Terrain system basics in Unity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Terrain system basics

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple terrain system in Unity for a game. The terrain will have different height values stored in a 2D array. You will write code to set up the terrain heights, define a height threshold, find which points are above this threshold, and finally print those points.

🎯 Goal: Build a Unity C# script that initializes a 2D array representing terrain heights, sets a height threshold, finds all points above this threshold using a loop, and prints their coordinates and heights.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a 2D float array called terrainHeights with exact values

Create a float variable called heightThreshold with a specific value

Use a for loop with variables row and col to iterate over terrainHeights

Inside the loop, check if the height is above heightThreshold

Store points above threshold in a list of tuples called highPoints

Print each point's coordinates and height using Debug.Log

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Terrain height data is used in games and simulations to create realistic landscapes and control gameplay elements like movement and visibility.

💼 Career

Understanding how to work with 2D arrays, loops, and data filtering is essential for game developers and simulation programmers working with terrain and environment systems.

1

Create the terrain height data

Create a 2D float array called terrainHeights with these exact values: {{0.1f, 0.3f, 0.5f}, {0.4f, 0.6f, 0.2f}, {0.7f, 0.8f, 0.3f}}

Unity

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class TerrainSystem : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        // Create the terrainHeights 2D array with given values
        
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use float[,] to declare a 2D array and initialize it with the exact values inside curly braces.

2

Set the height threshold

Create a float variable called heightThreshold and set it to 0.5f inside the Start method, below the terrainHeights array.

Unity

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class TerrainSystem : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        float[,] terrainHeights = new float[,] {
            {0.1f, 0.3f, 0.5f},
            {0.4f, 0.6f, 0.2f},
            {0.7f, 0.8f, 0.3f}
        };
        // Create heightThreshold variable and set to 0.5f
        
    }
}

Need a hint?

Declare a float variable named heightThreshold and assign it the value 0.5f.

3

Find points above the height threshold

Create a List<(int, int, float)> called highPoints to store points above the threshold. Use nested for loops with variables row and col to iterate over terrainHeights. Inside the loops, check if the height at terrainHeights[row, col] is greater than heightThreshold. If yes, add a tuple (row, col, terrainHeights[row, col]) to highPoints.

Unity

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class TerrainSystem : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        float[,] terrainHeights = new float[,] {
            {0.1f, 0.3f, 0.5f},
            {0.4f, 0.6f, 0.2f},
            {0.7f, 0.8f, 0.3f}
        };
        float heightThreshold = 0.5f;
        // Create highPoints list and fill it with points above heightThreshold
        
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use GetLength(0) for rows and GetLength(1) for columns. Add tuples with row, col, and height to highPoints.

4

Print the points above the threshold

Use a foreach loop with variable point to iterate over highPoints. Inside the loop, use Debug.Log to print the message: $"Point at row {point.Item1}, col {point.Item2} has height {point.Item3}".

Unity

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class TerrainSystem : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        float[,] terrainHeights = new float[,] {
            {0.1f, 0.3f, 0.5f},
            {0.4f, 0.6f, 0.2f},
            {0.7f, 0.8f, 0.3f}
        };
        float heightThreshold = 0.5f;
        List highPoints = new List();
        for (int row = 0; row  heightThreshold)
                {
                    highPoints.Add((row, col, terrainHeights[row, col]));
                }
            }
        }
        // Print each point in highPoints with Debug.Log
        
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use a foreach loop to go through highPoints. Use Debug.Log with an interpolated string to print each point's row, column, and height.