1
Programming / Re: Keeping room lists after dungeon generation
« on: October 02, 2011, 03:07:28 PM »
Sorry - I didn't realize you weren't allowed to gather information from both communities.
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Pages: [1]
2
Programming / Re: Keeping room lists after dungeon generation
« on: September 29, 2011, 12:14:26 AM »
Well, no - I'm not sure I need this for optimizing pathfinding. That's part of the question. If you're going to have all monsters do full pathfinding from all parts of the level, then at some size of dungeon that would get overwhelming. I'm not sure what that size is. Nor am I sure that I actually want all monsters at all parts of the dungeon doing full pathfinding. I think some people must do it by using only monsters that have seen the hero. In that case, no you probably don't need full pathfinding anywhere in the dungeon since any monsters will be relatively close to their ultimate destination. I suppose I should actually glance at some of the code that's out there to see what others are doing.
But over and above pathfinding, I'm wondering about "room effects". Do any games have these? I'm thinking along the lines of different rooms having different colors and some items working better in different colors - something along those lines - or maybe certain rooms emit a "strange aura". This would really, though, only require identification of the room "color" or "aura" in the map - the graph of room connections wouldn't necessarily be helpful. Other than pathfinding I'm not sure that I can come up with a great reason to keep the full map around. Perhaps some sort of "room by room" creep - say gas that invades the next room over. That doesn't seem terribly compelling and the connection map would only be of limited help there anyway.
I think I'll keep it in for the moment - it will be easier to yank out in the future when I don't need it than to reimplement it if I decide I do. I would be interested though if anybody knows any creative uses for such a thing.
But over and above pathfinding, I'm wondering about "room effects". Do any games have these? I'm thinking along the lines of different rooms having different colors and some items working better in different colors - something along those lines - or maybe certain rooms emit a "strange aura". This would really, though, only require identification of the room "color" or "aura" in the map - the graph of room connections wouldn't necessarily be helpful. Other than pathfinding I'm not sure that I can come up with a great reason to keep the full map around. Perhaps some sort of "room by room" creep - say gas that invades the next room over. That doesn't seem terribly compelling and the connection map would only be of limited help there anyway.
I think I'll keep it in for the moment - it will be easier to yank out in the future when I don't need it than to reimplement it if I decide I do. I would be interested though if anybody knows any creative uses for such a thing.
3
Programming / Keeping room lists after dungeon generation
« on: September 28, 2011, 06:35:45 PM »
I'm in the process of playing around doing a RL. I've got my
generation algorithm going and am happy with the result. I'm going
through a few extra cycles to keep around a detailed room/corridor
graph which keeps track of all rooms and corridors and which other
rooms/corridors they're linked to. I haven't started putting items
down yet, but my thought was that there are various parts of that
process that depend on individual room locations. Making a "monster
room" or "treasure room" for instance. When I start letting monsters
loose I figured that a graph of individual rooms would make the path
finding go a lot faster also - I determine the shortest path in the
room graph and then only have to have each monster search inside the
current room for the appropriate exit rather than having to search the
whole map.
So I'm wondering whether other people do it this way. It seems pretty
incompatible with some of the Perlin noise generated algorithms. I
think maybe other people just carve out the map and then forget about
the individual rooms. That would make some things simpler - I'm
thinking here in particular of potential tunneling on the part of the
adventurer who creates new passages. I think I could handle this by
just adding any tunneling on to the room the adventurer is in and if a
new path is created between rooms, incorporating it into the room
graph when it occurs.
In the end, do you folks think it's worth keeping this information
around? Maybe it's not "good" or "fair" having any monsters make a
direct beeline for the adventurer. Certainly, I think there's got to
be something that moderates it - you don't want your entire dungeon to
close in on our hapless adventurer and empty the rest of the dungeon.
Maybe only certain monsters? Maybe the beeline gets slightly elevated
probability in their wandering - higher as the adventurer gets
closer? Is this valuable information to keep around or should I just
chuck it after excavating and rely on one big map of terrain? Are
there other things I might use this for? I'm interested in hearing
people's opinions.
Thanks!
Darrell Plank
generation algorithm going and am happy with the result. I'm going
through a few extra cycles to keep around a detailed room/corridor
graph which keeps track of all rooms and corridors and which other
rooms/corridors they're linked to. I haven't started putting items
down yet, but my thought was that there are various parts of that
process that depend on individual room locations. Making a "monster
room" or "treasure room" for instance. When I start letting monsters
loose I figured that a graph of individual rooms would make the path
finding go a lot faster also - I determine the shortest path in the
room graph and then only have to have each monster search inside the
current room for the appropriate exit rather than having to search the
whole map.
So I'm wondering whether other people do it this way. It seems pretty
incompatible with some of the Perlin noise generated algorithms. I
think maybe other people just carve out the map and then forget about
the individual rooms. That would make some things simpler - I'm
thinking here in particular of potential tunneling on the part of the
adventurer who creates new passages. I think I could handle this by
just adding any tunneling on to the room the adventurer is in and if a
new path is created between rooms, incorporating it into the room
graph when it occurs.
In the end, do you folks think it's worth keeping this information
around? Maybe it's not "good" or "fair" having any monsters make a
direct beeline for the adventurer. Certainly, I think there's got to
be something that moderates it - you don't want your entire dungeon to
close in on our hapless adventurer and empty the rest of the dungeon.
Maybe only certain monsters? Maybe the beeline gets slightly elevated
probability in their wandering - higher as the adventurer gets
closer? Is this valuable information to keep around or should I just
chuck it after excavating and rely on one big map of terrain? Are
there other things I might use this for? I'm interested in hearing
people's opinions.
Thanks!
Darrell Plank
Pages: [1]