Re: [DM-dev] Additiional ideas for dungeon maker

[Henningsen <sh...@gl...>]

At 12:12 AM 2/11/04 -0500, George wrote:
>All,
>
>Looking at the output (at least from the design file on the web site) from
>the current
>version of dungeon maker, while they are quite good, they can be a little
>`stale' after
>awhile.  By this I mean that all of the corridors,  regardless of size, all
>run east-west
>or north-south.  The same can be said of the rooms - they are all regular
>quadrilaterals with their axis' running east-west and north-south.
>
>So, to spice things up I was wondering how hard it would be to implement
>several new features:
>
>1. corridors that are directed at various angles relative to the positive
>x-axis.?
>
>2. Rooms that are rotated with respect to the x-axis?
>
>3. Rooms that are various shapes other then quadrilaterals - for example
>circular,
>    triangular, and other polygons>
>
>Of course, these features would need to be limited in their occurrence in
>any
>dungeon or they loose their uniqueness.
>
>George

The DungeonMaker creates maps as they are currently used in isometric games,
where the map is made up of identical-sized squares which are either closed
or open. This makes pathfinding very simple, and thus allows MOBs to behave
in ways that look much more intelligent than is possible on arbitrary maps,
where pathfinding is massively more expensive. If pathfinding sucks and MOBs
get stuck or wander senselessly, then all illusion of having actual
"creatures" there breaks down immediately. This I don't want to happen, and
therefore I will stick with a basic map consisting of open or closed
squares, even in a 3D-world. (BTW, this makes DM and Cube such a good fit,
because the Cube-world consists just of Cubes. Makes the code simple and
easy to work with too...)

To rotate a room at 45 degrees on a map like this, you'd get a jagged edge,
which I don't think would look good. Other angles would look even worse. It
also would make obvious to the player the existence of the underlying map,
which is something we don't neccessarily want.

So, to answer your question, in order to properly do the things you suggest,
the DungeonMaker would have to abandon its basic underlying map concept,
which would make it neccessary to do a re-write from scratch. But if you
would want to do that, it would work fine: The Tunnelers could easily work
in any direction, and also btw work in 3D themselves, tunneling in 3
dimensions instead of in 2. Personally I think that computers are not fast
enough yet to handle hundreds of independently moving smart MOBs on such
maps, but in about 10 years time, this will be the way to go. Or maybe open
landscapes will be more interesting then...

Peter