Theme levels

[andrew wright]

Like when a level is destroyed, the whole layout is different. You could extend the idea to include variations where certain creatures that live there are the only inhabitants and the items found and maze layout all change. These would be very rare theme levels.

Examples of theme ideas:

Theme                       items                              layout
--------------------------------------------------------------------
dark elf city level |  more magic/ less weap |wide streets
dwarven hall       | + $ but less  items      __|  big halls
spiders nest        |           none          __|narrow with lairs
ant hill               _|       corpses          |narrow with centre
hobbit town      |       wine,food          |narrow with rooms
city of giants     |  armour heavier      |     wide with pits

[andrew wright]

ascii table lost with font change

[andrew wright]

1) There would be the same number of creatures but would all be the same type to fit in with the theme.

2) There would be a lot of completely different maze layouts possible from those at present.

3) The theme levels would be sufficiently rare to add interest but not significantly change the game

[andrew wright]

The theme levels would still be completely randomly generated of course, but the layout would be generated through a completely different algorithm to the standard one. Just like the destoryed levels are completely different.

[Berendol]

I personally like this idea. If you'd be so kind as to write some very specific and working code or pseudo-code for the generation algorithms, I'd like to give it a shot. I have a few of my own level generation codes in my archives too, but they're really slow.

[andrew wright]

'Dark elf city with wide straight streets
'An idea expressed in pseduo code

'Begin
Set up a normal maze
column = left
row = top

'Tunnel out wide straight veritcal streets in addition to
'maze
while column before last column
 if 1 chance in 10
    tunnel out a block of rock 4 wide all the way down
 else
   keep original maze pattern 4 wide all the way down
 end if
 add 4 to column
loop

'Tunnel out wide straight HORIZONTAL streets in
'addition to maze
while row before bottom row
 if 1 chance in 10
    tunnel out a block of rock 4 wide all the way across
 else
   keep original maze pattern 4 wide all the way across
 end if
 add 4 to row
loop

Don't forget to make all inhabitants of the city dark elves

[andrew wright]

Variations incude changes to frequency of streets that the dark elves dig out and making the streets miander about more.

[andrew wright]

Note: the elves would tunnel out streets in addition to the pre-existing maze with no streets. The streets would be on top of the normal maze. You would have street corners, cross roads etc where streets meet.

[Crimson]

Part of the extensions in newer angband include the llua system, which is a python "attribute"  system for levels and objects.

This is the natural place to make these templates.

You do not have to wait for mangband to be updated to start this work, if you like.  If ithe generation code works in Angband, it'll work in mangband, once mangband has the lua system incorporated in it.

Crimson

[Berendol]

Elf levels!

Hmm... that algorithm sounds like it would make some *really* ugly levels. I think it should be entirely different from the usual, instead of mining out randomly-spaced grids.

I always thought of elves as lovers of nature and beauty, so the whole level should be somewhat open, and there should be curves, symmetrical designs, streams of water, islands of grass, and small groves of trees. All of this lit intricately with round perma-light sources (radius of a dwaren lantern?) to make it a treat to look at. Items and monsters should be themed definitely, but drops might want to be normal but biased so the norm is about halfway towards themed.

[Ashi]

One thing you'd have to keep in mind about a dark elf level is that it should only be allowed to generate in a specific depth range. It would be a quick death for a newcomer on 50 ft, and a high-level player on 6350 ft could destroy any dark elf monster with a snap of his fingers and but a mean glance.
This would be a great place to add dungeon towns, though. (With elf shopkeepers of course )

[Berendol]

We could do the Dwarven Mines, like in Nethack, too. Hmmmm.... If only there were viably fast level generation algorithms! Perhaps a simple blit-like algorithm would pick random groups to fill the dungeon, over x iterations, or as a tile-grid system. I've seen it done successfully elsewhere. I do have an idea of how to do multiple dungeons or side dungeons, and it simply involves some extra fields in the level info. Starting depth, ending depth, and theme. Of course there would have to be a second set of stairs to accomodate this, and these side dungeons would have to be static. Not a problem, I think. All level, object, and monster generation functions would have to check the theme field and create the appropriate stuff. It could get REALLY tedious, coding all this.

I don't know any LUA.. what version of vanilla Angband actually uses it?? I need to find a good resource to help me learn it, too.