JonMillyMiles @jonmillymiles - Tumblr Blog

Not quite!!!

Well that didn’t work. After succeeding with the Recursive Backtracker and noticing the speed of dungeon generation, I tried a more efficient “scan and place” methodology, but it didn’t go as I expected. The premise is simple: Place a room Find a random tile adjacent to a tile Place a corridor or room. Goto 2 Sounds simple but there are a couple of things that need to be considered with this.…

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#3D Level Design #barriers #Computer Games Design #coping strategies #Games #gaming #positivity #Procedurally generated content #UE4 #Uni #University #Unreal Engine 4 #videogames

Curse of the Recursive Backtracker

Curse of the Recursive Backtracker - Procedural dungeon generation in #UE4 #gamedev #proceduralgames #unrealengine4

In my previous post I explained that there were several choices that I was considering for generating my maze. The first was Eller’s Algorithm, the next the recursive backtracker and finally a more linear corridor and room generation algorithm. In this post I will go through what has turned out to be a most surprising turn of events. Firstly, I need to say that Eller’s Algorithm was fast… the…

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Eller's Algorithm

Eller’s Algorithm

Continuing on from where I left off, I need to begin to create corridors to join my rooms together. To do this there are many ways I could employ… I could place a room, pick a random square and test for an adjacent tile then spawn a corridor or a new room. This is then repeated until the desired map is generated. I could place a random number of rooms and build a maze between them before finally…

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Major Rework

Following the last stage of my project I identified a few concerns:

Some of the rooms overlap

The rooms overlap the tiles

When the rooms overlap we get glitching

There are no structured corridors – yes we need to raise this one now

So to begin to fix this we need to do a few things… we need to combine our room building algorithm into the Map blueprint rather than having them separate. By doing…

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Why I love maths

Maths tends to be one of those subjects that people either love, or loath. Those who love it like its pure nature – the is a method and as long as you follow that method all it will always work. Others, like me, love the way that you can solve problems with it and use it to describe the world around us. Then there are those people that hate it, and who can blame them, because it is often such an…

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Hooray for Arrays!!

I’ve encountered a problem, I can make the random rooms, and I can make corridors – they’re just a random room that is a single square wide – but I’ve tried to get them to join up and I cant.

At present, everything is spawned as a separate object… and I can’t get them to read their coordinates from each other properly. I could read the x and y world coordinates from the room object and get the…

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#3D Level Design #barriers #Computer Games Design #Design #gaming #positivity #Procedurally generated content #UE4 #Uni #University #Unreal Engine 4

Interactive Media Experimentation - 6DM06

Interactive Media Experimentation – 6DM06

Aim – to create a blueprint that procedurally generates a dungeon as a level for a game.

Procedurally generated content is created within the game engine at run time through the use of an algorithm rather than being designed by a level designer. In order to effect good game play from the level it is essential that the algorithm is tweaked to generate best effect for the game style that is…

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#Computer Games Design #Procedurally generated content #UE4 #Uni #University #Unreal Engine 4

Sidetracked

My foray into Blueprints has led me down an involving and complex route and taken me off to the side for about a week. It was only this morning that I realised that not only was the work I was doing not going to help, it would pretty much put an end to the design that I created at the start of this module.

These are the level plans for the first area of the game. They feature areas where modular…

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We do the Monster Mesh!!

Within Unreal Engine 4, as with UDK, there are two types of scenery: basic BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) brushes and static meshes.

BSP brushes are used to create large pieces of architecture but are unwieldy to use well but they allow for the easy use of tiled textures to enable the production of quick and easy structures. They are also used for creating volumes, areas of game space with…

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#3D Level Design #assets #best practice #Computer Games Design #Design #UE4 #Uni #University #Unreal Engine 4

Blueprints of Life

A major difference with Unreal Engine 4 and the Unreal Development Kit is that nearly everything within UE4 can be placed within a Blueprint: these are essentially objects (meshes, lights, actors, etc.) and code in a single reusable entity. This means that it is possible for entire interactive objects to be created and manipulated and then reused several times within the game.

As my methodology…

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Advanced 3D Level Design - Disasteroid

With the start of a new 3D module comes a chance to get back into blogging for what I consider to be one of the most fun elements of my degree: 3D Level Design.

In this module we have to take our prowess at level design a stage further than we did before, taking our skills and the engine that we are using to new heights. This time I thought that rather than take things backwards in time like I…

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Shiny Syndrome: The Scourge of Learning Technologies

Shiny Syndrome: The Scourge of Learning Technologies - a blog post about introducing new tech #EdTech #LearnTech #Tech

Shiny Syndrome: A weakness that causes the afflicted person to crave something new or “shiny” just because it is new or “shiny”.

I was on LinkedIn the other week and I spotted a post by one of my contacts linking to an article on the three phases of technology in HR and comparing it to the Learning and Development community. A quick précis for you:

Phase 1: Automation of old processes

Phase 2:…

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