Procedural Generation of 3D Maps A Study of Polygon Graph based Map Generation
Wed 15 March 2017
Figure 1: Three different archipelago type maps generated by the implemented algorithm. The system is capable of generating lakes inside the land mass (centre picture) as well as sandbanks (right picture).
Implementation and review the paper
Abstract
The procedural generation of new content in video games is booming in the last years. There where even games whose biggest selling point was the amount of procedurally generated data. In this paper we elaborate about our use of an graph based map generation method that was used to generate archipelago type maps for a seafare and pirates 3D game. The map graph has been computed based on a random point distribution which was used to create a Voronoi diagram, which has been combined with its corresponding Delauny triangulation. We will explain how this graph data can later be used to compute islands and mountainsides and biomes and rivers and lakes. Based on this data, we place vegetation and NPCs and other game objects in appropriate places on the map. Following the detailed description on what methods we used for the different tasks, we provide some insight into what worked well in our approach and what aspects could be improved.
Update
The author of the original approach we employed for our implementation updated his demonstration application. Along with the demo he extended his article with new content on how to improve the generation techniques.