donjon random dungeon generator

[wolph42]

ok, I've got it again. It has been a while since last I worked on this project and I noticed that the online version is 1.0 while on my pc im already at 1.3. I remember getting stuck due to an issue in MT that should be resolved by now, but haven't come round to fix the issue.
Anyway, this is a good opportunity for me to get into the game again.

Here's the deal. Your doors are centered in a cell, while my tool also makes use of the edge of the cell, so you don't only have a square floor but also a wall around it and thus doors inside those walls. Hence the option to put a door at the Top, Right, Bottom or Left side of the cell--> DT,DR,DL,DB. If you can implement that in your code that would be grant.
As for different types of doors, that was what I was working on. currently you set up a list of different doors and the tool picks one at random (or just one type, in which case the whole dungeon will be filled with that). My next step was giving the option to set a doortype: e.g. D1T, D2L --> Door type 1 (e.g. portcullis) on the top side of the cell, Door type 2 (e.g. wood) on the left side. Other functions i was working on are double doors (quite a pain).
So anticipating on that you could indeed render codes like that. In stead of numbers I think that alfa codes should also be possible (A..Z), so portcullis would then become DPT and a wooden door e.g. DWT. Note that the tool is setup in such a way that you can (nearly) completely setup object codes yourself. The only exceptions are F, D, W and L (Floor, Door, Wall and Light). These letters are reserved.

[drow]

placing the door at the edge is easy, since the generator knows which side the room is on.
so, regarding door codes, would this work?

archway = F
open, locked, and trapped doors = DT, DB, DL, DR
secret doors = DST, DSB, DSL, DSR
porticullises = DPT, DPB, DPL, DPR

that's what i've implemented for now (generate a dungeon, click on the 'Map TSV' button to download), let me know if anything needs to change.

[wolph42]

wow thats fast!!. Its currently rendering (picked the standard "medium" settings which turn out to be pretty large so that'l take about 5 to 10 minutes). I noticed that the first row and column are empty, I haven't tested that yet but i think that will render an error. Also I haven't yet implemented the door type code e.g. S and P but If i've coded it correctly they should just be ignored while rendering. I'm curious what the outcome is. If it works out I'll post the resulting image here.

[wolph42]

Ok, ran the first test. Didn't check any settings nor on donjon nor on my tool. The render time was 6 minutes and 39 seconds. The most took me to to figure out how to get the screenshot onto this website. Original size was 140mb, after photoshop I've trimmed it down to 2,5 (any clue what the max. is here??).
Dungeon test 1.jpg

Now to show you the possibilities, here another render with different settings:
Dungeon test 2.jpg

I checked and it seems that the empty row and column don't render any problems. So its all peaches

In all, with minimal effort you can already create some nifty maps with this!!

[drow]

wounds of zeus... the .rpmap format isn't exactly simple, is it?

[wolph42]

LOL! You've used the wrong export function. Menu --> File --> Export
Or just use ctrl+shift+s (in windows, no clue what it is on a mac or unix system)

[drow]

but if i wanted to export a map which someone else could import into their campaign and still work with, i'd want map -> export map, right?

i was curious about how difficult it would be for the random dungeon generator to just generate a maptool compatible file. the asset structure is obvious, but the XML looks totally gnarly. i'll leave it to you and your macros, i think.

[wolph42]

ah, I see. I think 'difficult' is an understatement. Though you could try exporting an empty map and see what it looks like and compare that to a simple map with a few tokens. In all I guess its not worth the effort though.

[Dustyrocket]

Drow,
I was wondering if you could include a way to exclude hallways, and corridors or what ever, so instead of one dungeon, you have only the rooms. I want to try and your tool (in conjunction with wolph42's tool) to randomly generate cities. I made a collosal map, with small sized rooms, and it looks like a city, if you could disconnect all the rooms, into individual buildings. Another step forward would be to combine it with the city generator here for the details of the city. You could really easily make large functioning cities in maptools in under an hour. all you would need to do would be to put down tokens, and maybe dress the place up.

This addition could also be used for making bandit camps and really any area that's not just one huge dungeon. Thanks in advance if you manage to do this.

[drow]

could, yes. but i really have no interest in anything that specialized and trivial.
(just open a map and start plunking down random buildings, no need to code that.)