclose it.

It seems like the second option would allow for more uniqueness (not being generated within a particular boundary of coordinates). But the first seems like, because of having boundaries, it may keep constraints more regular and be less resource intensive.

Any thoughts?

2

Frankly, I’m not seeing the difference between the two, because in both case, you won’t generate a mesh out of that; that would be very expensive for very little result.

Option 1 or 2, you’ll probably end up instantiating prefabs of corridor pieces. In both case, you generate a right path, then fill the missing space with false paths. It will always end up as values in a 2D or 3D tables, therefore limited by that table’s size.