Sunday 3 January 2016

Build style

I have started this year with a critical revisit to level generation from the ground up. First thing to check out was the overall style of level themes and other elements. Each theme has information about natural rock types of walls, floors etc. and then a build style which determines tiles for rooms and many other things.

I had already made a distinction between natural and build styles, but some build styles were removed, because they were actually just the natural style of the level which means rooms don't have artificial walls, they are only carved into the bedrock of the level. Also an important change is the ability to mix build styles so not everything is made with the same style per level. There will be a secondary style for most themes and also possibly random styles which still fit into the current style.

The idea of styles is that they make the dungeon generation abstract. Then there is no need to think about individual tiles and their roles in the dungeon generation. Everything is reduced to abstract walls and floors, artificial versions of those and other things needed in the creation. You can then add a style/theme and the new level theme is done just like that, at least what comes to the style of tiles.

Rooms also have their own type, because some rooms are special. Still, even room data could be retrieved from the build style and it's probably something I'm going to do, at least for some room types. The difficult part in "generic" room styles is that many rooms are quite special and would probably require some heavy data so that each room type looks different depending on the build style or even the level theme. It's probably much easier to plan what room types each theme has and then design room creation only for those types.

No comments:

Post a Comment