I’m ahead of schedule for a change. The dungeon is now being populated by the world state produced from history generation. The way it works is: 1) sections are created (e.g. caverns, temple, catacombs) 2) world state entities (e.g. rooms, actors, items) are placed 3) the remaining unused portions of the map are filled in with randomly selected content associated with the section. It doesn’t have much bearing on gameplay yet, because only a handful of test events have been created. Nonetheless, it’s satisfying to walk through a temple and know (as the game developer) that it’s there because it was created by dark elves long ago, and that the remains in the crypt belong to the first leader of the dark elves, and that the magic sword the leader was entombed with is now in the possession of a thief hiding out in the nearby caverns. The history generation places map elements in a more logical fashion, which was the main goal, but I also need to reveal the history to the player in bits and pieces, through inscriptions, journals, NPC interactions, etc.
Next week, I’ll add support for more advanced generation from the world state, such as adding objects to preexisting containers on the map (e.g. chests, actor inventory). I’ll also start work on cause and effect relationships for history events, which will enable more logical event sequences.