Procedural Generation

Hey y'all, as you can see, I've rigged up a simple arbitrary "world generator" using some for loops. What I'm really looking for though, is some kind of node based system, or an algorithm, a reference, whatever, to get me facing in the right direction. I want to be able to create a grid, and Instantiate game objects in that grid. The system should be able to create a path, check if there's anything in a given node in the grid and determine whether or not, and what to create in that spot...

That's a little specific, but I'm just asking for someone to point me in the right direction, or briefly explain to me how procedural generation like this works. I'm not looking for someone to give me some code, or do it for me, I'd just like a little nudge of knowledge. Thank you for your time.

Edit: Any advice and/or input is wanted and welcomed.

 

Have you checked out catlike coding? Some good procedural generation stuff there to get you started.

 

I just did, that's some really great stuff, thank you so much. Do you think this is a good method for doing this, a large area, made of several small pieces? Couldn't this get messy after a while and cause performance issues? What's your opinion?

 

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I have no real experience with this. My knowledge of procedural generation ends with "try catlike coding".

 

Ah. I see. Well, thank you for pointing me there. He has some really cool stuff.