Experiments with Procedural Generation, Part 1

Dungeon Generator

Tools: LUA, Love2D, ZeroBrane Studio

Since Itch.io is having a procedural game jam in November which I'd like to participate in, I decided it might be a good idea to use 1GAM to get some practice with procedural generation.

My October 1GAM project is a top-down rogue-lite shooter that takes place in procedurally generated dungeons where you fight procedurally generated enemies. The plan is to have a virtually unlimited amount of procedurally generated weapons and gear to collect and choose from. Because the end of the month is nearing I am likely only going to get a simplified version of this done by the end, but I am definitely going to continue working on this game past the end of the month.

The dungeon generation system is pretty powerful and flexible. I can completely change the look and feel of the dungeons being generated just by tweaking a few small settings.

Here are some dungeons generated using settings designed to create disorganized, cave-like dungeons with lots of open spaces:

In those screenshots, green and red tiles mark the entrance and exit of a level, blue marks a dead end which is a place where chests or other nice things can spawn, and cyan blocks mark big open spaces where we can potentially spawn a lot of enemies at once to create some big, interesting battles.

And here are some dungeons generated using settings designed to make more square, man-made looking dungeons with many straight hallways and corners, and few open spaces:

As you can see, just by having a few different predetermined settings to select from I can potentially generate a huge variety of levels that all feel and play completely differently.