I’ve got a game in mind I want to make, however first things first:
I want to be able to generate the terrain for my levels randomly, using a UI with sliders to alter various aspects (how hilly, sea-level etc), and have that terrain deformable (via a mining mechanic) that cuts the terrain out in set asymmetrical chunks (like Dungeon Keeper). I realise the UI will come easily once I know what values to adjust for various effects, but…
My first stop was looking up stuff for Unity that involved randomly generated terrain, however it all seems to be geared around generating continuous terrain, rather than a single set-sized map that’s different each time it is created. So can anyone point me in the right direction? I’ve read some stuff on perlin noise, but not entirely convinced I need to go that route, Or am I thinking about this incorrectly?
Finally, for the effective ‘tiling’ of that terrain, I thought it would make sense to do that after the terrain is generated (like a giant grid of cheesewire splitting the freshly created terrain), rather than designing the terrain and its subsequent texturing to follow a tile format from the beginning. Again, any advice on this would be great. I’m not an experienced programmer, but I understand on some level what I’m looking at, so don’t feel like you have to dumb it down. Go nuts!
Looked at it and might work on it in the future so their a several non-voxel, non-minecraft strategies that only need be slightly extended but it doesn’t make for good characters, good terrain art, or good gameplay in and of itself.
So I decided to try and spend time on original concepts and gameplay and leave the tech to Unity and other experts.
Knowing what I do despite my amateur status, I think it’s safe to guess Unity is probably working on a highly morphable ‘simple not Matterhorn realistic’ terrain that can be altered (hills, mountains, plateaus, islands, rivers, lakes, sea, glaciers, …) and randomly populated with roads, railroads, airports, neighborhoods, towns, cities, various natural ecosystems. The simulations, training, and CoD wannabees, not!, are uninspiring to say the least.
Similar in highlevel concept to the Unity character generator that Unity is funding that Fernando Ribiero (sp.?) is working on and will be releasing in the next month or two.
Given those two things, it will be a 1-2 knockout in the government and big business simulation and training environments.
Good to know, thanks! I’ll make a start on the game play side (as much as I can do without the terrain editing) first then. Got plenty to be getting on with, just thought if I didn’t get a handle on the terrain side first I’d be skipping a step.
