I have experience in making 2D side scroller games such as Terraria, but now I want to challenge myself and make a game that has a 2.5D perspective. The game I am trying to mimic is Don't Starve. Right now my focus is on figuring out how to render the ground. I am having a hard time figuring out how they generated the ground, and then rendered it. The way I think they rendered the ground is by first painting the ground in some paint program, and then somehow manipulating that flat image so that it appears to have depth.

I am completely confused by how you would actually render that type of terrain. I want the terrain to have the following features:

• Look like the terrain in Don't Starve, here is a video showing the terrain in Don't Starve
• The terrain will be flat, and the camera's angle and perspective will be fixed

Any tips and hints will be appreciated, Thank you in advance.

(I am working in Java, using the Light Weight Java Game Library (LWJGL).)