Improved Level Generator

[maximus_asinus]

Originally Posted by Gerami

And how big are they?

I mean it's not like I'm asking for much.

I can put out a 5x5 GMAP in a little over a week, two weeks if I want it to be really detailed. An overworld may take me a month to create, but I assume it would take almost as long to generate a GMAP and tweak it to perfection.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by maximus_asinus

I can put out a 5x5 GMAP in a little over a week, two weeks if I want it to be really detailed. An overworld may take me a month to create, but I assume it would take almost as long to generate a GMAP and tweak it to perfection.

Not really. If it's for an online server it's better to work with some basic groundwork (since you're working with other people) than to make everything bit by bit without a common reference.

And you gotta remember these aren't little 5 x 5 gmaps I'm talking about. I'm talking about atleast 10 x 10.

[Tyhm]

food for thought:
there's something like 4096 tiles. A truecolor png goes up to 1667408 or so colors. Would it be better to make a generator that reads in every tile (so you can draw it up pixel-by-tile) or another like the one we got (where it only even Kinda works as if you're using the default tileset lineup)?

If it were set up so it went tile (0,0) = Red0, Green0, Blue0 and tile (5,5) = Red80, Green0, Blue80...you could hypothetically edit your entire overworld as an imagefile in shades of purple...you'd just need a damn good head for "fuchsia = darkwater stone, top left corner"

Methinks the ideal would be a big-dumb-generator that makes an Empty Field GMAP, then an editor where you can zoom out and draw cliffs like the old scripted dirthpaths...

[Crono]

Hell the only problem I have is that the cliffs Stefan wants it to generate aren't properly done to begin with. If he's able to make it generate cliffs, why not make it be able to generate cliffs properly? That's really my only main concern.

[p2p_Sir_Link]

Originally Posted by Skyld

Xcessive54321, if I am correct.

The level generator could do with some improvements; I have previously found it to be quite patchy.

Ah yea, that was the guy.

To make the Level Generator better, you'd probably have to slightly improve it's ability to read a PNG, and perhaps add some options for how to have the shadows.

[Tyhm]

Originally Posted by Gerami

Hell the only problem I have is that the cliffs Stefan wants it to generate aren't properly done to begin with. If he's able to make it generate cliffs, why not make it be able to generate cliffs properly? That's really my only main concern.

as I understand it, the way it works is:

Green touching red: placecliff(here, direction)
PlaceCliff(location): if (location) is a corner, placecorner (direction); else placenormalcliff (direction). So if he gives us the Graalscript version, we can replace placenormalcliff with a different tiling sequence, etc. Particularly handy for servers where "cliffs" means "skyscrapers" or "space station wall", etc.

then it blends nicely into dungeon generation, as you can say "mine wall" in place of "cliff" and "mine floor" in place of "grass", etc.

[Crono]

-shrugs- whatever it takes to get the generated cliffs to be proper.