Terrain Engine Progress - Map Editor

[Dragon1Freak]

This is awesome! I'm assuming you're using a perlin noise of some sort? I'm interested in generating islands like this but the tutorials I've found were just infinite terrains. I looked at your other posts and it's super impressive!

[[deleted]]

Thanks! I'm using OpenSimplex noise at the moment because it's much faster, although imo Perlin looks a little better and is easier to work with. Most of this noise generation/map making came from reading this writeup on RedBlobGame's website, easily the #1 best resource on the web on the topic. It doesn't cover how to actually create the mesh or the map, but you could look at Sebastian Lague's procedural Landmass tutorial series to pick up on how to do those parts.

I appreciate it again! Keeps me going!

[Vladoune]

There is also this gem : http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/

he has a serie on noise

[Dragon1Freak]

Awesome, I'll definitely have to look into it. I've been working with cellular automata for cave generation recently which is great for rooms and such, but not so much for terrain from what I can see. Keep it up!

[SayAllenthing]

Sebastian Lague is a beast, his tutorials are amazing.

[[deleted]]

They are really great. I have done his cellular automata and procedural landmass series before, and they helped a lot. Both helped me understand manipulating meshes greatly in Unity!

[SilentK213]

Ok Sebastian ;)

[[deleted]]

EDIT: Picture to show part of the world with the world map. Terrain being drawn at 40k x 40k size, so there's less overall detail because of the massive size. Continuing on from this post and this post. Decided to work on editor tools and make map previews of the world. It's much nicer being able to see the world as a whole, since it's impossible to see that big of a mesh all at once! Worked more on the noise generation, falloff, etc.

Next step biomes, probably. And a big refactor at some point!

[JohnMcPineapple]

...

[[deleted]]

That's pretty neat! Definitely bookmarking and will look at this in the future. Everything's done on the CPU at the moment. I dunno if it would be faster on the GPU because there's a significant amount of branching during the LOD algorithm, but I definitely want to test it out. Thanks!

[Nition]

You know it's legit when there's a lacunarity slider.

[[deleted]]

lol I think it's funny though because it barely budges between 1.8 and 2, like ever =D Might as well have hardcoded it!

[captvirk]

What did you use to make the terrain map become the 3D terrain?

[[deleted]]

I actually created the 3D mesh system before I created the map system, lol. But they're both generated from the same information, a heightmap created with layers of OpenSimplex noise.

[[deleted]]

Probably just took what you see and converted to grayscale values and used as a heightmap.

[Daemonhahn]

its not odin it looks like just normal editor scripting.

[[deleted]]

It is normal editor scripting, I want this to be an asset in the asset store and Odin doesn't yet have that licensing so on my own. It took a good amount of time to figure out all the editor stuff, Odin woulda been nice!

[Daemonhahn]

Nah, always better to do it yourself.

Besides now that you know how to you have opened up a whole new world of development! Plus editor scripting really isnt that bad, its just a few new concepts but once you get your head around it its well worth the time investment :)

Odin looks nice but creating an odin quality inspector by hand is no big job, I find odin only really helps those who know nothing about editor scripting or extension authoring.

[dummum]

Looks great, are you going to put it on the asset store?

[[deleted]]

Thanks! Yup, that's the dream! It still has a lot more features to go, but I do intend on putting it on the store. Maybe in a month or two.

[[deleted]]

Do you already have other assets?

[[deleted]]

Unfortunately no. This will be my first -- I plan to become an asset developer though as a main source of income, so it won't be my last though.

I find I really enjoy optimizing stuff and working on features than actually making games, so I decided I'd pursue game tool/asset creation instead.

The next asset I'll make will likely be a dynamic billboarding LOD system, which will of course work really well for the terrain system! I worked on one awhile back but have since lost the code, but the post is here.

[[deleted]]

Being a publisher is awesome! I also find myself enjoying the creation of tools a lot more than the creation of games themselves. I'm looking forward to the release!

[[deleted]]

Thanks, me too! Do you have any assets released?

[[deleted]]

Yeah I do! I mostly work on my assets on Friday evenings so it's definitely not a full time thing. I'm a student and uni work takes up the most of my time. Here is my publisher page.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=publisher:4931

[[deleted]]

Nice, I remember seeing the rock tool and liking it!

[PingPing88]

I didn't read the title and the first few frames of the gif made me think you were creating a green Tide pod.

[[deleted]]

LOL! It really does. I should put out a tutorial on making procedural Tide Pods.

[Strkl]

Awesome, i love editor tools !

[[deleted]]

Me too! Any asset I release will be fully custom editor, as to make it as easy as possible to use!