How does level gen work?

[wobbly]

Are there paramaters to adjust the size? Or the number of rooms? Is there an easy way to say, make the 1st ten levels small levels?

[Huqhox]

That's not a bad idea. Make the first 10 (or whatever) levels around half the size. You'd still have the gradual introduction for new players but without them getting bored exploring the whole of a full size level (which they will because that is how other games work)

[luneya]

Plus, even for those of us who plan to dive rather than exploring (strictly speaking, it doesn't matter which you do on the early levels, which are low risk-low reward propositions; I usually wait just long enough for the level feeling to tell me if an artifact or extreme ood treasure was generated, because hanging around isn't risky), big levels impede diving because you often have to explore the whole thing just to find the damn downstair.

[Nick]

lib/gamedata/dungeon_profile.txt has the names of all the possible level types - currently levels are roughly half classic, half modified, with the occasional cavern or labyrinth. Then src/gen-cave.c has generation functions for each of these, named classic_gen(), modified_gen(), etc.

Level sizes are set at the start of the generation functions.

[wobbly]

Thanks Nick! Much appreciated, I'm sure I'll end up asking a lot of these annoying question about where things are (though I've worked out that most of them say what they contain when I open them).

Anyway I tried comparing Os code here & woah a lot's changed.... but not? At least it seems to do the same thing organized much differently? So if I find the right no.s for O & find where they go in V it should generate an O-level? Anyway I've downloaded Sils code & while I suspect it'll have some hackery to generate forges I might be able to pinch the numbers from there & see if it'll generate a Sil sized level.

[Pete Mack]

I looked it up.
http://www.phial.com/angband/mods-28X.html

^;

is the inscription for 'do not attack' as of V2.8

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

I looked it up.
http://www.phial.com/angband/mods-28X.html

^;

is the inscription for 'do not attack' as of V2.8

Just tried it.... Not quite. ^; inscription prevents walking, which I suppose works for the unintended digger situation, but little else. It won't work for the unintended ESP swap weapon or the pure pacifist.

[wobbly]

Ok, turns out half of this is simple? There's already a scaling factor based on depth in there. Of course it ends up generating too many stairs & you get all of the dogs on top of you at once, but hey fun right? Not sure whether it's easier spliting the smaller levels off into there own category or trying to get the scaling factor to scale terrain & monster placement as well.

Edit: Maybe I can scale it by using the scaling % as a % chance of rejecting a placement, that may not be too hard?

[wobbly]

so if I change:

/* Scale the level */
    i = randint1(10) + p->depth / 24;
    if (is_quest(p->depth)) size_percent = 100;
    else if (i < 2) size_percent = 75;
    else if (i < 3) size_percent = 80;
    else if (i < 4) size_percent = 85;
    else if (i < 5) size_percent = 90;
    else if (i < 6) size_percent = 95;
    else size_percent = 100;
	y_size = z_info->dungeon_hgt * (size_percent - 5 + randint0(10)) / 100;
	x_size = z_info->dungeon_wid * (size_percent - 5 + randint0(10)) / 100;

to

/* Scale the level */
    i = randint1(10) + p->depth / 9;
    if (is_quest(p->depth)) size_percent = 100;
    else if (i < 8) size_percent = 75;
    else if (i < 9) size_percent = 80;
    else if (i < 10) size_percent = 85;
    else if (i < 11) size_percent = 90;
    else if (i < 12) size_percent = 95;
    else size_percent = 100;
	y_size = z_info->dungeon_hgt * (size_percent - 5 + randint0(10)) / 100;
	x_size = z_info->dungeon_wid * (size_percent - 5 + randint0(10)) / 100;

it shouldn't generate a full size level for the 1st 17 dungeon levels?

[t4nk]

Originally Posted by wobbly

it shouldn't generate a full size level for the 1st 17 dungeon levels?

Well it can still generate 99% size (95 - 5 + 9). And even 70% is not all that different from full sized level... There is also classic_gen(), where similar calculations don't seem to do much (just something about num_rooms). Maybe try a lot more aggressive scaling? For stairs, see calls to alloc_stairs(), you can use "i" to determine the desired number of stairs, e.g.

if (i < 2) alloc_stairs(c, FEAT_MORE, 1);
else if (i < 5) alloc_stairs(c, FEAT_MORE, 2);
else if (i < 12) /* and so on */;

A cleaner solution would be to introduce new profiles for small and medium levels. How's your C already? Generating dungeons is a good excercise, IMO