In the spirit of the ProcJam2014 (that unfortunately I have to skip because of a ton of academic duties :<) I’m presenting to you a simple algorithm to generate maps: the cellular automata generator. In particular, cellular automata are very well suited for cave-like environment and, in general, natural maps. It works both in 2D than in 3D and can be easily implemented in no more than 20 minutes.

From the theoretical point of view, a cellular automata is a discrete model that consist in a regular grid of cells. Each cell can have a finite number of states (usually two: on and off). On top of this grid, a system of rules is built to control the evolution of the cells. The rule are usually simple and local: this means that each rule decide on the state of a single cell just on the basis of a limited set of cells (the neighborhood) located around the cell of interest. No rule on the global state of the grid can exist! For instance “the total number of cell in the on state is less than X” is NOT a local rule.