Patent ID: 8207966

Claim:
A system for generating terrain in a virtual world, the system comprising: a module for generating procedural rules, wherein each of the procedural rules defines at least a portion of the terrain in a virtual world and includes boundaries, filters, and affectors; a terrain generator configured to process the generated procedural rules and generate a digital representation of the virtual world, wherein said procedural rule is organized into hierarchical layers such that a single location in the terrain can have multiple procedural rules that overlap and the terrain has at least one location that has overlapping rules, wherein when multiple procedural rules overlap the terrain generator specifies a blend region and initiates a boundary influence computation to blend heights and colors to prevent hard, visible discontinuities at the overlap of the procedural rules, wherein said procedural rules are textually represented so that the boundaries, filters, and affectors are assigned numeric values that represent desired attributes in a logical, textual format, and wherein the terrain is modified by adding or deleting at least one rule from said procedural rules; and a display module for displaying at least a portion of the generated terrain.