Random/Procedural Object spawner?

Hi @Rosscoe3,

Depending on time constraints and budget you may benefit from buying something like MegaScatter:

• https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14954

Otherwise here's some ideas that'll hopefully point you in the right direction!

Research voxels:

• http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/tutorial-c-voxel-terrain-with-infinite-terrain-saving-and-loading.293340/

To start add a material/texture to the plane with a normal map to create the illusion of a 3D grass (once you start placing objects on top it'll become less noticeable).

Create the assets you want to use and make a script to attach to all of them. This script can then use Foreach to add them to a List(), from there you can use random number generators (or seeds) to decide what gets instantiated. It's too far a complex topic for an answer here but I'll attach an extract from a script I use for some boids (NOTE: it is an extract and won't work if you copy it directly into your project). It's not quite the same but it's similar enough to give you a launching point for going forward!

As for terrain perlin noise is a fairly common way to randomly create a heightmap but it has it's shortfalls too - for example, in it's "basic" form you won't generate any caves.

Here's a link to a fairly interesting read as well on the topic of procedural generation:

• http://pcgbook.com/

Obviously it's a large topic, open for a lot of discussion, so feel free to ask me anything else.

All the best!

EDIT: Please remember if this has been useful to upvote it :-)

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 
 public class ProceduralObsBoid : MonoBehaviour 
 {
     public static List<ProceduralObsBoid> boids;
     public static ProceduralObsBoid S;
 
     public List<ProceduralObsBoid> neighbours; 
     public List<ProceduralObsBoid> collisionRisks;
     public ProceduralObsBoid closest; 
 
     private void Awake()
     {
         if (boids == null) 
         {
             boids = new List<ProceduralObsBoid>();
         }
         boids.Add (this);
 
         S = this;
 
         neighbours = new List<ProceduralObsBoid> ();
         collisionRisks = new List<ProceduralObsBoid> ();
     }

     public List<ProceduralObsBoid> GetNeighbours(ProceduralObsBoid boi)
     {
         float closestDist = float.MaxValue;
         Vector3 delta;
         float dist;
         neighbours.Clear();
         collisionRisks.Clear();
 
         foreach (ProceduralObsBoid b in boids) 
         {
             if (b == boi) continue;
             delta = b.transform.position - boi.transform.position;
             dist = delta.magnitude;
             if (dist < closestDist)
             {
                 closestDist = dist;
                 closest = b;
             }
             if (dist < ProceduralLevel.S.nearDist)
             {
                 neighbours.Add (b);
             }
             if (dist < ProceduralLevel.S.collisionDist)
             {
                 collisionRisks.Add (b);
             }
         }
         if (neighbours.Count == 0) 
         {
             neighbours.Add (closest);
         }
         return (neighbours);
     }
 
     public Vector3 GetAveragePos (List<ProceduralObsBoid> someBoids)
     {
         Vector3 sum = Vector3.zero;
         foreach (ProceduralObsBoid b in someBoids) 
         {
             sum += b.transform.position;
         }
         Vector3 centre = sum / someBoids.Count;
         return (centre);
     }
 }