Read the
manual

Quick start

1. Download & launch

Download the latest release. Unzip anywhere. No installer needed. Launch WorldSlate.exe.

2. Create a project

From the launcher, pick one:

• New Project — name it, define biomes, point at a sprites folder (or skip and use the bundled 1200+ SVG library), set up zones.
• Open Project — load an existing .worldslate file.
• Template — load a bundled starter and explore immediately.

3. Design your world

On the World Gen screen, the sidebar groups every knob by topic — Quick Start (a starter preset), then World, Distribution, Biome Shape, Rivers, Lakes, Features, Outer Rings, Zones, Draw Order, Size. Pick a preset to begin, dial in the details tab by tab. Click Generate to roll the world; click again any time to reroll with the current settings.

Tip: keep the Size pill at its defaults while you're dialing in biome rules and partition styles — bigger canvases mean slower regens. Crank it up once the design feels right; deterministic seeds preserve your intent when you scale.

4. Place biomes by intent

For each biome, set a weight (relative frequency) and a spatial bias (N/S/E/W/diagonals/Center/Edge). The sampler honors your intent across every seed. "Ice in the north" stays in the north no matter how you reroll.

5. Hand-place landmarks

Switch to the Editor screen. Use the manual layer for boss arenas, towns, story locations. These survive seed changes; authored, not generated. Use brush, fill, stamp, and path tools to scatter or place individual obstacles.

6. Open in your engine

File → Export (Ctrl+E). Pick "Open in Godot" or "Open in Unity." A complete runnable starter project appears with a walkable player, chunk streaming, world map, and minimap with fog-of-war pre-wired. Press F5. You're walking around your world.

The runtime arrives as .gd (Godot) or .cs (Unity) source, not a binary plugin. Read it, modify it, ship it inside your game. Licensing summary →

Project file (.worldslate)

One file per project. JSON throughout, version-control friendly. Carries every world-gen knob, biome palette + rules, layer list, hand-placements (POIs, paths, paint strokes), zone catalog, and asset-folder references. Edited entirely through the WorldSlate UI. No manual JSON tweaks needed.

Key fields

The generator

One unified generator. No swappable engines, no plugin maze. The same pipeline produces every world; what changes is the partition mode and per-biome distribution rules.

Partition modes (5)

Partition mode decides how the world is sliced into cells. Biome rules decide what goes in each cell.

Biome distribution

Per biome, you set:

• weight (0–100) — relative frequency. 0 excludes; default 1.
• bias_dir — N / S / E / W / NE / NW / SE / SW / Center / Edge / null.
• bias_strength (0–1) — 0 disables bias, 1.0 strong skew.

The sampler picks per cell from a weighted pool, modulated by a spatial-match score against the bias direction relative to the world bounds. Knob slides reshuffle partition cells; biome intent stays intact because bias is in world space, not cell index.

Rivers, lakes, boundary

Boundary rivers (spokes + spans) and free rivers (cartesian endpoints) are independent authoring surfaces. Lakes have count, size, wobble, and river-lake percentage knobs. The boundary supports moat width, island radius, corruption width, and void width.

Draw order

When overlays collide (ocean covering lakes, lakes covering rivers, custom biome paint over either), the Draw Order pill in the World Gen sidebar decides who wins. Biomes higher on the list draw above biomes below. Drag to reorder; + Add Biome brings any biome into the list. New projects ship with ocean → lake → river (ocean wins, lakes above rivers); biomes not listed render unconditionally and can be overwritten by later passes.

Algo vs manual layers

Layers split into two behaviors:

• algo — obstacles authored via brush/fill/stamp tools. Algorithmic scatter learns the density pattern from your brushed examples and reproduces it across every matching biome cell. Ships in v1 marked experimental; toggle on in Settings → Experimental.
• manual — absolute placements with explicit positions. Seed-independent. Wins all conflicts at runtime.

New projects ship with one of each by default. Add more of either kind any time.

Export formats

What ships with your game

"Open in Godot" and "Open in Unity" don't produce a sealed export. The complete world generator ships as readable source in your project, alongside the runtime shell. You can read every line, modify any pass, and rebuild.

Godot — addons/worldslate/

• shell/ — player, camera, chunk view, minimap, tab map, map reveal (fog-of-war), POI / zone indices
• world_gen/ — generator (compose + 9 passes: canvas, boundary, zones, partition, classify, outer ring, lakes, rivers, center)
• math/ — noise, Voronoi, Delaunay, splines, polygonize, geometry
• data/ — recipe loader, world-data adapter, sprite resolver
• runtime/ — cell catalog, scatter, scatter math (deterministic algo placements)
• render/ — palette
• skins/ — four bundled skin .tres files (Loom Dark / Light, Atelier Dark / Light)

Unity — Assets/Plugins/WorldSlate/

• Shell/ — player, camera, chunk view, minimap, tab map, map reveal, POI / zone indices
• Runtime/ — recipe loader, world-data adapter, sprite resolver, plus Runtime/WorldGen/ (the full generator) and Runtime/Scatter/ (cell catalog + deterministic scatter)

Players can hit "new world" in your shipped game; the live generator runs with a fresh seed.

Runtime shell

Every export ships with the same runtime shell:

• Walkable player — placeholder controller, drop in your own.
• Chunk streaming — regions load and unload around the player automatically.
• World map — press Tab, see the whole world.
• Minimap with fog-of-war — corner reveal as the player explores. Persists across sessions.
• Zone flags — query worldslate.is_in_zone(pos, "no_spawn") from your code.
• POI markers — query by name or kind for landmarks and quest hooks.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every shortcut is rebindable from Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts. Overrides save to your user preferences and survive restarts.

Roadmap

Solo-dev pace. The items below are committed work; bigger v2 ideas get hashed out in the Discord.