For entrance / exit, you could use platform volumes like the way I use in the multi-story building demo. However, UE4 doesn’t allow me to spawn volumes during runtime or from blueprints. So its C++ heavy. I’ll look at a workaround. I’m building a simple tower defence game (blueprints only) using infinity blade assets and will be looking at implementing this somehow
As for markers, there is a better way. I’ll expose a Marker Emitter blueprint which you guys can attach to the dungeon actor. This BP gets called and gives you an opportunity to emit your own markers into the scene. So you iterate through all the rooms, get their bounds and scatter your own markers (circular or otherwise) anyway you like on top of the existing stuff. Will post more on this later
You can now emit your own markers into the scene using blueprints.
The dungeon generation pipeline is:
Generate Layout in Memory > Emit Markers > Replace markers with meshes (using theming graph)
Now an extra step is added
Generate Layout in Memory > Emit Markers > Emit custom markers from BP > Replace markers with meshes (using theming graph)
This opens up lots of possibilities for theming as you are no longer bound by what I emit from the builder.
In this example, I created an emitter blueprint that iterates through all rooms and adds markers along a circle. This marker will be encountered by the theming engine so it can be defined in the theme file
watch?v=SbNBVTnSRXY
You can register multiple emitters (e.g. for each effect)
The Marker Emitter Blueprint
The theme file (D_RoomRunes)
Other possibilities are slanted roofs, curved roofs / structures etc, room corner pillars etc. You can place these markers anywhere in the map with any name. I’ll create more samples tomorrow
This looks like it will have the power to really customise prop-placement, but at the moment I’m not sure how I would use that to randomly distribute my crates in an area and stop them colliding with themselves/other entities/walls and clipping through the walls?
I think pretty soon every game being made in UE4 will feature procedural levels!!
Thx,
Daz
EDIT: Also, when will the build be out with this in mate?
Cheers
Daz
I tried to set some blueprinted decals as randomised props in the theme and although the decal entity (helper icon) appeared in the world, it didn’t seem to bring in the other components of the blueprint and so the decal didn’t show up? Are they not supported? I manually placed one and it worked fine…
Daz
I have this problem with instanced dungeon:
Performance Warning DungeonInstancedMeshActor_0 Large actor receives a pre-shadow and will cause an extreme performance hit unless bCastDynamicShadow is set to false.
Indeed it slows down FPS. But cannot change it, or i could not find where it is in plugin.
The only reason I haven’t bought it yet is that I haven’t seen any videos showing multiple height levels mixed together with one dungeon, I assume this isn’t currently possible? I know there can be different heights, but could you have one room above another for example? It seems like the current setup might lead to very “flat” levels if it isn’t possible to overlap rooms. I think it would be difficult to create a complex layout if the dungeons are essentially based around a 2d heightmap. Is this something you might add to the project at some point?
Edit: Also, is it possible to change the height of the rooms when using the volumes? I saw in one video that you changed the length/width of a volume and raised the Z height, but I didn’t see you changing a rooms height. I think this would be a very useful feature for adding variation to the generated rooms.
@uunx, as of now the generator doesn’t support overlapping rooms (on different heights). You can however use different dungeons and join them together like in the multi-story building demo (still wip). I might create another builder based on a different algorithm in the future if there is demand for it (no promises though)
When you get a minute, could you explain how we can use the new markers to generate our props so that they don’t collide with other props and meshes (including the room/corridor walls)?
Also, I mentioned in a previous post that my Blueprint decals spawn okay but do not display (it seems the inherited components for the box projection etc do not come in when generated via Dungeon Architect)
Look forward to spending some time this weekend iterating on my themes!
Daz, I have decals working in one of my levels. However you need a workaround since DA editor doesn’t yet support setting actor parameters, (so you can’t set the material on the decal actor from the theme graph)
As a workaround, simply create the decal you want by placing it in your main level viewport and adjusting it the way you want it to be (with materials, scale etc). Then turn the decal into a blueprint. Then add that blueprint in your graph as an actor node (you might want to check scale as it needs to be big) http://i.imgur.com/qXQCShNm.jpg
Hey, thats what I already tried. I have a pre-made decal blueprint which when I place in the level manually, works fine. But if I add that same blueprint into the theme, as you say as an actor, the decal helper icon shows up as if it has spawned correctly but it does not have the box projection or any of the other inherited components. Seems broken in mine
Blueprint is fine as I say, cos it places manually just fine.
Oh man! Good catch
The scale on my blueprinted decal actor was 128,256,256 (not sure why?!), and the ones DA generated were only 1,1,1 . When I adjusted them manually, they work.
