Development Update: May 14th, 2018

Quick Update Stuff

Coding is on schedule. I worked out the kinks in the random level generator, see below.

Art is coming along nicely. I got the combat UI two days ago and we made several improvements to the status UI. All but two of the combat animations are complete. Urimas is currently finishing item icons, and Chicken needs to get me 1 more enemy design before I can finish up Serenity Crater.

The Random Level Generator

I just finished putting together the basic exporter for the RLG. It still needs to generate useful enemy and object data, but the really complex texture mapper is complete.

The RLG was designed to be used in both auto and manual modes, to better allow me to identify bugs. So, here’s screenshots of it in action. To use the RLG, you just press the number keys and the generator stops at each stage.

Stage 1: Rolling Sizes

Not much to look at, but the red border indicates the sizes. You can use the arrow keys to scroll around in-game.

Stage 2: Generate Rooms

Here we have generated the ‘rooms’, which are just core points. The rooms are not necessarily connected. The green dots represent a room center, and the rectangles mean a room is elliptical.

Stage 3: Tunnel and Distance Check

Next, we “dig” between each room. Starting at the entrance (white square) we mark all connected tiles. If a room’s center is disconnected, the closest room is found and we dig a 1-tile wide tunnel to the nearest connected room, and then run the algorithm again until no rooms are disconnected. This guarantees it’s always possible to navigate to each room.

Stage 4: Spawn an Entrance

Here we have moved the entrance point to the top middle white square. This is because the entrance is always on a north wall, as it’s a ladder. An exit was also generated but is not yet marked on the map, as well as treasures being generated.

To generate the exit, we take a position that is 75% or more of the maximum distance away from the entrance ladder and modify it to be an exit. You’ll see it on the screenshot below.

To generate treasures, we find the shortest path between the entrance and the exit. The exit is in the bottom middle. Then, we take all locations on the map that are 17 or more tiles away and make them treasure candidates.

Treasure candidates are selected with weight being placed on the most distant ones from the shortest path. Sometimes a candidate is picked that is closer, but it’s usually an edge tile. Then, we find the shortest path between the treasure and the entrance-exit axis and mark it, and then find the distance for all tiles and this new, branching path. Then we run the algorithm again until there are no more tiles that are 17 or more spaces away from any path. The result is the above diagram.

Stage 5: Texture Everything

Programmatically the most complex part, the program checks pit, wall, and floor values and assembles texture data for the renderer. Now you can see how it’s an actual level with pits and walls. Presently the RLG does not place interesting objects and doodads, but it will later.

Stage 6: Generate Enemies

Enemies are purely object data and could theoretically be generated externally, but I decided to build their paths directly into the generator. Essentially, each room is given a priority value and enemies are rolled to spawn in each room. Each time a room gains an enemy spawn, it decreases in priority. The enemy will then mark a path to another room selected at random, decreasing its weight as well. Thus the enemy population is distributed fairly evenly amongst the rooms with some getting little attention by sheer chance.

Note that these are path candidates, and most levels will not have a full complement of enemies. Towards the bottom of the mines, you can expect all the slots to be filled, though. Waiting around corners and ambushing isolated patrols is still the best strategy.

So that’s my random level generator. I’ve already hooked it in to the game’s engine, I just need to generate objects and then I can finish the other half of the Tellurium Mines’ scenario work.