Hey..
Too lazy to search the thread, but I am making a small gaming project. I will delve into procedural generation for the world and dungeons and everything...
So my issue is how exactly to make the dungeons?
I see 3 ways:
1: handmade dungeons from start to finish, but that means building a lot of them for a single cave for example. And I want to have multiple caves and castles and stuff...
2: Module building that sh... Building multiple different rooms and stitch them together. As far as I'm aware, this is the most popular way of doing stuff. My issue is, that upon entering the room you already know what's inside, because you have entered the room like 100 trillion times already so far.
3: completely generate the dungeons from scratch. That will give every dungeon distinct feel, because you will not have encountered the same rooms over and over again. Now my big issue is the storage of the generated dungeon.
Handcrafted is save in the game as it is. Modules are saved in a 2d array with just a link to the rooms. Now generated from scratch will be pain. You need to save everything about it, including the tiles, used in the visualisation, and the encounters and eventual loot and everything...
I know how to do procedural generation. Now I'm trying to understand how to store all the generated data.
What would you do if you were in my position?
I would start with module rooms. I would have layouts in said rooms that were randomized on their own system. And if a game is in "early access" audiences are well trained now to not expect a lot content up front as long as regular updates are provided.
So what you are telling me is to basically mix 2 and 3...
Generate the dungeon layout and then generate each room?
So in the 2D array I will just store the room seed...
Beautiful. Simple.
I like it. Thank you.
Horrendously simple, but perfectly adequate I say.
@psycho_666 I actually really want to see play this game. One Question though. Does it run Crysis. Jokes aside I want to see videos of the development.
That is the game thread in the forum...
I stopped development to research a bit more the procedural generation.
So now, that i have the basic idea and some more specific ideas about how to do what, i can continue with the development...
The information below is only for the third option.
The approach I took in when I experimented on procedural generation is to start with random data and then have and algorithm adjust the results. For example, to generate random hallways I would start with random points and then have an algorithm which finds the nearest path to the next point (you would then redo until all points are joined together). Another thing I did was get a random location and then generated a portal which would move you to another location only if certain conditions were true (e.g., only generate a portal to another location if its the end of a hallway).
So basically:
- Random + deterministic completion/generation.
- Random + deterministic filtering.
- Or both of the above. Mix it up to taste I guess .
I personally recommend trying out procedural generation since its a very fun problem to work on.
Here is how i was about to do it...
First off, i'll start with the seed. I need a seed to generate anything.
From the seed i will generate the amount of dungeons, let's say the 5-th number plus 3... That will give me atleast 3 dungeons.
Then for each dungeon i will again use the seed to generate the layout.
Let's say the 7-th number. If it's above 5 it will be the 7th number minus 2, else the 7-th number plus 2... That will give me between 2 and 7 floors for each dungeon.
Then from that same seed i will generate connections between the floors, the enemies, the loot, etc, etc...
It will all come down to the seed. That's the point. I want the same seed to give me the same result. No matter what.
Yes, there will be a lot of checking if all things are reachable, etc, but i think i will base all on the seed.
Each dungeon will have it's own procedural generation algorithm, will use different numbers from the seed...
I could use the ASCII code for each symbol, but f@ck that... It's easier to work with the numbers i see, than looking a huge table and cross referencing numbers to calculate in my mind the minimum and maximum range of each procedure, like the amounts of floors in certain dungeon. It's easy to look at 2 to 7... It's more difficult to figure out an algorithm, that will use the ASCII code and give me result between 2 and 7, so the rest of the generation works properly...
No randomness what so ever. Everything will be tied into the seed.
I haven't done videos in a long time. But the plan is to slowly build it... Slowly...
The thing is, once I get into it and if I have the time, I may sneeze a video every day. Now when I am not into it I need to really push myself. And I didn't push and there we go - 2 months away. Now I will try and do some more work. Then hopefully pressure from the eventual community, building around the project will make me work on it...
imo hand crafted is best. procedurally generated will look better if you put the same amount of time into both, but crafted allows you more control over the players and the setting and game play. game play>aesthetics. the kit idea is very limiting and i rather have a complex handcrafted dungeon that looks more simple then a beautiful work of art over and over and over or randomly generated.
I agree with you, that hand crafted is better, because it allows more control over the player's experience. The thing is, the game I will try and make would be so big, that I may have to spend years just piling up content and still not have enough. The game will challenge basically your multitasking ability. You may have like 10 different people in different dungeons, exploring, fighting and looting, and I would have to build those dungeons.
Or I can generate them with their inhabitants, artefacts, secrets, etc.
Tweaking the generation algorithm will be the different between crappie dungeons and actually nice dungeons. But I really think in this case procedural generation will be a better choice.
Well hope you get back at it, I was watching them and enjoyed it!
Oh, I am going in. Those videos are both easy to make and interesting to me personally...
And it's original content. Not let's play regurgitation of content. Original content tends to do better on YouTube in general.
But yeah, I'm going in in a couple days...
OK, shameless plug...
Here is a video, where I show the basic idea of how I would make the dungeons if I was to hand make them.
Now, in the next couple of days I will start building the system for the actual dungeons and keep updating the main thread about the game...