Looks like the forum software added some extra characters in front of my links, sorry about that. I've edited the original post, and it looks like the links in it are working now.
@neuroguy Yes, to elaborate a bit on the points you brought up, I don't mean to imply that Intrepid's level designers couldn't use procedural generation as a base to start from - I think modifying an algorithmically-generated terrain would make for a fairly good workflow, with some advantages over a more manual workflow. Rather, the point I want to get at is that quite a few passes are still needed either way (prop placement, AI spawnpoint and navmesh definition, QA, etc), so it's less of a time savings than it might initially seem, and comes down moreso to personal preference on the part of the level design team.
This is off-topic, but if you're interested in learning more about the level design tools commonly used for this sort of thing, Unreal Engine 4 is free for personal use, and as I mentioned, has some good tools for terrain editing (you can find a short tutorial about manual terrain editing here, and about importing an externally-generated heightmap here). Bear in mind that UE4 has a bit of a learning curve, and if you're interested in importing the outputs of a noise function, you'll need to write some code for handling images. There are good noise function libraries in Python, Node.js, and Java. There's a great tutorial on some specific concepts in procedural generation here.
Looks like the forum software added some extra characters in front of my links, sorry about that. I've edited the original post, and it looks like the links in it are working now.
@neuroguy Yes, to elaborate a bit on the points you brought up, I don't mean to imply that Intrepid's level designers couldn't use procedural generation as a base to start from - I think modifying an algorithmically-generated terrain would make for a fairly good workflow, with some advantages over a more manual workflow. Rather, the point I want to get at is that quite a few passes are still needed either way (prop placement, AI spawnpoint and navmesh definition, QA, etc), so it's less of a time savings than it might initially seem, and comes down moreso to personal preference on the part of the level design team.
This is off-topic, but if you're interested in learning more about the level design tools commonly used for this sort of thing, Unreal Engine 4 is free for personal use, and as I mentioned, has some good tools for terrain editing (you can find a short tutorial about manual terrain editing here, and about importing an externally-generated heightmap here). Bear in mind that UE4 has a bit of a learning curve, and if you're interested in importing the outputs of a noise function, you'll need to write some code for handling images. There are good noise function libraries in Python, Node.js, and Java. There's a great tutorial on some specific concepts in procedural generation here.
Thanks, yeah I'm comfortable with python so I'll start there once I have a bit more free time and see if I can gauge the effort required a bit better.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Not quite the same as the OP suggestion, but thought that perhaps some of the islands, should they have nodes, could have varying degrees of accessibility and/or sufficiency. So that they may become a little more unique or outliners.
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@neuroguy Yes, to elaborate a bit on the points you brought up, I don't mean to imply that Intrepid's level designers couldn't use procedural generation as a base to start from - I think modifying an algorithmically-generated terrain would make for a fairly good workflow, with some advantages over a more manual workflow. Rather, the point I want to get at is that quite a few passes are still needed either way (prop placement, AI spawnpoint and navmesh definition, QA, etc), so it's less of a time savings than it might initially seem, and comes down moreso to personal preference on the part of the level design team.
This is off-topic, but if you're interested in learning more about the level design tools commonly used for this sort of thing, Unreal Engine 4 is free for personal use, and as I mentioned, has some good tools for terrain editing (you can find a short tutorial about manual terrain editing here, and about importing an externally-generated heightmap here). Bear in mind that UE4 has a bit of a learning curve, and if you're interested in importing the outputs of a noise function, you'll need to write some code for handling images. There are good noise function libraries in Python, Node.js, and Java. There's a great tutorial on some specific concepts in procedural generation here.
Thanks, yeah I'm comfortable with python so I'll start there once I have a bit more free time and see if I can gauge the effort required a bit better.