Room types & outdoor areas

Lately, a lot of thought has been put into categorizing types of rooms and possible shapes for these rooms.

I also did a quick mockup today of how outdoor areas would be generated.  There's a lot of adjustments needed before I'm satisfied with the generated results, mainly the size and environment colours, but adding a sun already helps.  Makes me think I should really consider adding a time/day.

Because I did a major rewrite on how rooms are being generated, I had to make slight adjustments to the logic in which ramps spawn; so I spent some time doing that.  The last screenshot shows (it's a bit dark, mind you) how ramps can easily get out of control!  There are everywhere!

It's starting to take SHAPE! HA!

I didn't post until now because there was a lot of "thinking things through" and a lot less "doing" going on.  It's hard to show pictures of mere (and incomplete) ideas unless you're showing concept art and I don't want to reveal any of that just yet... because, yes, I have been doing some concept art.  Besides, the infrastructure of the game hasn't completely solidified yet and that's where most of the thinking has been about.

Last month, I mentioned that I wanted to focus a bit more on the 3D Art "by the end of the month" and, as far as that is concerned, "organic" was the recurring theme.  The current 3D models that you see in the screenshots so far have been redone because everything looked too much like you're surrounded by a bunch of boxes.  So there was a lot of brainstorming to see if something couldn't be done to make it look more natural.  The basic ideas are the same, the execution of the art is different and more akin to what the final game will use both in looks and how it's modeled (polygon count, etc).

The new 3D assets aren't in the build just yet because they're far from being completed but the results I'm seeing so far are very promising and I can't wait too put them in.  For now, I'm content on using the old assets as my basic construction tool for the programming side.

The programming side has received a major change.  Most of the code has been re-written (again) so that it's organized in such a way that I can actually start building the game as opposed to just a mere "random cave generator".  There was a lot of planning involved in trying to figure out how to structure the code and, as far as I'm concerned, I think it's done now... it might be more efficient too.

Lastly, a lot of thought has been put into how rooms are being generated.  They started as square rooms, then they evolved into more uniquely shaped yet still very square-like but now I got it all setup where I can build even more unique shapes... with more 3D-ness involved.

The cool part is that the shapes can now be based on the type of dungeon I want.  Man-made structures such as crypts, keeps or shops shouldn't be too organic while prairies, forests and caves should have varied terrain elevations, etc.

These are very exciting times!