Procedural Generation of 2d Tilebased Terrarin

My friends and I have recently started a project on unity. We want to make a simple sandbox / survival game with a tile based, top down (exactly 90 degree) 2d perspective. In trying to generate terrarin I've run into a few problems and being new to unity haven't been able to resolve them really and looking around online I can't find any resources on what I am trying to do (probably because I don't know what to search).

* I want it to be efficient, initially I tried with game objects but realised they aren't as efficient I probably need. I have heard the tile system in unity is good but I'm not sure where to start there as most videos covering procedural generation use meshes or game objects
* I also would want it to be able to handle height. For example cliffs running around the terrarin, but not just as an illusion of height but as an actual thing you can dig into and will have roof tiles above you.
* Lastly I would want to plan for the future with a chunk system, do I have to implement that from the start or can you save it for later?

Thanks in advance for any help, sorry if this is common knowledge I just haven't been able to find much info on the specifics I've listed. Also any additional info / tips on terrarin generation or unity as a whole would be very helpful.

https://redd.it/1gkvt30
@r_Unity3D

Some of the environments and characters we created for our Unity game Go Home Annie. CPU light baker still sucks, hope we can get Bakery to work as intended before release.

https://redd.it/1gkvrvd
@r_Unity3D

help with character rotation

So i need to create a game like asteroid for a school project but what i want to add is a system where you can aim with your mouse AND the character change sprite depending of where it face like in enter the gungeon when your mouse is at the top of the screen you see the back of your character and when its at the botom you see the face of your character it goes on with 8 possible direction preferably, so i already know how to make the character rotation follow the mouse thanks to a tutorial but i really don't know how to change the sprite of the character depending of where the mouse is so if you could help with that i would be very gratefull

https://redd.it/1gkwc8r
@r_Unity3D

What do u think, should I delete it??

https://redd.it/1gkynvk
@r_Unity3D

A planet made entirely out of text symbols. The entire screen image is drawn symbol by symbol. Each symbol's position is calculated in real time. There’s only one texture with symbols and a lot of sprites on the screen. Created a text editor on a sphere to make planets for my game Effulgence.

https://redd.it/1gl0atx
@r_Unity3D

Efficient way to cycle through sprites in a texture?

I have have a texture with multiple sprites like this:

https://preview.redd.it/0kdpez14sazd1.png?width=245&format=png&auto=webp&s=198405b4bc607a8d66f68d633c86c028675a741b

What I want to do is basically at certain points switch between different sprites in the texture (in the case, it is a crop that is growing with different stages). What I have come up with so far is this:

using ProjectEdg.CoreModule;
using UnityEngine;

namespace ProjectEdg.TextureModule {
public class MultiTextureComponent : MonoBehaviour {
[SerializeField]
private SpriteRenderer _spriteRenderer;

[FoldoutGroup("Debug")]
[SerializeField]
[ReadOnly]
private Texture2D _texture;

[FoldoutGroup("Debug")]
[SerializeField]
[ReadOnly]
private MultiTextureData _multiTextureData;

private float _updateArea = 1f;

private int stage;

private string[] _spriteNames = new string[] { "ParsnipPlant1", "ParsnipPlant2", "ParsnipPlant3" };

#region lifecycle

private void Start() {
_multiTextureData = ResourceManager.Instance.GetTextureData("FarmingCrops");
_texture = ResourceManager.Instance.GetTexture("FarmingCrops");

SetCroppedArea(_spriteNames[stage % 3]);
}

private void Update() {
if (_updateArea > 0) {
_updateArea -= Time.deltaTime;

return;
}

stage += 1;
SetCroppedArea(_spriteNames[stage % 3]);
_updateArea = 1f;
}

#endregion

private void SetCroppedArea(string spriteName) {
var spriteData = ResourceManager.Instance.GetTextureSpriteData("FarmingCrops", spriteName);

if (spriteData == null) {
return;
}

var startingPosition = new Vector2Int(spriteData.StartX, spriteData.StartY);
var size = new Vector2Int(spriteData.Width, spriteData.Height);
var centerOffset = new Vector2(
spriteData.CenterOffsetX != -1 ? spriteData.CenterOffsetX : _multiTextureData.DefaultCenterOffsetX,
spriteData.CenterOffsetY != -1 ? spriteData.CenterOffsetY : _multiTextureData.DefaultCenterOffsetY
);

if (startingPosition.x + size.x > _texture.width || startingPosition.y + size.y > _texture.height) {
LogManager.LogError("the attempted crop area is out of bounds of the texture");

return;
}

var croppedPixels = _texture.GetPixels(startingPosition.x, startingPosition.y, size.x, size.y);
var croppedTexture = new Texture2D(size.x, size.y);

croppedTexture.SetPixels(croppedPixels);
croppedTexture.filterMode = FilterMode.Point;
croppedTexture.Apply();

_spriteRenderer.sprite = Sprite.Create(
croppedTexture,
new Rect(0, 0, size.x, size.y),
new Vector2(centerOffset.x / spriteData.Width, centerOffset.y / spriteData.Height),
_multiTextureData.PixelsPerUnit
);
}
}
}

While this works, my concern with this approach is that each time I am changing the sprite to render, I am creating a new `Texture2D` and `Sprite` and was wondering if there is a more efficient way to do this. For example in Godot, I can have a sprite use the main texture and then just set the region rect for the sprite without creating this extra data (at least explicitly, I don't know what is happening under the hood) and was wondering if there is something like that in Unity?

The best approach I can think of is when loading the main texture, I create and cache the individual textures / sprites in the texture and then just reference those cached items when I need to (like my current example is doing for the main texture). This has the downside that I have to store