Sunday, October 5, 2014

Example map

Just wanted to post a screenshot of a map showing the current state of the generator.  This is a "medium" size random map - you can imagine the "large", "huge", and "massive" systems.


You enter the map at the bluish dot in the middle top of the map, and can work your way through the caverns from there.  You can see some of the "troves" (explicit discoveries you can make) on the map here and there, but not all of them are visible - this particular map has 12 troves.

Here's another "medium" size map:


I'm really happy with the direction the generator is going.  You can kind of see the delineations between areas when looking at the map at this zoomed-out level, but they're not nearly as obvious when you're playing.

This is partly because, in your typical roguelike, you generate rooms and then connect them with corridors.  A naive view of the above displays might guess that this sort of thing was happening.  But unlike typical roguelikes, the tunnels are their own rooms - we just choose to render them as tunnels, crawlspaces, or narrow passages instead of as large rooms.  It's entirely possible to have a map composed exclusively of rooms and no "tunnels".

Another factor to this is that there are many types of room generators in the game - currently, there are 22 with more planned.  Even if you're familiar with the generator, during play, you never really know what's around the bend because even individual rooms can often produce very different shapes.    A slight incline might be perfectly safe, or it might lead to a drop off or chimney.  Like in a real cave, all you can do is be careful and explore.  It doesn't feel like a series of rooms.

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