[DM-dev] Suggestions for work on DungeonMaker

[George H. <kh...@op...>]

first a little background,

I had email Peter with an offer to help on DungeonMaker, and as a result we
have
started a private dialog.  After a few messages, Peter suggested that we
move
the discussion to the mailing list so that others might `profit' and give
suggestions
as the work continues on DungeonMaker.  The following is the first
substantial
message in this series, an I will post the subsequent messages as replies to
this one.

George

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Peter,

I just complied the existing source, so my executable does nothing new
or different.  Except for cleaning up as many of the warnings as I
could.  One thing that I have not do yet is to see if my modified
files compile cleanly on a Linux system - probably will do that in a
day or to.

From what you described about DungeonRaid, it sounds very interesting,
and certainly lines up with my interests on several levels.  As a player
of computer RPG's I have always found the NPC to be rather stall and
static.  I have always felt that much more could be done to make the
game interesting.  Secondly, having just finished my Masters in Computer
Science with a concentration in Intelligent Interfaces (i.e. artificial
intelligence), the AI work is definatly interesting.

I have included some thoughts on how to proceed, sorry if I come of
a little `strong', but as a senior developer much of my work day is
spent evaluating risks and coming up with courses of action and the
such.

I agree that `playing' in 3D would be very cool, and I suspect it will be
a significant undertaking.  Thinking about, I see two issues,

1. Converting the 2D world into a 3D world and managing movement.
2. Developing the AI for the MOB's.

While the first issue is complex, there is a good precedent on how to do
this.  In face, I am currently taking a course through "Game Institute" on
3D graphics programming, and in some of the later labs we do construct
simple dungeons and implement enough so the camera can move through
the dungeon.

The second issue is more `risky', there is not as much precedent in the
literature for developing intelligent NPC.  Of course, this make this
issue all the more interesting!

I believe that there is an intermediate step that can be made, that of
developing
proof-of-concept (or demo) systems in 2D.  The basic idea would be to have
an interface somewhat similar to what DungeonMaker currently produces, with
a various colored squares for the different types of MOB's and the player.
This
interface would allow the play to move his icon around the dungeon or
labyrinth and
have the MOB's react.  I believe this approach would have several benefits:

- the AI algorithms can be developed and tested with out the overhead of a
true
   3D environment.

- having an `birds-eye' perspective on the entire dungeon will enable us to
keep
  track of all entities and make sure they are doing what is expected.

- being a simple 2D environment, there should be no need for graphic
packages
   such as SDL or openGL.  The initial work can be done with a normal
window.
   This means that you do not need to get an improved development machine
    because we would not be pushing the graphics subsystem as hard.

I would think that the first, tentative steps here would be to imbed the
current
DungeonMaker interface into a GUI of some sort.  I can see this being a
simple application with a main window and a menu bar.  The menu bar
would have the following items:

file
   new template - allows the user to select a new design file to use to
create
                          dungeon.
   new              - clears the display and generates a new dungeon based
on
                          the currently selected design file.

edit
   view             - allows the user to view the design file in a read only
window
   edit              - allows the user to edit the design file.  This can be
invoking
                         a simple text editor or a move complex 'wizard' to
guide the
                         user through the creation of the design file.
   save             - allows the user to save the modified design back to
the
                         original file
   save as         - allows the user to save the modified design to a new
file.

This would reproduce the current ability of DungeonMaker, however by using
one of the cross-platform frameworks (QT, wxWindows, FLTK, etc.) the
interface will be the same on all platforms.  I have no real preference on
these
frameworks, having worked with them all, however FLTK does seem to be the
easiest to work with (and there is a DevPak for DevC++).  I have done a
quick
search and there seems to be precedence for embedding an SDL window into
a widget from any of the afore mentioned frameworks.

Once this is done, the next perceived task would be to add a few new
features,
most notably would be a save and open feature for dungeons.  This would be
necessary when the move to 3D is made so games could be saved and restarted.
Of course this means defining a DungeonMaker file format.  A neat extra
would
be to provide an export feature.  As a start, exporting to a bitmap and jpeg
would be great.  Because, I still play traditional pencil-and-paper
role-playing
games (e.g. Role Master or Dungeons and Dragons) I make use of a tool
called Campaign Cartographer (CC) and I would like to see a conversion
between DungeonMaker and CC.

Once this is done, we can concentrate on `playing' the dungeon in 2D,
implementing
player movement and MOB's AI algorithms.  Of course being able to reload a
dungeon allows for training of the MOB's.

At the end of this phase, all of the AI algorithms should be complete and
effort can
be applied to converting the 2D world to 3D.

How does this sound?

George