Random map generator

Hi folks!

As
some
of you may know, i've been working on an application initialy
called "random map generator for half life 2".

Well i'm about 90% finished with the coding (i've written about 2000
lines of vb code (...yet)) and 15% finished with the bug-testing. But i
have greatly underestimated the third part, and that is, making the
rooms. It's not that, that i'm bad at mapping, but i'm bad at making
hl2 maps. After iv'e made the first room (took me like 45 min), i had
to bugtest it all of the physics, models and special effects that i'd
put into it, and it took me all day. :sad: I still havn't got everything
to work as it should...
...please
help me on this one!

If your'e interessted of contributing by making rooms please PM me and
i'll send you the standard template for random map levels when i'm done with the coding. After all, i might run in to an unsolvable problem. But everything looks quite bright right now.

When i'm done coding, i'll also give it some nice design. Does anyone
have a cool name to suggest like "Scorpion, random map generator" or
"HL2 MazeMaker" etc..?

Here's to give you a taste of the current, ultra cool, GUI: ;D



I see you in the world of random maps sooooon....

As before, im sorry for making it look like a dumb ass advertisement from some kind of internet spam crawler. :sad:

As for the name suggestion, what if you call it "The Other Half"?

So what this does is takes different rooms and makes a level? Very interesting.

BTW, is this HL2 SP or HL2 DM? I think it would be crazy for a server to use this and have random DM maps every level change. It'll be a new adventure everytime. :razz:

is there any way this could be incorporated into a mod or a level? this
thing by it self IMHO isnt very much, but if you had a multiplayer mod
(preferably coop) where you are never familiar with the level beacuse
it's generated each time, that would be very cool.

is there any way this could be incorporated into a mod or a level? this
thing by it self IMHO isnt very much, but if you had a multiplayer mod
(preferably coop) where you are never familiar with the level beacuse
it's generated each time, that would be very cool.

Yes, thats a great idea! Even though my original idea was to use it for
SP. You could set up a serwer witch get fead by new maps all the time!

As for the name suggestion, what if you call it "The Other Half"?

Hmm.. i like it! :biggrin:

if it didn't involve downloading a new map on every mapchange, that would be amazing.

Making some kind of voting system (or simply a tally of kills etc.) and a 'genetic code' to refine the generated maps could be a cool experiment too, if you were into that sort of thing.

I dont think this could be done seriously - people would be quite
pissed downloading new maps on every map change, maps that would never
be playied again...

You could send the random seed to the client, to compile, but again,
you'll have people with slower pc's compiling this map before playing
and stuff. Lot of inherrent problems.

I see my idea is liked. :smile:

I wouldnt mine downloading maps everytime, as long as it was something fun to do.

As for a voting idea. Maybe they could vote for the layout or tuff-ness of the map. I think it would be a really cool idea. I would play it.

these maps arent too complicanted, so file size shouldnt be that big -
and server can create, compile, and quene up maps while people are
playing to have some ready ?

Try and get the HL2 BSP format off of valve and see if you can assemble pre-compiled pieces instead :biggrin:

Also why aren't HL2 BSP's compressed? It would seem the logical thing
to do, ie. save space by loading the compressed bsp into memory, and
then decompressing into the data structures. Maybe its faster loading
uncompressed, but the difference in speed would be tiny compared to the
space saving.

these maps arent too complicanted, so file size shouldnt be that big -
and server can create, compile, and quene up maps while people are
playing to have some ready ?

If server and client have the same generator version, and start with
the same parameters, they should produce the same maps, no ?

No downloading involved.

You mentioned everything looks quite bright --> Leakage !

Thanks for the suggestions and ideas guys! But downloading the maps
"should" take way shorter time than compiling them. And it requires
some loads of CPU too. Maybe that would work when HL3 commes out and
everybody is running 100000 TH optical computers :biggrin: .

Now i have another idea.

With some kind of mod-modification, maybe you could dowload the map
from an internet server instead of the game server. I reckon that the
download speeds would increase with like 1000% since you normaly get
like 3 kb/s - 5 kb/s when downloading from a server. Any ideas on how
this could be done?

I believe an experienced mod coder could modify the bandwidth given to
map downloaders, in hl1 is was quite sufficent. I would definatly jump
on this bandwaggon if I had hl2.

I believe Steam has a setting that allows you to specify a map download
URL. If the entry exists it will serve the download from there,
otherwise the standard trickle download continues. If someone can
confirm this, then I think this may be what you are looking for.

i've read the same as fraggard. you dont need to dl from the game server.

http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?news=1078093753-84291500

It was activated in Half-Life but I dunno if it's in Half-Life 2.

WOW! Thanks for that fantastic link KingNic! Just checked, that cvar is
implemented into HL2 SP as well (sv_downloadurl)!!! That means that
anybody could set up a server, using maps from a fast internet
distributer!!!

In other news: ( :biggrin: ) I made some amazing progress today, completing a
function, allowing the rooms to be rotated in place! No need for 16
roomtypes now, but just 4!!! ( - | T + )

Sounds cool. Im really looking forward to it. :smile: