How to place objects based on noise

UnknownUser

I have an infinite completely flat map. On this map there should be some objects (let's say trees). They should be "randomly" placed but they should stay on the same spot (even if a chunk gets unloaded and loaded again later).

I was thinking about using OpenSimplexNoise for this. The problem I have with OpenSimplexNoise is how to I efficiently get the "highest" (or lowest) spots to "plant trees" there?

Any help is appreciated!

UnknownUser

You can define sample points on a grid. You can read the points on the grid to grab the minimum and the maximum values.

A simple way to do it would be to take a floating point number between 0 and 1 and pick a value (0.5, or 0.25, or 0.75 -- you can tweak this number to taste), call this number "L", then define a cut-off value "cuttoff_value = L*max_value". Then walk through all points on the grid, assessing the "grid_value" and only place trees on grid points that meet the critera "grid_value > cuttoff_value".

What I described should be simple; I don't know if you could call it "efficient"; it's definitely a naive approach to solve the problem.

UnknownUser

I came up with something similar, but I'm concerned about the "walk through all points on the grid" part. If there was a way to get the coordinates of all points above the cut-off value, that would be way better. But I couldn't find something like this.

I guess I will implement it this way for now. But any ideas for making this more efficient are welcome!