Hey there! LB requested a maze generation a couple of weeks ago.
In his (and mine) opinion, Pathfinding Object's maze generation is too limited and buggy. So I sat down and tried to program a maze generator, but failed.
Now, about 5 days ago, RickyRombo requested such an extension again - and z33z, author of the Pathfinding Object, posted a link to an open-ource dungeon generator.
It really impressed me, so I tried to program an extension that implements the library. It was really easy, and I'm really happy with the results.

Here are some screenshots and explanations.
All these were generated using the inbuilt painter for the Overlay Object.

<-- A classic maze. Very random structure, many deadends.
This was generated using the default settings.

http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/1.png
The same maze with rooms. Rooms are always rectangular.
The red rectangles are doors.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/2.png
Many small rooms, doesn't take much longer to generate.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/3.png
No deadends at all.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/4.png
Not very random, but not very sparse either.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/5.png
Super sparse.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/6.png
Random and sparse. Pretty boring.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/7.png
Bigger mazes are possible, too! Even mazes 5 times as big are generated quickly on most computers.

http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/8.png
No thick walls, but a grid.
http://clickteam.info/looki/Pictures/Dungeon/9.png
Yay, colors.

Notes

If you enter 10x10 as size, the size will be 21x21.
The formula is pretty easy, (X*2+1). (X-1)/2 to convert it back.
Internally, the maze is stored in blocks with a wall at the top or left side, walls don't have their own block, that's why.
There are convertion expressions for those who don't want to use formulas.

The painter only works with Overlay now.
I'll add image export (BMP,PNG...) later.

Just look at the example to get some idea how it works.

Get the latest beta here. Have fun testing!
http://clickteam.info/looki/Extensions/Beta/Dungeon.zip

Wow, cool

Could this work with the raycast extension and make random mazes to be displayed by raycast? That would be cool...

Also a way to have keys to open certain doors? Doubt it will be possible...

Anyway, excellent work

Hey! I'm sure you'll be able to combine this with the Raycasting object.

That key thing would require a lot of logic and math.. not sure if I can do it.

OMG, this is awsome!
Must figure out how to implement into a game

Iv'e always tried to do this type of thing using fastloops but failed due to lack of know how.

My algorithms weren't very good but they did the trick and created the maze.

Now thanks to you it's a Jillion times easier.

Just tried this with the Raycasting object and it works like a charm
Awesome extension!

Small bug I noticed: If you set minimum number of rooms to say 1 and leave maximum number of rooms at 0 it crashes!

This is very cool, Looki! Great job!

stephen1980

Told you it was going to be famous, Looki!

I absolutely love it!

Hey, that's awesome! Really easy to use and super easy to tweak, this is really great.

Only problem I have with it now is that when you use actives to paint the maze rooms end up looking pretty bad. Are you going to take this extension further to make tile based engines work better with rooms? Like each wall being a full tile thick?

It's mentioned in part 10 from the link z33z posted in the other thread, it's under "Converting to Tiles" in this link:
http://dirkkok.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/generating-random-dungeons-part-10/

That would make this already amazing extension immensely more useful in my opinion. There could be an "(x,y) is door?" condition so you could make each door be an active object.

I know this is just a beta so maybe you've already got that planned and didn't say, but I'm just making sure the idea is out there.




I dunno how doable this is, but it's just a fun idea I had cause this made me think of NetHack. Maybe you could work in a "room type" system? So you'd have a random chance of floors in a room being categorized as a specific type of room.
It could be like this:
Room type 1- 50% chance
Room type 2- 25% chance
Room type 3- 25% chance
and it would randomly assign room tiles that variable or something. Then you'd have a "(x,y) is roomtype(1)" condition. Then in your own code (this part isn't built into the extension of course" you'd be able to create certain items on the floor if it was that type.
example: Room type 1 = treasure room, user randomly generates treasures on the floor.
Again just a fun suggestion, if you've got the time or if it's easy to do. I imagine it'd be pretty useful.


Sorry for all that, this extension is just really exciting!
Thanks for working on this!

Thanks, DanielRiehn. Fixing it.
Sheexy, that second link z33z posted is a different algorithm. I I agree it would be useful - I'll try to convert the code to work with the extension.
The treasure generation is kind of supported by the library, if I'm not mistaken. Floor types aren't, I agree that would be cool.

Thanks for all the reviews!

EDIT: Uh, I just noticed the examples are not in Examples\Dungeon Object but Examples\! Sorry.