Level generation types.

I've now narrowed my level generation methods down to two. Previously I was also using randomly placed rooms and BSP trees, but with one the corridors were too long, and the other suffered from terrible predictability.

The two I'm using are (1) cellular automata and (2) collision based room insertion.

In the maps above the D and E maps are type 1, a kind of cavern like level. There are several inputs like coverage and smoothness. They basically generate these two extremes, very open, joined caves, or sparse tunnels. I may add double thickness corridors to the (E) map as otherwise they are annoying to play (no room for maneuver).

Type 2 maps start by piling up a bunch of random rooms in the center of the map. Then they run collision detection to push them apart. (A) is a map with quite high padding value, which places the rooms far apart. (C) is the same method by a padding value of 1. The rooms are quite close together. Corridors are short, which is a good thing.

(B) and (F) have a "hole" specificed in the center of the map. Rooms won't be placed here and so get pushed further out for placement. What goes in this hole? A prefab!

I can specify the hole to be placed anywhere and any size, plop a prefabricated room or section in there and hook it up to the rest of the map. Now I have special puzzles, boss encounters, treasure vaults and many more possibilities. It would also be possible to generate a different kind of map there, like a cave system using generation method 1.

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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 A newer version of the tileset with a lot of variant parts for making more interesting rooms.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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