Sidenius

World-making workflow

Added 2024-07-07 21:55:59 +0000 UTC

Workflow (a bit technical)
The new landscape tech I talked about in the last post has two cool features that aren't possible (at least not to this extent) with the default UE landscape tool. It can do deterministic procedural generation, as well as "stamping" heightmaps (like a single mountain) into the terrain at runtime. This allows for a new kind of workflow where the world consists of a procedurally generated base layer that simply adds some interesting variation to the ground, while large scale features like mountains can be placed by hand where desired. This has two major advantages over the standard approach, which is to generate the entire terrain in an external software and the import it into UE as a heightmap (a grayscale texture representing the height). First, you save a ton of memory in a large world by using small, reusable heightmaps where needed and procedurally generate the rest, and second, it allows for much better art direction where you can precisely place terrain features interactively instead of having to remake the entire terrain for each small adjustment.

Map editor

This workflow is also well suited for making an in-game map editor where the player can literally move mountains around to create their own fantasy world, or the world from their favorite show or movie. If such an editor is made, it would likely be included in some post launch update.