Friday, 13 November 2009

Dyson Logos' Marvellous Random Dungeon Maker

Dyson Logos: philanthropist, author of the superb Geodesic Gnomes, blogger and all round excellent fellow embarked on a mission to create a random map generation system using map tiles of discernible rooms. The idea would be for you roll on a table and produce the tile from a set of pre-cut tiles. A charming, bonkers idea that it simply has to work. I like big, bold ideas so much that I tend to throw a bit of myself at them. This time, I'm throwing a bit of myself at Dyson and, chances are I won't get arrested this time.

Forsooth! He's made software out of it

Yes! I've gone and taken all 12 tiles (so far) and performed some digital magic to turn them into a web page that will generate a dungeon for you. You can then print or take a screenshot. Or generate another. The possibilities are endless! Do be careful: changing the values in the boxes will create a new map!

I'm hosting it on a spare web host, so you might find that the location moves in the future (perhaps to Dyson's own blog) but I promise I will leave a forwarding device, so please do bookmark. I hope Dyson keeps going so I can keep adding more tiles to the page, it will look better and better each time. The overlap you see is to make the tiles line up a bit. As they are a little rough in size, you'll find that there can be a bit of overlap. I think it adds character to the result. If you can think of a feature you would like, please do comment.

With some mirth, I'm excited to announce that I haven't told Dyson I'm doing this. So, we all get to see the golden man's aghast internet persona when he discovers this. I see it as piling philanthropy onto philanthropy until we end up in an enormous philanthropic heap. It's a way of saying thank you.

14 comments:

David Macauley said...

I've been following these posts on Dyson's blog, but what you've done is simply fantastic Rob. A big thanks to you both. :)

Will said...

This is...wonderful! I love Dyson's maps, and this makes for fantastic dungeons.

Rob Lang said...

I'm automatically not accepting any thanks or praise. I'm handing them on to Dyson. It only took me an hour, so I simply cannot accept any praise.

Thank you nonetheless.

misterecho said...

well done Dyson!!

no praise for rob.

:)

greywulf said...

Now that's just awe-inspiring brilliance from you both. Yes, even you Rob.

Excellent!

seaofstarsrpg said...

Very cool. Great work!

Restless said...

I hacked (and when I say hacked, I mean hacked) one together today once I saw this. Mine isn't pretty or do options, but it rotates the graphics to give more combinations.

VW: splathos - the pity evoked when you see someone splashed by a car going by.

satyre said...

Now this. This is awesome.

Rob Lang said...

@Everyone, thank you all! The best way to thank us is to follow Dyson's blog.

@Restless - I tried the link earlier and it worked a treat but now it is dead. Would you mind if I added the same functionality to my version? I'll give you props, naturally. Did you do it in JS or PHP on the backend?

Restless said...

Sure, it's no problem! I did it on the backend with PHP. It'd be less load on your host if you did it with Javascript, though. Like I said, I was spending an idle half hour hacking it together, and most of that was trimming the images down a bit in Photoshop.

Dyson Logos said...

Rob, you kick ass.

Restless, nice hack.

Dyson Logos said...

Wow, Rob. Great new look for the blog!

Rob Lang said...

Thanks, Dyson! Glad you like it. Have found a solution to the rotating images in javascript and will be giving it a go this coming week. :)

new2rpg said...

love the new layout, very swish!