Some Cave Generation

This weekend I was struggling trying to create my map generation, so I finally researched the topic and came up with a few algorithms to use.  My cave like tunnel maps are going to be using my own version of the Cellular Automata algorithm.   After some tweaking and some different ideas I came with something that I can say is quite feasible.  

Here are some of the maps it generated:

   As you can see I still have some rooms that are not reachable but I am happy with the random "Tunnel look it gives.  Next steps:

1. Find access to those pesky little rooms.
2. Start creating support for the rooms add events.
3. Start adding doors to areas that look food for it
4. Adding lakes and rivers - bridges
5. Find larger areas in the map and maybe create monsters fortresses.

   The possibilities are endless

Map Generation First Idea Failed Time for Plan B

   My first plan in creating a Room Styled Dungeon was to create a map with random sized rooms and place them within the maps bounds.  This created maps that looked like this:

 

   Now granted this is random I didn't like the fact that the rooms where always squares and rectangles.  What if I wanted to make a L-shaped room bend around another room?  Also the way I did this was just making a text room and fill it in the map buffer.  The only way I could add doors and or corridors within these maps would be constant rereading of the map to find plausible places for doors and cooridors.

PLAN B:

   So I created a Room class that holds tokens.  Tokens will be the connectors from one map to another, doors from one room to another, and other special events that can happen in a map.  Maybe a pit? A treasure chest that holds items?  And the Tokens placement within the room.  I am planning on adding scripts in Eracia later on, each room could hold multiple scripts, storyline, and epic battles.  

   

   The Room class will have an ID in the map it is within and the door tokens will tell the map which room the player is within.  This could help intelligent Monsters "hear" the player and run to stop our hero from achieving victory.  I could also add path nodes within each Room, so these intelligent monsters will know exactly where to go to stop our "noisy" hero.  The possibilities are endless! /brainstorm

   This is Plan B generation idea.  Start with one room givae it an ID of 1 and add the connector token from the map to the new one.  Place the Player Start token there so the Player don't start at 0, 0 or whatever other placement on last map was.  Maybe add some random items and or Monsters.  Now find a random place on the map, give it a shape add some noise to it so its not a perfect square or rectangle and place it in the map.  Write down some coordinates where its walls are and find a wall to place a door token.  Create another room with the door token from Room 1 and give it ID 2, again maybe add some random items or Monsters, maybe have it bend around room one?  Maybe create another Room to bend around Room 1? Or maybe start at Room 1 again and go another way?

   That is my next approach to this.  I hope to work on this tonight and have it finished by Monday.

Update v0.0.1b

Update v0.0.1b:

1. Added Keyboard support for the arrow keys
2. Created Map class and it can create a very crude random Map
3. Player can move his token around in the map
4. The Map scrolls with the player
5. The walls block the players movement

Its a small update but at least I got a map finally!

Events and Entities Display and Im Still Alive!

Finally after three days I got the EventLog and the EntityList to work.  There is always room for improvements.

So far The EventLog supports:

1. Messages Like the first line.
2. Multiple Entity lines.
3. Actions
4. Scrolls from the bottom up
5. Certain words will be different colors
6. Entity names will be their colors

Things I still wish to work on:

1. Make the EventLog scrollable atm it erases anything after the twelfth line
2. Word wrap atm if a event is more than 80 characters longer it will give an out of bounds error
3. More Dynamic messages.

The EntityList supports:

1. The Entity's name
2. The Entity's Symbol
3. The Entity's Color
4. Stacks with like Entities
5. Supports up to 12 different Entities

Things I wish to work on:

1. Make it Scrollable also, atm if all 12 lines have entities it just does nothing for its addEntity method
2. ATM I dont have any methods that will delete an Entity from the list.  I really should add that.

All the Events, Entities and Player Stats are Dummy test data to see if things work.

Here is a screen shot so far:

Eracia's First Screenshot and Plan B

   Here is my concept ideas of what Eracia's UI will sort of look like:

   I used Java's JPanels, JLabels, and JTextArea's for this look.  However these things in Java are very limited on text coloring, size and backgound.  Sadly you cannot have multiple colors on a JLabel or JTextAreas.  So I am jumping to plan B.
   
    In Plan B I will be creating my own JPanel through inheritance where I will override its paintComponent method.  This way I can change the color of each character if I wish.  The map display has this already, the stats panel and bottom panel which holds the events log and entity window will now support this idea.