These further experiments in random terrain generation are the result of a new level-building process I've been auditioning. I suppose technical folks might call it "atmospheric prototyping" - essentially, building and exploring a rough open world, getting a feel for potential moods and components before moving on to layout work.
The components used to generate this dead, frozen forest were put together in a single afternoon, and while the terrain is admittedly pretty sloppy (particularly in regards to the haphazard grass placement), I think that it was quite a successful experiment in regards to mood-based brainstorming. While I certainly could have focused on finding a perfect level flow before tweaking the atmosphere, the randomized layout suggests some interesting elements that simply wouldn't have occurred had I had been adhering to a rigid plan. Certainly, future designs for snow-based levels will be pieced together from this experiment's hits, and informed and inspired by its misses.
Perhaps the biggest success story to come from this little jam is the new approach to trees, a simple-but-effective forest building script which randomly places, scales, and rotates meshes from a determined folder (the same script determines the level's rock formations, with admittedly less success). I've grown to know Unity's built in tree system pretty intimately, and while it handles distant backgrounds and small brush acceptably, it's quite pathetic at handling such vegetation up close. I'm still racking my brain for a memory-friendly leaf solution, but this approach has proven fairly effective at creating a believable dead forest.
Alternately, the biggest failure here is the water, which is the standard Unity asset and really stinks up the look of the place. After this attempt, I resolved to never again touch the built-in water and instead devise a system of my own - more on that in the near future.
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