Dungeon Architect

[Laurentius]

Hello again ;-)
In order to display the stairs (going up) in a topdown dungeon I need to make sure the "north" wall of the startroom where the stairs will be placed (this is solved) (1) has no doors AND (2) behind the same wall there is at a minimum of 2 cells no markers at all (or else the character could walk behind the stairs mesh and the character is hidden - which I must prevent, too).
I create a marker emitter that emits a "Entrance" marker at the middle of the north wall - no problem here.

I'm not talking about hiding a wall or other smaller obstacles which is a problem I have solved by hiding parts of the obstacle. But the stairs are much too big and complex to be hidden that way without visual glitches ...

I first thought about using an MarkerReplaceVolume and make the door markers into wall markers and delete the markers behind the north. This looks ok at first, but the startroom and other parts of the dungeon could be cut off from the rest of the dungeon.

The solution to this might be that I can test if there are no doors in the north wall AND no markers are behind this wall - if this is not true just rebuild the dungeon (checking after the layout phase would be enough and fast enough to do this).
I can't find a way to do this properly in the dungeoneventlistener OnLayoutBuilt event. For example GetCellType for even the StartRoom center give an unknow cell type result.

Here are two images that may help to understand this problem:



Is there a solution to this problem or maybe I'm thinking to complicated and I can prevent the problems in the first place without a rebuild "hack".

Any hints?
I tried to find a working solution for the last days ... ^^

[DrinkThisPotion]

Da 2.2.0

Looks like DA 2.2.0 is up on the marketplace. This really saves me as 4.13 crashes my project like it's going out of style.

[mattleslie.tech]

Thanks man!

[Alexarg]

[MENTION=28980]Ali Akbar[/MENTION] that city generator looks vergood and useful.
Some suggestions and/or questions
Is any way to make it less symmetrical? Some squares for parks, empty areas, bigger buildings (like a entire square area building)

The squares dont need to be exactly squares.

wider or thinner streets

I know that DA is not meant to be a city generator. But some of these features could be very good.

Thanks!!

[DrinkThisPotion]

Just wanted to pop by and say the Grid Dungeon Query system is really cool. Exactly what I needed at this point in my project. Thanks Ali!

[dave_sullivan]

Hi Ali, just wanted to say thank you for a reply you made a while back re: how to handle replication with your plugin.

Your advice of a custom DungeonEventListener and overriding OnPostDungeonBuildEvent, then selecting all children components and setting them to replicate worked.

I'm really impressed by how much work you've put into this, and how you continue to iterate based on user feedback. This is how you build a great product!

[Warcabbit]

Yes, the ability to conform to terrain, and to tweak the shape of the streets would be critically important to me.

[DrinkThisPotion]

Anyone have any ideas on how I might grab the most center room in the dungeon? (either using the query system or otherwise)

Also useful would be to get the 4 rooms furthest from one another. (Like the example of GetFurtestRooms in the query system but splitting into 4 (or even 8)). I would use this to spawn markers for multiplayer start points.

[DrinkThisPotion]

Is there any way to get connected cells in 2.2.0? I'd like to be able to have some corridors have different themes within a runtime dungeon, but in order to do that it seems like I'd need to also get the corridor padding to make it look right. Or is there some other way to accomplish overriding theme for a particular corridor at runtime?

[Laurentius]

Since my last problem with the GridBuilderDungeon seems to be harder or impossible to fix for now (see my last post and no answer ;-) ) I tried to use the SnapBuilder approach as this looks like to have more control over the rooms appearance.

To get the best of both worlds I made 2 simple rooms and 1 corridor in levels using the GridBuilder and added a MarkerReplaceVolume where I needed a door.
I then added SnapDoors (blueprint doors) where I need them in the correct orientation. The "Allowed module types" are set to "corridor" on all SnapDoors.
Nothing too fancy.

I then made a "main" level where I use a SnapBuilderDungeon with the following settings:


Problem is that only one room will be generated.
I saw in the users guild that there is a setting of "Max Modules" with default of zero (?) which is missing in my details panel (see screenshot). Maybe thats the problem?
Is this not needed ony more? Other settings are missing or changed as well ...

I witnessed many crashes of the editor and some save anomalies concerning room levels that I saved before while using the snapbuilder in the main level.

How can I solve this?

PS: I'm using DA 2.2 version from your website.

[DrinkThisPotion]

Since my last problem with the GridBuilderDungeon seems to be harder or impossible to fix for now (see my last post and no answer ;-) ) I tried to use the SnapBuilder approach as this looks like to have more control over the rooms appearance.

To get the best of both worlds I made 2 simple rooms and 1 corridor in levels using the GridBuilder and added a MarkerReplaceVolume where I needed a door.
I then added SnapDoors (blueprint doors) where I need them in the correct orientation. The "Allowed module types" are set to "corridor" on all SnapDoors.
Nothing too fancy.


Problem is that only one room will be generated.
I saw in the users guild that there is a setting of "Max Modules" with default of zero (?) which is missing in my details panel (see screenshot). Maybe thats the problem?
Is this not needed ony more? Other settings are missing or changed as well ...

I witnessed many crashes of the editor and some save anomalies concerning room levels that I saved before while using the snapbuilder in the main level.

How can I solve this?

PS: I'm using DA 2.2 version from your website.

Is there any way to mix and match grid builder and snap builder? It would be nice to have a snap builder room open up into a grid dungeon and be able to snap in other rooms. That's essentially what I've been trying to accomplish. I never really got snap builder to work.

[Laurentius]

This is what I'm trying to fake by making compact GridBuilder levels (currently non runtime dungeon) and then let the main SnapBuilder level (should be random runtime dungeon) stitch them together.
But the SnapBuilder part is not working properly (only the first room/level shows up) - and I'm already ignoring all GridBuilder assets in the SnapBuilder level, so this should be no problem as they are simple static levels.

Maybe theming would work, too. With some kind of DungeonEventListener blueprint in the SnapBuilder level changing (or maybe even rebuilding) the GridBuilder modules.

But I must agree that a built in way to do this in DA would be better.

For doing a shooter map the GridBuilder as it is now maybe sufficient, but for an ARPG style game I need mush better control over the rooms.

[DrinkThisPotion]

This is what I'm trying to fake by making compact GridBuilder levels (currently non runtime dungeon) and then let the main SnapBuilder level (should be random runtime dungeon) stitch them together.
But the SnapBuilder part is not working properly (only the first room/level shows up) - and I'm already ignoring all GridBuilder assets in the SnapBuilder level, so this should be no problem as they are simple static levels.

I think you're further along than me with the snap builder as I couldn't even get it to stitch in one room. The other approach you tried was using a theme override and the Query system to make SpawnRoom look a little different than the other rooms, right? And you made a custom emitter to change the north wall. But that didn't work out for you, right?

This seems to be one of the trickier things to do with DA.

[Laurentius]

I think you're further along than me with the snap builder as I couldn't even get it to stitch in one room. The other approach you tried was using a theme override and the Query system to make SpawnRoom look a little different than the other rooms, right? And you made a custom emitter to change the north wall. But that didn't work out for you, right?

This seems to be one of the trickier things to do with DA.

Exactly. But I only invested one or two hours into the mixed builder approach, so I can't really say how good this might look.

I invested much more time into the "GridBuilder only" approach and I thought I'm quite there getting a usable random dungeon level with good variation in the rooms (even if every room is rectangularly shaped ... ^^).
But some meshes like a level entrance with stairs can not fit into this approach easily as they are much too big for a topdown perspective game as the player or other walkable area might be hidden behind this mesh.
Querying the dungeon layout and rebuilding a non fitting dungeon might do the trick here - but I don't know for sure - and I don't know how to do this if it's even possible.

[Ali Akbar]

Hey everyone sorry for the delay. I'll get back to you all tomorrow
[MENTION=121838]Laurentius[/MENTION] for your door problem, I did something similar with a unity version (combination of negation volume, platform volumes & theme override volumes) but it was not a clean straightforward solution. I'll think of a better implementation tomorrow