there was a thread in the old forums where this came up, and i wanted to bring it back. it would cool if there where random levels, like in hellgate london. add some roleplay features (look dungeondoom mod for doom3) and you got a roguelike in 3d.. would be the best game ever

I think someone said in the old thread that bsp maps are not really good for being generated on the fly. And as some maps can take hours to compile from .map to .bsp i think this is correct..

They did say, however, that entity placement could easily be randomized, since it's handled by the engine at runtime... I think

Yes though i think this should be possible..

It is.. Minstagib uses this for the powerups.

tChr wrote:It is.. Minstagib uses this for the powerups.

No, mistagib just switches already existing entities.
Randomly placing new entities is a bit harder, since you might want to make sure that it's inside the map and not stuck in a wall.

Using entities to create random maps is possible, but afaik it would be not a really good idea performance-wise. Afaik visibility checks are done by the enigine by using bsp portals. An empty "base" map for randomization would have almost no portals and i doubt the engine would consider "wall entities" for visibily checks, so it would always render the whole map.

But it wouldnt be a poroble creating spawnpoints as you wish and use them by random, right?

Spawn points are just entities and those can be placed randomly.. if you can make sure they are within the map

Enemies will not be at fixed locations, and there will not be a fixed amount of enemies, but the levels will stay the same. I think it would be pretty much impossible to randomly generate levels.

Hey, hellborg from DungeonDoom here. I read your discussion about randomization and I can give you the basics of how it was done in DungeonDoom (bsp based Doom3 mod): No entities are placed or moved during randomization. Before level randomization all walls are in place, complete with a vis portal and an aas obstacle. During randomization, selected walls are made invisible and the associated vis portals and aas obstacles are enabled/disabled. Done that way, there is no hit on gameplay performance. Enemies or other objects are spawned from hiden spawnentities that are distributed all over the map and a number of additional objects (light sources, torch models, traps, stairs, ceiling heights) are changed according to the general dungeon structure. Please let me know if you have any questions.

somebody should buy this guy and lock him in a chamber where he codes for Zymotic

Vermeulen wrote:Enemies will not be at fixed locations, and there will not be a fixed amount of enemies, but the levels will stay the same. I think it would be pretty much impossible to randomly generate levels.

Not if you entered the 21st century and interpreted .map files (or atleast had the ability to). Compiled maps are for 486s.

person2 wrote:Not if you entered the 21st century and interpreted .map files (or atleast had the ability to). Compiled maps are for 486s.

You might have noticed that some maps can take hours to compile.. I really doubt this time is wasted by the map compiler.. You might have enough time to load the .map files or accept lower quality maps but i'm quite fine with the current system
Thats my personal opinion.. Maybe you can persuade LordHavoc to code a .map loader for DarkPlaces.

esteel wrote:

person2 wrote:Not if you entered the 21st century and interpreted .map files (or atleast had the ability to). Compiled maps are for 486s.

You might have noticed that some maps can take hours to compile.. I really doubt this time is wasted by the map compiler.. You might have enough time to load the .map files or accept lower quality maps but i'm quite fine with the current system
Thats my personal opinion.. Maybe you can persuade LordHavoc to code a .map loader for DarkPlaces.

"There is more then one way to do things".

I don't know... it seems that things like bzflag https://caethaver2.ath.cx/cat2/ffa-columns.png interpret source map files (5 of which I have written by hand in nedit (a linux text editor) and apply lighting effects on the fly....

It is not impossible, it might be impossible _in your mind_ however. Also the developers might not want to develop anymore, inwhich case they should seek out new people to continue developing.

person2 wrote:"There is more then one way to do things".

I don't know... it seems that things like bzflag https://caethaver2.ath.cx/cat2/ffa-columns.png interpret source map files (5 of which I have written by hand in nedit (a linux text editor) and apply lighting effects on the fly....

It is not impossible, it might be impossible _in your mind_ however. Also the developers might not want to develop anymore, inwhich case they should seek out new people to continue developing.

It _is_ possible. DarkPlaces already runs unvissed and unlit maps quite well when using realtime world lights. As the "q3map2 -meta -bsp" stage runs quite fast anyway, it would not be that much work to integrate this too, although no point either as the first stage of BSP compilation is fast enough.

However, a good lighting simulation does need some CPU and GPU power, and the computers of most Nexuiz players and developers don't have that yet, which is why most players have realtime world lights disabled.

BTW, since you are accusing US of laziness... can you please do a BIT work yourself and fix your invalid (wrong hostname) and expired (hehe) SSL certificate or stop using technology you are not smart enough to manage? Oh wait, you fixed it, you aren't running a web server on port 443 (https) any more... but why are you then posting URLs pointing to it?

