I want to make an infinite 2-D world generator. I thought I would make a chunk class that represents some part of the world. I only don’t know where to store the chunks, and how to generate new ones.
I thought I could store chunks in vector and remember their X,Y. For the player, I make 3×3 array (where he stands in the center) with pointers to the chunks to form the vector. When he moves up, for example, I move upper and middle row lower, and load new chunks from the vector. I dont know if this is a good idea, It was the first thing that I thought up.
Anyway, I don’t have any idea how to generate chunks, so they match each other (no desert near water, aso). Even generating constant dimension map is quite hard for me (I really need infinite world).
Some time ago I generated constant dimension world using flood method, so I filled whole map with grass at the beginning, and then made random spots of water, trees and other ones, although I dont think that is usable in infinite world case.
This probably isn’t the right way to do this, but may give you some ideas.
what you could do is store a 3×3 2D array of chunks or even a 5×5 array of chunks into memory. Updating the these chunks and which chunks are loaded depending on the player’s position. The rest of the world can be stored within a file, which is read from and written to. When a player moves within 2-3 chunks of a un-initiated chunk, or empty chunk, generate that chunk using whatever method you want.
The tricky part of this is if you have rivers or bodies of water, forests, or any other type of landscape that spans across multiple chunks, you’ll have to have a separate algorithm to handle that when generating new chunks. Will probably need to measure the intersection between two lines each time you generate. The line created by the intersection of land and water, or plains and forests, and the line that represents the edge of the chunk. Once you have that point, you can probably figure out which side of that point on the chunk needs land/water, and randomly generate it from there.
This is what I see happening in Minecraft anyways.