Origins (II/IV): Procedural planetoids

Crossing Galaxies: Starworm Raiders » Devlog

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During the first half of 2016 we spent quite a long time learning how to work with meshes. We wanted to move the vertices of an icosphere around in order to create small planetoids procedurally.

By means of parametric curves, coherent noise and projections we were able to create planetoids with no more than two biomes: mountains, green plains, deserts, oceans, lakes, rivers, swamps, volcanos... They were not just visual sugar: every single triangle contained information about the kind of terrain it represented (so yes, lava was hot and swamps were poisonous)

The current iteration of Crossing Galaxies will not feature procedural planetoids, although asteroids are generated similarly. And when our future selves consider adding them, they will probably use marching cubes in order to have proper caves and editable terrain.

This post belongs to the Origins series where we explain where Crossing Galaxies comes from: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV