I also think adding some random dungeon levels would really benefit Flare-game.
some ideas come to my mind:
sidequests with random dungeons
a deep, completely random dungeon (like a game in a game?)
varying generators (as shown by Pauls great work above)
I think variety is really important for a successful hack n slash. There could be mazes, random rooms, random arrangements of fixed architecture, hybrids etc. But of course all these things need to be used wisely. A too simple dungeon generation will bore very fast
@Stefan: Your approach sounds good. Some details:
Generate a schematic, how to lay out rooms, corridors and such. one layer only, choose from several different map generators/options
Generate all the actual layers from that schematic. (Collision, background, foreground, objects, fringe layer). If the tiled code+rules can handle that - even better
Populate the layers. Several algorythm(/options) to choose from.
I did a pretty basic map generator and added some kind of "wall tile recognition". Still very rough around the edges, but s.th. like this should work fine within Flare:
It would be pretty cool to have some random generated dungeons in flare!
I'm not 100% sure with the following info, so everyone is welcome to correct me :)
the maps can be accessed by simply opening the coresponding text files in \mods\alpha_demo\maps
e.g. the starting map in the current alpha, "Frontier Outpost" is frontier_outpost.txt
In this file, under [layer] you'll find the map structure (this giant list of numbers beginning with 0,0,0,....). Those numbers represent the 2D map for Frontier Outpost. I think it's simply rotated 45° clockwise ingame.
The "background" layer contains the noninteractive graphics, "object" layer interactive objects and "collision" tells the player if he can enter this tile.
As there are three layers in Flare you'd have to create three maps as output. And I'm not sure about the collision layer. There seem to be at least 5 collision states (0 to 4), so it's probably not just "go" and "nogo".
fyi, just stumbled upon an older flare thread:
http://opengameart.org/content/random-dungeons
I also think adding some random dungeon levels would really benefit Flare-game.
some ideas come to my mind:
I think variety is really important for a successful hack n slash. There could be mazes, random rooms, random arrangements of fixed architecture, hybrids etc. But of course all these things need to be used wisely. A too simple dungeon generation will bore very fast
@Stefan: Your approach sounds good. Some details:
I did a pretty basic map generator and added some kind of "wall tile recognition". Still very rough around the edges, but s.th. like this should work fine within Flare:
http://pastebin.com/hkZZ5MXq
It would be pretty cool to have some random generated dungeons in flare!
I'm not 100% sure with the following info, so everyone is welcome to correct me :)
the maps can be accessed by simply opening the coresponding text files in \mods\alpha_demo\maps
e.g. the starting map in the current alpha, "Frontier Outpost" is frontier_outpost.txt
In this file, under [layer] you'll find the map structure (this giant list of numbers beginning with 0,0,0,....). Those numbers represent the 2D map for Frontier Outpost. I think it's simply rotated 45° clockwise ingame.
The "background" layer contains the noninteractive graphics, "object" layer interactive objects and "collision" tells the player if he can enter this tile.
From there you can use one of the many dungeon algorithms to begin with ( e.g. http://www.roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Dungeon-Building_Algorithm ).
As there are three layers in Flare you'd have to create three maps as output. And I'm not sure about the collision layer. There seem to be at least 5 collision states (0 to 4), so it's probably not just "go" and "nogo".
edit: see also Map Files - Flare Wiki