Best way to visualise very large prng array @ runtime

Development Programming & Scripting
1

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:

  • A Pixel Colored Map, with 1:1 for pixels and tiles or similar, probably drawn onto a ucanvas etc. or;

  • 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.

2

You could try this:

227098-capture.png

It should be easy to set up and be fast. It draws a textured quad of any size, uses a material and is quite flexible overall:

3

this is great, I’m trying it out now!

4

welp. I tried it out, but its super intensive on the gpu.

While it does show the whole map, it comes out black. Possibly something to do with being unlit.

any thoughts?

5

Make the material unlit and emissive. How many are talking about? 250k?

6

phew done. There was a shading category for UI, so I just made some dummy materials with appropriate colors using that shader. Worked out quite well

https://i.imgur.com/lCwllLQ.png

thanks very much for the idea!

7

Wicked! I’ve got a world generator, too - need to think of implementing a similar debug tool, mine is currently text based. ;p

8

mind you, I still really couldn’t display the whole map, but its possible to make it lower res instead, which is good enough for what I wanted to do.