Creating grid based terrain.

Hey all, I have the following script that will create grid based terrain around the player. The problem is that it is creating it over and over. I want to add a check to see if there is already a block at that grid and if so, dont create a new block. I would also like to make it so old blocks are removed as the player moves away. Thanks for any help.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3. using System.Collections.Generic;
4. using Random = UnityEngine.Random;
5.  
6. public class tileGenerator : MonoBehaviour {
7.    
8.     public int xTerrain;
9.     public int zTerrain;
10.     public float scale;
11.     public float resolution;
12.  
13.    
14.     private Transform boardHolder;
15.    
16.     public GameObject[] ground;
17.     public GameObject[] water;
18.    
19.    
20.    
21.     // Use this for initialization
22.     void Update () {
23.        
24.         GameObject player = GameObject.Find ("Player");
25.        
26.         //Find the players x and z location.
27.         int playerX = (int)player.transform.position.x;
28.         int playerZ = (int)player.transform.position.z;
29.        
30.         //Holds the gnerated tiles in a heading called board.
31.         boardHolder = new GameObject ("Board").transform;
32.        
33.  
34.             //For each square in range instantiate a prefab at that point, using the perlin noise as a highmap.
35.             for (int x = playerX -xTerrain; x< playerX + xTerrain; x++) {
36.                 for (int z = playerZ-zTerrain; z< playerZ + zTerrain; z++) {
37.                    
38.                         float xCoord = x / resolution;
39.                         float zCoord = z / resolution;
40.                
41.                         //Generate a hightmap
42.                         float height = Mathf.PerlinNoise (xCoord, zCoord);
43.                
44.                             if (height < 0.6) {
45.  
46.                        
47.                                 //Randomly pick a tile from the array to generate.
48.                                 GameObject toInstantiate = water [Random.Range (0, water.Length)];
49.                        
50.                                 //Generate it
51.                                 GameObject instance = Instantiate (toInstantiate, new Vector3 (x, 0, z), Quaternion.identity) as GameObject;
52.                                 instance.transform.SetParent (boardHolder);
53.                            
54.                            
55.                            
56.                             }
57.                
58.                             if (height > 0.6) {
59.  
60.                                 // Randomly pick a tile from the array to generate.
61.                                 GameObject toInstantiate = ground [Random.Range (0, ground.Length)];
62.                            
63.                                 //Generate it
64.                                 GameObject instance = Instantiate (toInstantiate, new Vector3 (x, 0, z), Quaternion.identity) as GameObject;
65.                                 instance.transform.SetParent (boardHolder);
66.                                
67.                                                        
68.                             }
69.  
70.  
71.                
72.                            
73.             }
74.         }
75.     }
76. }

And what I am creating so far:



Like I said though, I need it to only instantiate if a block isnt already there. Thanks!

 

Use a 2-dimensional array to keep track of your terrain tiles. You could make it be of Type GameObject[,] and assign the previously instantiated tile to the xy position, and check if a xy position is null or not if you want to find out if you need to instantiate something there. You could also make it be of Type int[,] and set the integer at a xy position to 0 if no tile is there, and 1 if it is. These are just example, but for all these kinds of tile or voxel terrain, it's common to have a 2- or 3-dimensional array for each tile/voxel that can be accessed at any time.

 

Yea I figured it out. Basically added a bool then when I created it turned it to true. Added a check before creating if block was already there.