Visual Biome Editor for Voxelmetric

[HeadClot]

So in order to make Voxelmetric more accessible to artists like myself. I am proposing a Visual Biome Editor inside the Unity Editor. I can see this being a low priority but a massive productivity booster for both artists and programmers. That said I would be willing to help out on the art side of things.

See video below for reference -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LJauth8EFc

So basically here is what I am asking -

• Loads a pre-defined default biome for editing, modification and saving.
• A series of sliders with a variety of ranges, tick boxes, and options for making each biome different. (See the video for reference)
• The ability to import art assets such as 3D art and Scripts for Biome specific events, AI, etc. into the editor.

[alex-irt]

Not sure when this will be feasible but I like the idea and some way to customize terrain generation will be needed.

[thegreatpl]

Easiest way to customize terrain gen would be to make it possible to pass a TerrainGen or derived class to the World script, and access it from there. And make the TerrainGen be able to be inherited. Wouldn't allow non-programmers to mess around, but coders would be able to make their own terrain gen.

[advra]

Even before doing all this, object pooling should be implemented, right?

[HeadClot]

@AlexSTV - What way are we proceeding with the biome editing? Are we going with an editor approach or a more code based one?

[alex-irt]

I've started taking a look at it and I think it will be good to have an editor window to set up terrain generation and biomes. I have some stuff in place to create terrain from multiple editable layers of terrain but I'm trying to figure out a good way to make biomes, define how they behave and implement the terrain deciding which biome to use and how to split them up.

[Dalez]

Just to follow on from biome options, it would be cool to have an option for each biome on how often they spawn (like the Mushroom biome in Minecraft, it only spawns like 1% of the time) and also how big the biome should be (a rough size, so you can have small biomes and massive biomes).

Just something that would make the generator amazing I think.

[HeadClot]

@AlexSTV - I have some useful stuff for you to take a look at regarding the biome editor.

Seed of Andromeda voxel editor - https://github.com/RegrowthStudios/SoAVoxelEditor It is written in C and C++ so keep that in mind.

Also expanding on what @Dalez said maybe some sliders for how often a certain biome should spawn as well as some options for making biomes such as -

• Reuse TerrainLayer.cs from a world editing basis to per biome editing basis.
• What Blocks and/or meshes should be in a biome.
• Chance for the biome to spawn using a slider or something similar.
• Rough size of a biome using a slider or similar. Should the size of a biome be measured in cubes or something else?
• Maybe save out the the information for the biomes as XML? This way the end user can modify our games if they want to.

Keep in mind that these are just thoughts.