Evil Science

A classic by The Onion, reporting on the 1969 Moon Landings. And whilst we’re on the subject of The Onion, here’s another classic: Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’.

Display albums by year on your iPod using this tool.

Handy, but  Windows only.

Here is a nice “Dungeons and Dragons” style map generator.

Uncle Fatty has a number of detailed thoughts on the subject. Check it out.

Gordon Lipford has a very good tutorial on computing line of sight for large areas. It’s really worth a look.

Behold (again)! An improved map generator for a roguelike game:

It’s in C# and you can find the source code and a compiled executable here. As you can see in the above screenie you have two buttons called build and reset - if you can’t guess what they’re for you shouldn’t be reading this. You can also adjust properties using the grid, which will affect the appearance of the map produced.

Map generating is as follows:

1. Create a room in the centre of the map, and randomly place a corridor that connects to it.
2. Is the number of rooms created less than the property maxRoom?
   1. Yes - end
   2. No - go to step 3.
3. Generate a number between 1 and 100:
   1. If less than 20 - attempt to build a new corridor on a randomly point on an existing corridor.
   2. If less than 40 - attempt to build a corridor on the end of a random corridor.
   3. If less than 60 - attempt to build a corridor on the randomly selected side of a room.
   4. If less than 80 - attempt to build a room off a randomly selected corridor. If a room is built increment room counter.
   5. If less than 100 - attempt to build a room off an end of a randomly selected corridor. If a room is built increment room counter.
4. Go to step 2.

Note: All of the probabilities defined in step 3 can be changed in the properties grid.

There are many, many ways to generate a map / dungeon. The method described above is something that works for me, but can certainly be improved upon. If do can improve it, let me know and I’ll add it to the site.

I strongly advise you to check out Cthulhu Tract by Fred Van Lente and Steve Ellis. It’s brilliant.

I don’t like the look on Pope Benedict XVI’s face! He’s up to no good!

Behold! An extremely simple Rougelike map generator. You can find the C# source code and compiled executable here.

It’s rather simple: the class called map contains a public method called build that will randomly build a map; there is a public two dimensional array called gameMap that contains the map; and to reset a public method called resetmap which resets the map.

The map building process can be summarised as follows:

1. Build a single room in the centre of the map.
2. Pick a random point on the map adjacent to closed cell.
3. Decide upon a new feature to build.
4. See if there is room to add the new feature.
   1. Yes - go to step 5.
   2. No - go back to step 2.
5. Add the feature. If the feature is a room increment the room counter.
6. Go back to step 3, until the room counter exceeds the maximum number of rooms required.

The form’s property grid contains 7 properties that are used in the generation of the map: their names are self evident, and changing them will change the characteristics of the final map.Obviously, this produces a primitive looking map: chaotic and sprawling, but it’s a nice effect and looks like the sort of thing a crazed horde of goblins would actually build…..