Edit: no, you did NOT fix it, you posted the wrong hostname. SSL certificate for cat2.dynu.ca is still invalid and expired:

Code: Select all

Accept unsecure SSL session:Bad cert ident cat2.ath.cx from cat2.dynu.ca
subject=cat2.ath.cx: issuer=cat2.ath.cx

Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 3 (0x2)
        Serial Number: 0 (0x0)
        Signature Algorithm: md5WithRSAEncryption
        Issuer: C=ET, ST=Ether, L=Net, O=CAEthaver2, OU=Inet, CN=cat2.ath.cx
        Validity
            Not Before: Jun  9 18:49:28 2003 GMT
            Not After : Jul  9 18:49:28 2003 GMT
        Subject: C=ET, ST=Ether, L=Net, O=CAEthaver2, OU=Inet, CN=cat2.ath.cx


Hold your horses, dudeds.

Dont make a flame war out of this.

consider this a warning by a .. senior member of the board (not that I have any power)

Guess its too late for this tChr..
As long as people thread the others with repect they are welcome here, but person(2) has a known history of violating that rule over and over again. Bespite this he is/was welcome as long as he did show respect to others. But as you have seen he once again was very rude..

i wonder if one day the darkplace engine will support uncompiled maps that would enable random maps.. there would be extremely cool things that could be done (random diablo like dungeon as a shooter.. go deeper and deeper in the dungeon, kill monsters, gain xp.. well, the rest of the game concept would need to be thinkd of first but you see what i mean..)

Asraniel wrote:i wonder if one day the darkplace engine will support uncompiled maps that would enable random maps.. there would be extremely cool things that could be done (random diablo like dungeon as a shooter.. go deeper and deeper in the dungeon, kill monsters, gain xp.. well, the rest of the game concept would need to be thinkd of first but you see what i mean..)

That'd be excellent for a Pathways Into Darkness remake.

random map generators only work for hallway based games. I mean, can you imagine a random map generator for nexuiz arena style maps?

Vermeulen wrote:random map generators only work for hallway based games. I mean, can you imagine a random map generator for nexuiz arena style maps?

Yup, i can.

(long pause)

Lemmeoutofhere!!!!!!

A completely random map would be horrible.

it wouldnt be completely random. THe idea is the following:

A mapper creates different "modules" like

different hallways
different rooms
etc

they are then "tagged" with things like:

spaceship
dungeon
etc

then the random levelgenerator creates a level with those modules based on the information that is in their tags.

there would also be tags like

level end
level start
special room
etc

with all this it should be possible to create interesting random levels.

i'm wondering why nobody answered on my post. i mean, my idea is possible to do, realy. then combine the random levels with some rpg elements and you get a game that goes in the direction of hellgate london.

Sorry about rezzing this post, but I actually know of a game that creates (sortof) random levels. It's UFO:AI, when the aliens invade your base it creates a level that is based on the current design of your base. The game is based on Q2 (I think) but the technique could probably be adapted to Zymotic, you would have to use an algorithm to generate a design which could then be fed into the thing that creates the level. I don't know how easy, or possible, this would be, but I thought it would be useful to know about.

Enemies will not be at fixed locations, and there will not be a fixed amount of enemies, but the levels will stay the same. I think it would be pretty much impossible to randomly generate levels.

I love levels when there are too many enmies and you have too get somewhere,launch something, destroy or save someone to pass the level.

Vector_Matt wrote:Sorry about rezzing this post, but I actually know of a game that creates (sortof) random levels. It's UFO:AI, when the aliens invade your base it creates a level that is based on the current design of your base. The game is based on Q2 (I think) but the technique could probably be adapted to Zymotic, you would have to use an algorithm to generate a design which could then be fed into the thing that creates the level. I don't know how easy, or possible, this would be, but I thought it would be useful to know about.

I think it's easy with outdoor map, for exemple, Soldier of fortune II (Quake 3 based), the player can play a game on a outdoor random map, with some prefabs buildings.

Totally indoor map maybe possible, but what about diversity ?

Think of nethack. It holds quite good diversity for indoor maps. Arena like maps could use similar generator to create it's arenas but there wouldn't be those corridors that much. generator would consentrate on routes and cross sections of paths what players could go. Then generator need information how premade "toys" like trampolines, catapults, doors etc. work so that generator could be sure that every part of map can be visited.

And if generating of adventure which would be near of nethack experience while player plays the game is too CPU consuming project, why not give an opportunity for wannabee GM:s to precreate an adventure and tweak it a bit?

well, implement random levels, add a inventory system and monsters droping random waepons, and there you have a nethack like shooter... how would i love such a game....i would like to code it myself, but i'm a java coder, and a bad 3d engine coder, so i'm still searching for a engine and programming language i like

I think I may have solved our compile-the-map problem. I'm getting something like 10 computers from my school district. I'm going to make a linux kernel with it. I could put a map compiler on there, so all you'd have to do is sftp the map over and compile it. I'll make accounts for mapmakers. that should hopefully bring the compiling time down

[TSA] Psychiccyberfreak wrote:I think I may have solved our compile-the-map problem. I'm getting something like 10 computers from my school district. I'm going to make a linux kernel with it. I could put a map compiler on there, so all you'd have to do is sftp the map over and compile it. I'll make accounts for mapmakers. that should hopefully bring the compiling time down

And for the bandwidth ?
Imagine if th server must upload a new map all the time :p