To test out the new tile engine I made a simple yet effective random cave generator. Here you can see a video of a physics-based character walking on a very large randomly generated map. The map size here is 13312×13312 pixels and was generated in about 23 seconds. The world size can be of course infinitely large (well as large as your hard drive). This is possible because I only stream the part of the map that is needed at the moment. On the video you can see that there is only part of the map visible at any given time. This is to show you how it works. New map parts are loaded when needed. Of course in the full game the loading won’t be visible at all.
Large map and cave generator test
Written by MM. Posted at 7:20 pm on May 22nd, 2009
18 comments.
Post a comment.
an interesting thing to do would be to have a truly infinitly large map. I think that this could be done 2 ways:
1. create a tileable map, this way, would take another fancy algorythm. this would work for a top, down shooter on a planetoid.
2. as the screen moves, generate new map portions that would be added to the viewable portion, the portions that move outside of the screen would be removed from the memory.
I’ve used both for games, the first one in a space shooter, yet to be completed. The second for an interesting survival game.
Looking good.
Although destructible terrain doesn’t go with smaller man-made maps, it would just ROCK in those random caves!
How much memory that map might need, including all layers, tiles, and everything?
looking good!
Clive Jericho: Yes its very easy to make a truly infinite map from here, but its not the aim for Link-Dead. Maybe for our future games. Sigvatr has plans to make a rogue-like.
How much memory that map might need, including all layers, tiles, and everything?
Finally it will take 10-50MB in memory. Might be slow for 32mb video cards, does anybody still have them?
This is pretty neat… although what purpose will this have in the final product? I’m not sure how this can work for a fun online match!
You probably do not need to worry about these smaller hardware limitations in the first place.
1. There’s going to be a chunk of hardware release time before the game is actually released.
2. If you need to ask, these people are probably not in your target demographic anyway.
According to http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ about 3% of steam users have 64 MB of VRAM or less. The vast majority have 128 MB or more.
#2 being true if you are the market the game is being designed for.
(Just to clear up my opinion.)
I’m at my parents house right now, my internet will get connected again within 7 days.
Probably the biggest concern with the random level generation is how long it will take to generate a level. We’ve yet to see how long it is going to take to generate a complete map with multiple image layers composed of multiple image layers, dynamic fog map generation, dynamic lighting and parallax scrolling backgrounds.
I think a realistic goal will be to get a level to be generated in under a minute on a decent computer. It’s also possible to have level generation on the fly, but it might take a tough computer. Would be pretty awesome though.
I don’t understand how this is different from SOLDAT ?
What does the game bring new ?
Have you seen that the guys at 3D realms totally failed because they took too long to bring out the fucking game ?
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1127
They probably wasted all the money and resources(and a big part of that was probably eaten by hungry managers and chiefs) , and in your case you’re probably safe from that as you have a small company that and only you’re working.
Michal is coding like a fucking snail , when the f*** is he going to ramp it up ?
Michal , are you snail buddy ? Can you quit that fucking beer and get to work ?
I mean what you’re showing us a side-scrolling fucking man and a cave , what is this ? kindergarten ?
I want to see some hardcore coding from your side , don’t let me down , I was among the biggest fans of Soldat
I really hope that was just a sad troll.
Randomly generated maps etc. are always cool tho.
Make random bunker complex generator next! 😀
This could be a single-player survival game mode. Infinitely large random cave map, full of enemies. Make the cave walls casting shadows and you can’t see the enemies behind walls.
>What does the game bring new ?
>Michal is coding like a fucking snail
Troll.
Yes , I’m a troll
now what ?
MMORPG shooter?…. possably??
really excited about the game!!!
rofl – DARK AVENGER’s comments always get me motivated.