Eli5: In games like World of Warcraft (for example) with vast and varied terrains, did a human game designer decide to put THAT particular rock on THAT particular ridge on THAT particular mountain, or is world design more automated somehow?
In: Technology
Obviously it depends on the game and an older one like WoW its possible that a lot of areas were hand-crafted rather than procedurally made.
But yeah, nowadays large environments would be largely procedurally made then polished up manually. Theres a [Game Developers Conference lecture on how the Manhatten in the 2018 Spider-Man game was created](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aw9uyj9MAE) and it goes into depth on all the layers in the system they had. You can practically expect a similar workflow for most modern open-world games, though for a more natural environment I’d expect a less systematized solution but more like the game developers ‘paint’ on the world (green paint means this is grassy, brown rocky, etc) and the procedural systems kick in to fill in the painted areas appropriately.
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