If we use Skyrim as an example, there are plenty of spaces to cross. Mountains, roads, beaches, forests.
Those are often littered with tiny points of interest. A cave, a shrine, a hunter. These exist to insure our journey is not simply "hold W for ten minutes" and almost never have any deeper value or chain to other objectives. They are points to define the space.
But then we have major POI: the cities. These draw us from vast distances.
We also have mission POI, to create more paths.
So I was thinking: if we're generating maps, wouldn't it make the most sense to start by generating the points of interest, then generate the space that separates them according to the experience you want the player to have between two given points?
Like, if two points should be unrelated, you put a big fuckin' mountain inbetween them. If two points seem like a natural fit, there's a road between them.
You can start with the bigg'uns, then recurse down to smaller sizes...
This seems like fun!
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