Creating Varied Terrain-Considerate Road Networks on Heightmaps with Directed Alternating Physarum Agents

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to procedurally generate path networks between multiple places on large, heightmap-based 3D terrains. The paths are to have similar features as hiking trails, meaning they wind up steep slopes, are not perfectly straight and try to avoid arduous terrain while minimizing path length. To achieve this goal, a slime-mould and ant colony optimization-inspired stochastic multi-agent simulation is proposed. The resulting networks are graded on 6 properties to determine if the approach produces results of sufficient quality.