Alright, so let me tell you about my recent deep dive into “wild gods sod”. I’m no pro, just a guy who likes to tinker and see what happens. Grab a coffee, ’cause this might take a minute.
It all started with me wanting to mess around with some procedural generation. I’d been reading about it online and thought, “Hey, I could probably cobble something together.” Famous last words, right?
First, I spent a solid day just trying to figure out what “sod” even meant in this context. I knew it was some kind of soil surface or turf, but I wanted the vibe to feel wild, untamed – something a god might have a hand in.
So, I fired up my usual environment (Unity, because it’s what I’m most comfortable with) and started with the basics. I needed some kind of terrain, so I played around with the built-in terrain tools. Honestly, those things are a pain in the butt. Spent hours just trying to get the hills to look somewhat natural.
Step 1: Basic Terrain
- Created a new Unity project (duh).
- Added a Terrain object.
- Sculpted some hills and valleys. This involved a lot of “undo” and “redo” – my artistic skills are… limited.
- Added some basic textures (grass, dirt, rock) to the terrain.
Then, I thought, “Okay, needs trees.” So, I grabbed some free tree assets from the Asset Store. Dropped ’em in. Looked like a poorly decorated golf course. Not the “wild god” vibe I was going for. Scrap that.
Step 2: Plants
- Imported some free tree and plant assets.
- Manually placed them around the terrain.
- Realized it looked terrible and was super tedious.
That’s when I decided to get serious about procedural generation. I started researching algorithms for distributing objects randomly but in a way that looked somewhat natural. I stumbled across Poisson Disk Sampling. Sounded fancy. Figured I’d give it a shot.
Step 3: Poisson Disk Sampling
- Spent a day reading about Poisson Disk Sampling and trying to understand the math. My brain hurt.
- Found a C# implementation online (thank goodness).
- Adapted the code to generate points on my terrain.
- Used these points to spawn trees and plants.
Okay, now we were getting somewhere. The trees were more evenly spaced, but it still looked kinda… artificial. Needed more randomness. I decided to introduce some variations in size, rotation, and species of the plants.
Step 4: Introducing Variation
- Added code to randomly scale and rotate the spawned objects.
- Created different “biomes” based on terrain height. Higher elevations got more rocks and fewer trees, lower elevations got more grass and denser vegetation.
This made a huge difference. It actually started to look like a real landscape. But it was still kinda… static. Needed some life. I decided to add some simple wildlife.
Step 5: Wildlife
- Found some free animal models (deer, rabbits, birds).
- Added some simple AI to make them wander around.
- Created a basic day/night cycle to make the world feel more dynamic.
And you know what? It actually worked! The deer wandered around, the birds flew overhead, and the sun rose and set. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. A somewhat “wild” looking “sod”.
Lessons Learned
This little project taught me a bunch. Procedural generation is hard, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. Don’t be afraid to grab code off the internet and adapt it to your needs. And most importantly, don’t give up when things get frustrating. Just keep tinkering, keep experimenting, and eventually, you’ll get there.
This is just the beginning, and I plan to do more iterations and improve this further.