I am generating a tile based world using numerous noise functions in a pretty standard manner.
The terrain that I am generating is very large. I have no intention of ever having the whole thing loaded with actors at once during release (cause memory is precious), but for testing and tweaking I need to be able to better visualize what’s going on. Currently, I am able to see a small subset of the map ~4% at one time (for about 10,000 Tiles), which allows for very good performance, and I can rapidly unload and reload the actors I need to see as I move towards them/away from them.
I would like to be able to better visualize the output maps at run-time, so I can further refine my noise for better topology. Ideally, I would prefer to do this in editor/run-time without spawning all the actors.
So, without dumping the data to a file and opening it externally, what might be a good (low memory cost) method for viewing the entire map?
Current Ideas include:
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A Pixel Colored Map, with 1:1 for pixels and tiles or similar, probably drawn onto a ucanvas etc. or;
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Low Res Mapping of the entire data set. (so actors represent more than 1 region / tile, instead of 1:1 actors to tiles.)
Beyond these two, I can only really think of methods for dumping and opening the data externally.
If anyone knows a better method or has any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated.