I’ve been working on the design items for the island height map the I’ll be importing into the game. If you aren’t sure what a height map is, it’s basically a top down image of the landscape with colors between black and white. When the game imports the height map, it uses the colors to define high and low points. So areas in the map that are the highest are the closest to 100% white, while the lowest are closest to 100% black. For example, if you wanted a hill, you would have a circle of white with a gradient that got darker the further you got from the center.
I drew my island map on paper, took a picture of it, and traced over it with a photo editing program. Then, I applied some functions to simulate a hilly area for now until I get more picky and want to define the island layout more accurately.
Since a lot of the design is written and the height map is setup I think it’s just about time I started development!