I would like to proceduraly generate 2D caves. I already tried out using some 1D simplex noise to determine the terrain of the floor, which is basically everything you can change in a sidescroller, but it turned out rather unimpressive.
I would like to have an interesting terrain for my cave/dungeon and if possible some alternative paths.
I couldn't come up with any ideas for this kind of terrain and I also could not find any promising ways to do this kind of stuff on the internet.
On
Assuming you've tried something like abs(simplex) > 0.1 ? nocave : cave, maybe the problem you're running into is that it's too connected, and that there are no dead-ends anywhere. You could extend this by doing the following simplex1*simplex1 > threshold(simplex2) where threshold(t)=a*t/(t+b) where a roughly controls the max threshold (cave opening size) and b roughly controls how much of the underground is caves vs not. The function looks like this, and the fact that it quickly rushes to zero is supposed to make dead ends look more rounded and less pointy. Working with the squared noise value is also for this purpose.
Have you tried Perlin Noise? Seems to be the standard way of doing this sort of thing.