How to randomly spawn obstacles for infinite runner?

Question

I am trying to create randomly generated path properly? Think of flappy bird (its not really) but my code/algorithm is all wrong. If I make BarMax, BarMin too large, then player can cheat cos in centre there will always be space. Make it too small and pipes are spawned randomly and sometimes very close to each other (unlike flappy). So my player sometimes could run into a situation where its impossible to move past two pipes. My adjacent pipes are really close together as well unlike flappy birds big gap between pipes.

So this is what i dont want to happen. I have also thought about spawning sets of pre-configured pipes but then i thought they might run into this impossible situation at some point too. I had my level set-up like this So when a bar touches the looper, it spawns again - code is above.

int numBGPanels = 35;

float BarsMax = 1.5f; float BarsMin = -1.5f;

float widthOfBGObject = 1; float offset = 0.75f; Vector3 pos;

void Start() {
    StartBarsPosition(); }

void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D collider) {


    if(collider.tag == "Bars") {       // this is not getting called cos theres no collider attached atm
        pos = collider.transform.position;
        pos.x += widthOfBGObject * numBGPanels * offset;

        pos.y = Random.Range(BarsMin, BarsMax);
        collider.transform.position = pos;

    }

}

void StartBarsPosition() {
    GameObject[] bars = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("Bars");

    foreach(GameObject bar in bars) {
        Vector3 initialpos = bar.transform.position;
        initialpos.y = Random.Range(BarsMin, BarsMax);
        bar.transform.position = initialpos;
    }

}

Answer 1

How it works in flappy is, all pipes are same size. Their "y" position is altered to create space at random. In this image, red area is the visible screen, green bars are the pipes.

As you can see, all pipes are same size. But by changing their "y" co ordinate, random gaps are generated.

So, in your game, you need minTopY,maxTopY that decides "y" co ordinate of the top pipe, minBottomY,maxBottomY which decides the "y" co ordinate of bottom pipe.

For each pair, "x" co ordinate is same, but "Y" co ordinate is different.

Hope this gives an idea of what you're looking at.

Next, to place each pair of pipes, you call the spawner at random interval of time.

Answer 2

generate the "holes" using a 1d perlin noise function