Show procedural map without running the game?

Question

Currently I have a script that generates prefabs by code and I'm wondering if I could show a certain "seed" of that map without actually running the game. The reason why is that I often want to tweak things, and when I run the game and alter settings for objects like lights they get reset when I stop running the game and perhaps have some kind of button where I can reset the seed and see another generation of the map.

Answer 1

You could write your own CustomEditor script for your map generation, where you show a button that will trigger the map generation with the new settings and instantiate it.

A small example:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

[CustomEditor(typeof(MyMapGenerator))]
public class MyMapGeneratorEditor : Editor
{
    // cache the current map preview
    Transform current;

    public override void OnInspectorGUI()
    {
        // target is a variable that is available to scripts that derive from Editor
        // and holds the Object that is being inspected
        MyMapGenerator gen = (MyMapGenerator)target;

        DrawDefaultInspector();
        if(GUILayout.Button("Generate and preview"))
        {
            // Generate() should create and return the prefab
            var prefab = gen.Generate();

            // delete the cached preview if there is one
            if(current != null)
                DestroyImmediate(current);

            // instantiate a new preview and cache it
            current = Instantiate(prefab);
        }
    }
}

Please note that I have not tested this script, so there may be errors.

You can find more Information on Custom Inspectors from Unity here