Dungeon Quest
2D Dungeon layout generator functional - 15/12/2009
The 2D Portion of the dungeon generator is now fully functional. I can now create all sorts of dungeon layouts!



The next step now is to take this 2D data and create 3D Geometry from it. This gets slightly tricky as corridors in dungeons can be adjacent to other rooms. Since having 0 thickness walls and doors would be a bad thing, I'm going to have to offset all walls slightly inward by half the wall thickness.

Once that is completed with some basic texturing / lighting sprinkled on top, the next step will be to allow myself to walk around in the dungeon and not do bad things such as walking through walls, etc. Once that's working, I can start on actually placing doors and items into the dungeon which also will have to be randomly chosen and placed.

- Kermos

Final version dungeon generator finally coming together - 30/11/2009
I finally have the final version of the dungeon generator fully working. About the only thing I did not get to last night was to let the pathfinder connect the various corridor endpoints together. Once that is done, I can start on actually creating the mesh.

Unlike my previous approaches, which used a point based grid, my new approach uses a square based grid which makes a world of difference as it allows me to store data in a completely different and more convenient way. The new approach also makes having adjacent walls far easier, which would have been difficult previously. This will allow me to have adjacent rooms if I want, and corridors running directly in between rooms. Doors between two directly adjacent rooms are now also possible with this new approach. Overall, things are much better now. Here's a screenshot with the rooms and their corridor endpoints:



I've also added an e-mail for this project to may mail server, so if anyone wishes to contact me, feel free to e-mail me at dungeon@somrek.net.

- Kermos

Update - 24/11/2009
Sorry for the long gap with no news, recently switched to a new employer and a much much better job (hey, I get to write software to make cars go faster, doesn't get much more fun than that) during my daytime. The new job however also means more money, which translates to more resources for me to spend towards this project. And, after I move in January next year, significantly shorter commute which means more time to work on this. Definitely a positive change.

However, been also working on the dungeon engine a bit. Did run into a small issue with my current setup that causes hallways when I expand them to their proper width to intersect with the rooms. Not exactly a good thing.

Also my current aproach requires me to make the individual tiles making up the hallways non-square shaped which also further complicates things. Due to that, I'm going to rework things slightly to resolve both of those issues. Planning on seeing that I can get that done over the holiday and hopefully still get my first 3D extruded dungeon going before the end of the year. Will try for some more graphical / screenshort worthy material soon.

- Kermos

Site launch - 07/11/2009
The time has finally come to launch the site for my game project. Currently everything still is in very early stages but some screenshots should become available over the next couple of months.

The aim of this project is to create an online game for dungeon exploring. Initially, the player will be dropped into a randomly created dungeon and will then be able to explore it. There will be monsters to fight, doors to unlock, traps to get around, etc. All sorts of fun stuff! More details to come later.

The current state of the game is as follows: The basic graphics engine is up and running, capable of displaying geometry and accepting user input. As my next step, I've been working on the component that generates the dungeon. Example output below:



The green outlines are rooms, blue dots are possible door points and the red dots represent the pathing for the corridors to connect the rooms. The next step will be to create a complete 2D outline of all the above information that will then allow me to extrude this into 3D for the real dungeon.

- Kermos
Copyright (C) 2009 Stephan Rose