More proc gen work this week involving the new Map Elements framework. I’m starting to see the difference this technique is making. Dungeons feel slightly less random and more coherent.
- Moved existing map features to Map Elements. Hidden doors, blocking doors, shrines, bone pile, storage room, chest, and treasure room map elements were added. These map features were already being generated, but generating them within the Map Elements framework provides a lot more flexibility and control.
- Object variations. Different types of shrines, bone piles, and blood splatters were added to increase visual variety.
- A lot of bug fixes. Resolved some long-standing map generation bugs (objects placed on top of each other, placing a difficult encounter in the starting room, etc.). I also fixed an odd pathfinding issue where some player paths weren’t generating. The root cause was simply that the player’s pathfinding map was no longer getting initialized. This wasn’t obvious at first because most paths worked; as the player moved around, the pathfinding map got updated and corrected itself.
Next week, I’ll add more Map Elements, primarily combat-based. I also need to revisit the roadmap. The next internal release (Release 3) is scheduled for the end of November and there’s still a lot to do. For the past two months I’ve deviated from the roadmap to focus on some core aspects, such as combat and map generation, that I decided were more important than the objectives that were on the Release 3 list.
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