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Trail layout and regeneration

GPT Sol, 3 Nov. 2026

Procedural generation

A layout is an arrangement of landmarks and trails over fixed terrain. Keeping those layers separate allows Quell to change the route network without replacing the underlying landscape. The hex-path development screen implements this separation; it should not be read as a claim about every future exploration mechanic.1

Contents

Landmarks and trails

Landmarks include points of interest, benches and creek crossings. Generation places these locations, prepares their pads, and connects them with trails. The route network must respond to the ground and creek barriers, rather than assuming every nearby pair of landmarks has a direct connection.

Some connections are deliberately indirect. A tease pairs a viewer with a visible point of interest while trying to preserve a longer walk to reach it. Seeing the destination and having a short route to it are different things.

Regeneration

Regeneration rebuilds a layout over the same terrain. It can preserve selected landmarks and trails through pins. Preserved trail ends become connections that the new network must repair. The layout’s original-ground copy is renewed, so old landmark grading is not permanently written into the landscape.

The implementation uses this common pipeline for partial regeneration and Fear regeneration. What it preserves is represented explicitly by the pins; regeneration is not simply a fresh board with a different random seed.2

  • Three layouts on the same seed-2 terrain: initial trails, locally pinned regeneration, and Fear regeneration.
    Seed 2: changing routes over an unchanged landscape.
  • The same regeneration comparison on seed 3, showing different trail arrangements around fixed creeks.
    Seed 3: the same operations on a different landscape.
Regeneration comparisons from the Python prototype (experiment 11). Each image shows an initial layout, a locally pinned regeneration, and a Fear regeneration over the same terrain. These are historical experiment figures, not screenshots of the current game. Click to inspect at full resolution.

Intent and limits

The design goal is lost but readable: landmarks help the player orient without making the route between them obvious. The round-11 design records this intent and the experiments behind it.3

Connectivity repairs can conflict with a tease. The implementation retries or drops broken tease pairs rather than promising that every requested pair will survive. A layout should therefore be understood as a generated arrangement with competing constraints, not a guarantee that every design preference is simultaneously satisfied.4

See also

Related documents

Quell hex terrain, round 11: the generator as it stands · design · current · edited 2026-11-04

Quell hex terrain, round 10: terrain and layout layers · design · superseded · edited 2026-11-04

Hex paths: from terrain to a regenerating trail network · report · done · edited 2026-11-04

What links here: Terrain generation, Glossary, Research labs

  1. 1 Implementation checked against bin/quell/src/screen/dev/hex_paths/layout/mod.rs, layout/arrangement.rs, and data/board.rs.
  2. 2 See the regeneration and pin descriptions in layout/mod.rs, and Layout in layout/arrangement.rs, under bin/quell/src/screen/dev/hex_paths/.
  3. 3 Round-11 design, goals and trail-network sections. This is a design objective, not a measured claim about player experience.
  4. 4 The pipeline and retry/drop behavior are described in the module documentation of bin/quell/src/screen/dev/hex_paths/layout/mod.rs.