Random Dungeon Generator (Game Maker Studio 2.3)

Introduction

This Random Dungeon Generator combines user-defined chambers to create a dungeon.
The user-defined chambers are simple sprites that use color coding (user can customize the color detection).
The system does not require any objects to use and is easy to integrate into your own project as it can rely only on the provided scripts

Requirements

• At least Game Maker Studio 2.3
• Some sprites

Features

• Creates dungeons from user-defined sprites
• Highly customizable due to the user being able to define chambers by sprites (uses color-coding for recognition)
• Allows for automatically applying Wall-Metadata around ChamberGround, Hallways and open Connectors. This can be toggled on/off
• Returns a generic ds_grid with information about the dungeon layout. This can be used in ANY Game Maker Studio Project and even outside of such projects

Samples

These are some random dungeons generated using the provided sample chamber sprites.
The results shown here are drawn pixel-by-pixel using the underlying ds_grid.

Dungeon with high amount of chamber offset

Dungeon with AutoWalls applied (closed corners deactivated)

Sample Dungeon with Player interaction

Output format

Once the dungeon was created the system will provide a ds_grid which contains one of the enumeration-values of the ColorMeaning enumeration.
The values you will encounter are

• Connector => A connector was found on this position
• Hallway => A hallway was created on this position, connecting chambers
• ChamberGround => This is chamber ground
• Padding => Padding applied around a chamber. You usually can ignore this
• AutoWall => Walls that were applied around ChamberGround, Hallway and open Connector. Applying auto-walls can be switched on/off in the options
• Unknown => Empty Space

In addition to these pre-defined metadata-types you can also defined you own "meanings" using the ColorAssignment-Struct that is used on the RandomDungeonGenerator.
Take a look at the dungeonCreator-Object on how to define custom colors.

In addition to the ds_grid you can also retrieve a ds_list of placed chambers with information on how each chamber is connected. Use the placedChambers property on the DungeonPreset-Struct for this.

Creating chamber sprites

Without chamber sprites there can be no dungeon. Each chamber sprite needs some ground and connectors. At least one connector on two different sides need to be placed on a chamber.

About Connectors

Connectors come in two variations: Vertical and horizontal. Depending on how the pixel of a connector are placed on the chamber sprite the connector will either be detected as a horizontal or vertical connector. Vertical connectors have a height of 1 and a width of > 1. Horizontal connectors have a width of 1 and a height of > 1. In addition to the connectors orientation it also has a facing direction. This facing direction is dependend of the pixels surrounding the connector. For a horizontal connector the facing direction is left when the pixel to the right of the connector are chamber ground. The facing direction is right when the pixel to the left of the connector are chamber ground. For a vertical connector the facing direction is up when the pixel below the connector are chamber ground. The facing direction is down when the pixel above the connector are chamber ground.

About Hallways

Chambers are connected to each other by hallways. A hallway will be created from one connector to another. Only connectors with the same orientation can be connected (horizontal to horizontal, vertical to vertical). Even with the same orientatin (vertical/horizontal) only connectors with a opposite facing direction are able to connect (left to right, right to left, up to down, down to up). The width of a hallway depens on the dimension of the used connector.

Current limitations

• Can not limit how many times each chamber is used
• Builts one long dungeon from start to end but does NOT create branches
• Depending on the chamber layout crossing hallways could appear
• Depending on chamber sprite size and amount of chambers to be placed the required ds_grid can become quite large before being cropped. This could potentially crash your game. I would advice testing results with various different amounts of chambers.
• Initial loadup could be slow depending on the size and amount of chambers