Planet Builder

In large-scale space exploration games such as Elite:Dangerous, No Man's Sky and Star Citizen, procedural algorithms are used to generate planets. Your goal is to create a new tool that will help game authors, or even enthusiastic players, to create new alien worlds. You'll need to think about how to control terrain, settlements, life-forms and so on in a way that provides creative control while also being fast and efficient. The visual quality doesn't need to equal that of professional games (you might target delivery on a low-cost platform such as Raspberry Pi), but you should aim to provide a creative tool in which users have a dynamic preview of their work in progress as well as intuitive ways to define and adjust it.