Hey guys, just wanted to throw a suggestion your way.

How about using a seed scheme for generating level layouts? The idea is that each generated level would have a number associated with it (the seed). The seed would normally be chosen at random, but if a group wanted to play the same layout again later, they could enter the seed of that level.

Most other things could still be more random (encounters, etc.), but I think having the layout of a level be seed-based might be an idea. Thoughts?

_________________
What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Obviously you need to use seeds. Otherwise you have to send a lot of information about the level over the network. But I don't think letting people pick seeds is a good idea. It would be easy to cheat to get specific items to drop or keep replaying an imbalanced (too easy) level.

Well yeah, that's why I said it would be mostly for level layout. The rest of the stuff (items, encounters, et al) would be generated via a clock-generated seed.

The reasoning is mainly for when someone finds a level built in a way that's really groovy, they can opt to play through that level again. If you wanted to though, you could have everything (including item drops and encounters) the same, and just make the program not save the player's progress when using their own seed. It would be a good option for single-player "quickplay" and allow the player to "do over" a level he or she has trouble with, or just really likes.

edit: Also, you probably want to send the level data anyway, since (AFAIK) different CPU architectures produce different random numbers, even if a seed is used.

_________________
What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

You wouldn't need generate typical random values, but rather just alter the value. All you would need are bit shifts, XOR, AND, OR, and NOT to generate good enough values, and all of those should result in the same values no matter the processor. Then to make use of mod, which I am assuming is used for generating the maps, just make sure it takes into account endianness.

In any case, I don't see it being difficult at all to, given a seed value, generate the same map across all supported platforms.

_________________
NetGore - Open source online RPG engine

Seeds are an obvious must.

_________________
In brightest day, in blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!
Twitter!

.NET's Random class is not CPU dependent and is more than ample for any random level generation purposes.

While this is a cool idea, it's outside of the scope of the project.

_________________
Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

What!? How? Any proper level generator would/should have this built in by default.

_________________
In brightest day, in blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!
Twitter!

Agreed. It is not like it is more effort to do (it is actually less since you don't have to come up with a way to store or transmit level data).

It is more effort in that you have to give the player a way to indicate that he wants to replay a level. As for the level generator having this by default I haven't seen the code yet so don't know how Jasmine is doing it.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but for now it's not part of what the project is supposed to do. The project needs to get done without any scope creep.

_________________
Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

Even if they can't enter a seed to be able to play the level again the level should still be created using a seed. If only to make it easier to send the map data over the network.

_________________
In brightest day, in blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!
Twitter!

As Jasmine already has code to generate the levels (and pretty good looking ones at that!) we'll have to wait and see what the code looks like.

_________________
Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

Even if his code is not set up properly for seeding, I will happily modify it to allow seeding. That was my primary interest in working on the random level generator anyway.

This.

_________________
In brightest day, in blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!
Twitter!

Here.. I'm tired of holding onto this thing ... I can't do anymore till Machaira decides what strength the monsters are going to be, and/or builds a way of testing/tweaking them.

It should be fairly simple to convert, although I think some variables will no doubt need converting from singles to integers. And a random number routine making for seeding.

Struan, the random numbers don't need to be that random, because the dungeon layout is kind of chaotic. I would think a simple

to be sufficient.

I think I get what it is doing, but could you add some comments on the variables just so I am sure what each variable is supposed to represent.

I will edit that now.

Also, the random number function described works. I've just tried it, so you can add the seed as an argument to the generator function.





edit: (+15 minutes) comments added. I hope that's adequate. Ask any more questions.