Hello survivors,
Welcome to the monthly progress report covering the major aspects I worked on in October 2022. As always, if you do prefer bullet points and not read everything in detail you can skip the sections after the TL;DR part.
TL;DR:
- Implemented new (finite) world generation algorithms featuring
- Worlds up to 64km² or ~25miles²
- Mountain ranges as natural world borders
- Mountains and hills with forests and meadows
- Future points of interest position evaluation
- Road network to connect all points of interests
- Implemented new vegetation renderer
- Used UI Toolkit (new production ready Unity UI system) to create world generation setting menu for upcoming tech demo and get experience with the new system for future UIs
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Procedural world generated with new algorithms
World overview (White circles represent points of interest connected with a road network)
New World Generation Algorithms
After additional testing of a new asset for designing worlds I decided to give it a try to reimplement the procedural world generation for the game utilizing the features of said asset. The asset is not specifically designed for my use case, meaning it’s intended use is to create worlds manually during design time. However, with some input from the asset creator I was able to make it work at runtime too. So far I was going for infinite procedural worlds but over time this turned out to make certain things incredibly difficult to implement and balance so I made the decision to take a step back and attempt to create the new world generation algorithms for a finite world. This for example allows me to ensure much easier that certain points of interest are always within a reasonable distance to the player. With the asset working at runtime I immediately started working on the new algorithms and thanks to the functionalities provided by the asset I was able to quickly make visible progress. With the rapid progress of the first week I decided to focus all my efforts in October on getting the world generation as far progressed as possible. I am happy to say that the core of the world generation is already implemented. This current implementation allows the generation of worlds up to 8x8km (64km² or ~25miles²). Those worlds have mountain ranges at the edges of the world as natural borders. Mountains and hills are also already available and can be increased or decreased in a world generation settings menu. Vegetation placement functionality is also already implemented. To not waste time on crazy variety and density I went with a basic forest and some grass land with a couple flowers for demo purposes only. Next month I will put some time into more diversity of vegetation to give the world an even better look. As mentioned in the September progress report this change means also stepping away from my current vegetation renderer and replacing it with a new one. Fortunately this change went quick and without issues. An algorithm to evaluate viable positions/spots for future towns and other points of interest is also already in place. Those points can already be connected via a road network. This leaves only the generation of towns as part of the absolute core world generation.
UI Toolkit - Unity’s new UI system
With Unity’s UI Toolkit being production ready as of late I decided to familiarize myself with it. The old/current UI system in Unity is quite bad when it comes to performance and as I heard good things about the new one it was important to take a look at it before making any new UI for the game. As the upcoming world generation tech demo does require a simple UI to allow the various settings to be chosen it was the perfect time to learn and practice the workflow of UI Toolkit. The workflow is quite different but so far I am really happy with improved modularity and simplicity of the system. I did create a very basic settings menu for the world generation tech demo and will likely use this system for any future UI implementation and will also consider porting over existing UI in the game.
Plans for November
The primary goal for November is to add support for generating the town roads and having basic building placements. With those 2 features in place, the core world generation would be complete. To add more vegetation variety I will also be taking a look at biome placement which would allow dedicated vegetation to be placed in specific areas of the world. The addition of rivers and/or lakes are also planned but I don’t know how long the implementation of the previous features will take me so it’s hard to say if I will be able to take a look at those in November.
I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts, feedback or criticism in the Steam discussions.
That’s it for this update post. I hope you are all doing well.
Stay safe out there and I’ll see you in the next one.
Norman aka CitrioN
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