Messing with dungeon generation

[Robson]

Icey, image #9 looks really good. I hope I'll get to play in something like it at some point

Just wear a bowler hat while programming long enough, you will eventually catch it

That is so untrue, I don't even own a-- *suddenly the wardrobe doors fly open and millions of bowler hats fall out*

Ummmm. Right!! I don't care if it is raining, I'm going out to buy some chips!!

[Krice]

I had an idea that could be worth trying. What if corridors were made first and then rooms as extensions to corridors?

[Slash]

Isnt a corridor just a (very) narrow room?

[Ex]

Isnt a corridor just a (very) narrow room?

I think typically rooms are square while hallways usually bend. Also hallways are sometimes allowed to overlap each other which rooms usually aren't.

Mostly I think of the bend in hallways since most rooms are not L shaped.

[Krice]

Today I was planning a new kind of dungeon generation (trying to solve corridor problems). I still have to test that and if it works I guess I could write an article, because it could be useful. If the plan works it allows very flexible dungeon generation without "grids". I hope it works..

[Slash]

We await for news about it

[Krice]

We await for news about it

Yeah.. Really annoying thing is that I'm in square one all the time with dungeon structure generation. Is it just me or does people here have same kind of difficulties with it? The hardest part seems to be connecting rooms with corridors so that it doesn't look stupid and that it works in the first place and doesn't break rooms.

[Krice]

First take was an epic fail. What's wrong with me? I can't even make corridors.

[Anvilfolk]

Why don't you try a totally different approach? I've some people using "non-standard" stuff, like cellular automata. You could try creating "abstract digger dwarves" with pseudo-personalities, and have them dig a dungeon through a series of iterations... I might try that when I have free time (somewhere in 2145).

[Krice]

You could try creating "abstract digger dwarves" with pseudo-personalities, and have them dig a dungeon through a series of iterations...

That sounds really odd and over complex. Anyway I came to the conclusion that "overlapping" rooms were the source of all bad things. They generate two major problems: walls inside the rooms dividing a bigger room area and floors that destroy walls from the original room that was overlapped. This in turn makes it impossible to find a wall facing to certain direction when the other room just wiped them out entirely. Making the two rooms connected wont solve that problem, you would have to connect the two rooms physically to one room with the same room mask id. That was too much for me and I disallowed the creation of overlapping rooms. It's probably going to make some level types less interesting, but I don't care.

[elsairon]

I came to the conclusion that "overlapping" rooms were the source of all bad things. They generate two major problems: walls inside the rooms dividing a bigger room area and floors that destroy walls from the original room that was overlapped. This in turn makes it impossible to find a wall facing to certain direction when the other room just wiped them out entirely. Making the two rooms connected wont solve that problem, you would have to connect the two rooms physically to one room with the same room mask id. That was too much for me and I disallowed the creation of overlapping rooms. It's probably going to make some level types less interesting, but I don't care.

I know what you mean. Several things I tried to add didn't work right for me. Like making circular rooms on a grid. Eventually I got them working (2 years later) so I didn't include them in the dungeon generator.

I think making it work is first priority. When thats done, improvements can always be made later.

Right now I don't even use a dungeon generator for my tests.. I just load ascii text files that I hand-edit into maps. I'm majorly refactoring my map creation.. so I don't even have a working dungeon generator in my codebase right now.

[Krice]

I think making it work is first priority. When thats done, improvements can always be made later.

It was working, but then I wanted to have "strict" and overlapping rooms in the same level, which required re-writing and then I couldn't make it work. Anyway, I think after all level generation is quite easy to do, so I'm concentrating to harder aspects of the engine such as game object code.

[Gamer_2k4]

Why don't you try a totally different approach? I've some people using "non-standard" stuff, like cellular automata. You could try creating "abstract digger dwarves" with pseudo-personalities, and have them dig a dungeon through a series of iterations... I might try that when I have free time (somewhere in 2145).

My dungeon generator creates maps that looks like caves.  After all, why would a dungeon consist of rooms and halls? You're going into caves and the like; at any rate, nothing will look as neat as the dungeons in ADOM (which seems to be one of the "better" generators).

My process is described here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.development/browse_frm/thread/f2899ee1318b62fd#

[JoshuaSmyth]

A little while ago I posted some stuff about the random generation in Caverns of Underkeep - It doesnt go into detail, but might provide someone with some tid-bits.

http://www.peachysoft.com/?p=84

[Krice]

Underkeep tilted my firefox. No matter, Java-based games are always crap.