What algorithms should a solo Unity developer use for interconnected, performant bio

[Tyler33]

I'm a solo developer working on a small survival-crafting game, and I want to implement procedural generation in games for my world map to ensure replayability. I've been studying how games like Minecraft and No Man's Sky handle their generation, but I'm struggling with the practical implementation in Unity. My main issue is creating biomes that feel logically placed and interconnected, rather than just random splotches of terrain. I also need the generation to be performant on lower-end hardware. For developers who have tackled this, what algorithms or asset packages would you recommend for a beginner? Is Perlin noise still the standard starting point, or are there more modern approaches I should look into first?

[AubreyPG]

Great goal. A practical starter pipeline is to seed biomes with Poisson disk points, assign each region a biome from a small palette, then blend at edges with a distance falloff. Generate per-biome height and texture maps, then compose into a Unity Terrain. For performance, use chunked generation with streaming and LOD. Tools to learn the node approach: Gaia Pro or MapMagic, and pair with a fast noise library like FastNoise for custom maps. citeturn0search1turn1search7turn1search4

[Natalie.J]

Perlin is a solid starting point, but for believable biomes you want multiple criteria (temperature, moisture) and Voronoi-style blending at boundaries; No Man's Sky demonstrates layered biome rules that feel coherent across worlds. citeturn0search12

[JonathanT]

On Unity, Gaia Pro or Gaia and GPU-accelerated terrains make iteration fast, especially for multi-tile worlds. Start with a few tiles, then iterate lighting, vegetation, and blending; you can export textures and streams for mobile or VR. citeturn0search3turn0search4

[SavannahD]

MapMagic 2 is another solid approach with node-based generation that can blend multiple graphs into coherent biomes; it supports biomes, erosion, and Voronoi nodes and is widely used for indie projects. citeturn1search7

[Joshua97]

If you want, tell me your target tile count and platform and I can sketch a starter 2-biome test plan you can run this weekend.