Validation checks.

I did some coding today on the prefab builder. I want to get most of the possible functions in before I go and build a load of test prefabs. If not I'll have to go back and rebuild them, or build a bunch of new ones.

Since I'm hoping that later people will help to expand the game by making new prefabs I want to make sure the prefabs are valid before saving them.

This one is not valid. Need to add a message to state that fact eventually...

Right now I've only included a couple of checks, there are more I should add. Such things as checking if a prefab has any encounter areas set, if it has a valid walkable path from the entry hook to the exit hook (pretty essential to avoid game breaking prefabs), if it has any invalid door or stair placements and other things like that.

The check for stairs came to me when I was thinking of how to deal with stair containing prefabs vs non-stair containing ones. How can I choose the right kind in the right situation? Why should there be two types? Why not include stairs in every prefab? Then when placing the prefabs the algorithm can decide if the stairs are needed or not. If they are not needed then they can be replaced by plain floor tiles. If they are needed the level builder can decide if they should be stairs up or down.

This way makes it much easier to lay out levels and have down stairs match co-ordinates with the upstairs while still having stairs placed in logical locations, and having things such as door guard encounters and safe rest areas at the bottom of a new set of stairs.

Comments

Advice needed on tilesets...

I need some advice on which is the best way to handle building the dungeon. Right now I'm using prefabs for my dungeon, they have a north south east and west section for each "room": The basic tileset. This has several advantages, and also several disadvantages. Firstly I can have curved rooms, I can have tunnels and other interesting shapes. The tilesets can look quite nice with a little work. On the other hand I can't easily get the navigation data before building the map and once the map has been built I can't make changes to the layout, like having active pit traps or believable secret doors. Although the rooms are interesting, they are quite repetitive, and it takes a lot of effort to make even a few different variations. Also rooms are constrained to one size. A newer version of the tileset with a lot of variant parts for making more interesting rooms. To create a tile set is a real headache too. Planning how to lay out the UVs, trying to cra...

Upstairs / Downstairs.

I've decided to make my prefabs multilevel. Later this should allow me to add pit traps and other great stuff. It also makes it easier to line up stairs so that you can exit them on the same co-ordinates where you entered them. The prefab editor is pretty much finished, it just needs some code for loading up prefabs from a saved dictionary, so that they can be checked or edited. The entries will need to be forwards compatible, so I'll be loading each tile and then translating the indexes to a new array, that way if I add extra indexes or extra info (like traps or puzzles) I'll be able to update existing prefabs to work with the new standard. Click for a video.

Video Diary 8

Things are moving along well, there's been a lot of progress on the action manager side of things. Actions have finally moved to the UI, so you can initiate actions by clicking the appropriate button. I've set up some dummy actions to show what happens visually when actions are taken, but the actual dice rolls and such are yet to be integrated. The UI objects are also being added, though some are non functional or empty at the moment. Click on the image to see this week's development video. Every time I add something big I also add about a dozen small things. Like the selection box visualization. Previously this was using render.drawline, and old fashioned Blender function which can be impossible to see at certain resolutions, or at certain frequencies. I replaced it with a function that adds planes of the right size and scale in the right location. I also made all characters a little bigger. I still need to do some work with vectors and final target locations t...

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