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Procedural generation builds a game world by applying rules to inputs: a seed, a representation of the world, and constraints for terrain, regions, structures, and details. A typical workflow shapes broad terrain first, classifies environments, places larger landmarks, and then adds smaller features—but there is no universal sequence. Minecraft documents a multi-pass approach, while tools such as Unreal Engine’s Procedural Content Generation (PCG) framework can build worlds through graphs, and generation may happen in an editor, during play, or both.
How does procedural generation build a world step by step?
Think of generation as a stack of decisions rather than a button that invents a finished map. A system represents the world in a form it can work with, evaluates rules against that representation, and uses the results to create or modify content. The exact passes depend on the game and tool: some systems combine them, repeat them, or skip steps entirely.
- Choose a world representation and inputs. The world might be stored as a heightmap, a voxel volume, a mesh, or a collection of candidate points and assets. Rules, settings, and often a seed guide what the generator can produce.
- Establish large-scale shape. A terrain system can create broad landforms such as plains, valleys, mountains, and oceans before adding fine detail.
- Shape and refine the terrain. Noise can create variation, while processes such as erosion can alter slopes and form directional features.
- Assign environmental regions. Biome rules classify areas using properties such as elevation, temperature, or moisture.
- Place landmarks and structures. Larger objects can be tested against location and environment rules before being added.
- Scatter smaller features. Trees, plants, ores, and other details can be distributed according to local rules and density.
- Generate, inspect, and revise. The system may run while content is being authored, during gameplay, or in a hybrid workflow. Designers can adjust rules and assets when results do not meet the intended goals.
This is an explanatory sequence, not a claim that every game uses these exact passes. Microsoft Learn’s Minecraft Bedrock documentation describes world generation as multiple passes that build on one another; Unreal Engine and Unity document different tools and workflows.
What does the seed do?
A seed is an input used to select a particular run of a generator. In a system that uses seeded noise, the seed helps determine the pattern of values sampled across the world, which can then influence terrain or other generated content. Microsoft’s Minecraft Bedrock documentation describes a random seed being fed into gradient-noise generators to produce height variation that changes smoothly from chunk to chunk.
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A seed is not a complete world recipe. The generator’s implementation, settings, and version also affect the result. Do not assume that a seed will produce an identical world in every game, engine, or version unless that particular implementation promises it. A seed also does not dictate every visible decision on its own: the rules determine how its values are interpreted and what content can appear.
How does a generator create terrain?
Start with large landforms
For a heightmap-style landscape, the generator can evaluate values at positions and use them to set elevation. Broad patterns establish features such as oceans, plains, valleys, and mountains. Minecraft’s documented terrain process is an example of this large-to-small approach: it establishes landforms before later generation passes add other content.
Noise is one way to produce smoothly changing variation, but a convincing landscape is not necessarily the result of one noise function alone. A generator can combine rules and shaping operations to control the size and character of terrain features. Other world representations, such as a voxel world, need not follow the same heightmap model.
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Use erosion for different effects than noise
Noise changes height variation; erosion simulates sediment moving from one point to another. In Unity’s terrain tools, erosion can add variation to overly smooth terrain, shape riverbeds and banks, or soften slopes that are too steep for a material. That describes practical editor-tool behavior, not a guarantee of physically accurate climate or geological simulation.
Unity’s guidance makes the order of operations important: run erosion before painting textures, because its erosion tools do not move textures along with the terrain. Trees and other objects can be moved to match changed terrain height, while grass and detail meshes adjust to the surface but do not travel in the direction sediment moved. Resolution, simulation scale, iteration count, and intervals affect results. Unity says erosion detail looks best at heightmap resolution 1025 or greater; that is a Unity-specific recommendation, not a universal minimum for terrain systems.
How are biomes generated?
A biome system assigns environmental regions to parts of a world, but a biome does not have to be a simple elevation band. In Minecraft’s documented generation, biome selection considers height along with temperature, humidity, erosion, and “weirdness.” Biome choices can influence surface blocks and underground biomes as well as which kinds of natural features can appear.
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Implementations can represent environmental conditions as continuous fields that are classified into regions, as explicitly painted areas, or as designed volumes and splines. Unreal Engine’s Biome Core documentation describes biome volumes, splines, and texture actors, with biome definitions associated with assets. Its system can also represent biomes in 3D space—for example, stacked regions or underground caves. These are options in Unreal’s implementation, not required steps in every game.
How do games place trees, buildings, and resources?
Place large structures using constraints
Structures are often handled separately from small natural details because they have different placement requirements. A generator can test locations against rules such as whether a site is in a suitable region or has the required space, then place a structure if the constraints are met. Minecraft documents a distinct structure pass and gives jigsaw structures as an example. Villages, ruins, and dungeons are useful generic examples of structures, but their exact rules depend on the game.
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Filter candidate points for smaller assets
One concrete placement model is Unreal Engine’s PCG graph. Spatial data enters a graph; nodes can generate candidate points, attach or modify data, and filter out unsuitable points. Assets can then be spawned at points that remain. A point’s density can represent the probability of it existing at a location.
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This model helps explain how a generator can turn broad rules into local placement: first define where an asset is allowed, then create candidate locations, filter them by relevant properties, and spawn the associated asset. It is one documented engine workflow, not the only algorithm games use.
Apply biome and subtype rules to features
In Minecraft, the feature pass adds natural elements on or under terrain that are not entities. Documented examples include trees, plants, flowers, springs, ore, and coral. Features follow biome-specific rules and distribution patterns: a forest may cluster trees, while a spring may appear only occasionally.
Unreal’s Biome Core can map asset types to generated points by biome. Its guide also describes subtypes, allowing a generator to distinguish assets using attributes such as landscape layers or slope angle. In either kind of workflow, regional eligibility and local placement are separate decisions: a biome may allow an asset without requiring it to fill every eligible location.
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When does world generation run?
During content authoring
Some generators help create or update content inside an editor. Designers can adjust rules and inspect the results as part of a world-building workflow. Epic describes Unreal’s PCG framework as extensible and interactive, and as something that integrates with existing world-building pipelines. Procedural and hand-authored work can therefore be combined rather than treated as competing choices.
During gameplay
Other generation happens at runtime, often near a player or camera, so the game can create or update content as the player moves. Unreal’s Biome Core documentation describes a runtime workflow using player location in a play session or cooked build, with pre-generated biome data.
Use partitioning with its tradeoffs in mind
Large worlds may be divided into regions so a system can process or update parts rather than the whole world. Unreal’s guide says partitioning can make a full regeneration take longer while making partial biome updates faster, and recommends partitioning for certain World Partition runtime workflows. That is a workflow-specific tradeoff, not an automatic performance improvement. The right choice depends on world size, streaming needs, update patterns, target hardware, and the amount of detail being generated.
How do designers make generated worlds coherent?
Rules create variation, not a guarantee that every result will be coherent, readable, or fun. Designers still choose the world representation, assets, constraints, biome relationships, and acceptable ranges of variation. They can also combine generated regions or details with hand-authored landmarks and edits to preserve deliberate pacing or visual direction.
When comparing workflows, useful questions include what representation they support, whether they target editor-time or runtime generation, how locally rules can be revised, and how they handle biomes, asset placement, streaming, and updates. Unity documents terrain tools and erosion behavior; Unreal documents graph-based PCG, biome tools, and runtime options. Those descriptions do not provide a controlled performance comparison between the engines, so they cannot establish a universal winner.
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