First Stages - Map Generation

A player and his minion in a procedurally generated map.

The above picture shows a preview of the procedural map generation implemented in the game. The algorithms used are outlined in a blog post by Bob Nystrom. The basic idea is that you provide a few simple parameters like map dimensions, maximum number of rooms, and so on, and then the generator goes through a couple stages to come up with what you see in the above screenshot.

To summarize:

1. Randomly place rooms of varying sizes within the map dimensions (up to the amount provided). Don't add any rooms that would overlap.
2. Fill in the remaining empty space (not occupied by rooms) with mazes.
3. Go through and randomly add doors between mazes and rooms until all mazes and rooms are connected.
4. Remove maze dead ends.
5. Scale the maps by a certain amount (otherwise hallways for example are only 1 tile wide).
6. Create a new map using the scaled map to designate specific sprites. The scaled map only has 4 tile types specified: empty, floor, wall, and door tiles, while the total sprites used are over 10. The new map determines things like which wall corner sprites to use among other details.

In the above video (and screenshot), you can also see one more feature added. As the player goes behind walls, they fade out so you can see through them. As soon as you walk in front of the wall, it goes back to fully visible. This effect was copied from the Diablo series. The algorithm used basically scans the tiles below the player, and if it finds a wall (either along the x or y-axis), it goes along the wall in both directions along the same axis and fades it out. This way you never have an issue seeing as you are fighting behind a wall.