Back to the Dungeon
After two years or so of working exclusively on the cavern maps, I went back to dungeon maps. This was due to finalizing the level themes this week and deciding to start the game in a dungeon instead of a cave. I updated the game configuration and started a new game. As soon as the map generator started, the Unity console filled up with error messages. I’ve never come so close to calling it quits. This worked perfectly a couple of years ago, and I didn’t remember making any changes to the map generation code during that time. Evidently I did. I made some tweaks for caverns that weren’t incorporated into dungeons.
History Generation Design Tools
I made a couple of handy tools for history generation. Although history generation was removed from the game, the history generator still drives map content placement. It does so by randomly selecting content based on the previously selected content. This allows, for example, a section of the map that has been designated as a bandit hideout to be populated with bandit hideout rooms. The first tool displays the event types that can trigger a specified event type. The second tool visualizes the event type relationships in a graph. I also wrote instructions to remind me how to add various types of content to the generator (it’s complicated).
Miscellaneous
- Improved the default action logic when hovering over a cell by determining the highest priority action across all entities in the cell. This makes it easy for the player to perform all of the important actions in a cell just by left-clicking. For example, if the cell contains two corpses to loot, the first left-click will loot the first corpse and the second left-click will loot the second corpse. Previously, the player had to cycle through the entities using the context menu.
- Add a Kennel room type.
- Fixed bugs in map generation, UI, and stats.
Next week, I’ll add more room types.