August 2026
Building a Hex-Based Planet Generator
A couple of months ago, I started noticing more games using hex-based planets and worlds. Every time I saw one, I kept thinking the same thing: I could do that.
That thought eventually turned into another one: I'll bet other game developers would like to learn how to do it too.
So I took a day away from my regular work and started experimenting. I wasn't recording anything and there wasn't a course yet. I just wanted to find out if I could build the kind of system I had in mind.
It didn't take long before I had my answer. I could definitely do it.
From there, I put together a curriculum and worked through the entire process as a proof of concept. I built the planet, solved the problems that came up along the way, experimented with different approaches, and figured out how all of the pieces needed to work together.
Once I knew the process worked, I went back to the beginning and did it again. This time, I turned on the microphone and started teaching.
Solving the Problem Before Teaching It
This is actually pretty close to how I traditionally create my courses.
I don't want students watching me blindly experiment for hours, making mistakes, reaching dead ends, undoing work, and eventually stumbling onto a solution. That's an important part of development, but it isn't necessarily the best way to teach what I learned from the experience.
Instead, I make that journey myself first.
Then I go back and recreate the development process in roughly the same order, except now I understand where I'm going. I know which approaches worked, which problems we're going to encounter, and why we're making each decision along the way.
The result still resembles the way the project was actually developed. You're just seeing the second pass, after I've already figured out the problems and can concentrate on explaining them.
More Than a Planet Generator
That's particularly important with this course because I didn't want to create a kit that students simply download, drop into a game, and use without understanding it.
We're building a complete hex-based planetary generation system using Unity, C#, and Blender, but the finished generator isn't really the most important part.
Understanding how we built it is.
I want students to understand what each part of the system is doing, why it's there, how the different pieces work together, and how they can take those ideas and integrate them into their own projects.
By the end, you don't just have a working hex-based planet generator. You've gone through the process of building one and, more importantly, you understand how it works.
That's the difference between having somebody else's solution and learning how to create your own.