Having recently hit a pile of deadlines for my main projects, the last chunk of which resulted in me working 7 days per week, my partner used rather strong language to imply I needed to take some time off work. Which is… fair.

So, I set out to do so. The problem is, what I do for fun (write, make video games, sometimes do indie film stuff) isn’t just an overlap with what I do professionally it… really pretty much just IS what I do professionally. But I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t touch my “main” projects (Deck & Conn and the Freeports [Hey, that makes a nice band name!]), which left me wondering what to do for a few weeks.

I decided I could let myself work on something fun. A side project, just for me. And something I’d been curious about for a long time is – a software-rendered Raycasting engine akin to Wolfenstein or Doom.

I tried to do something a little different the other day – I decided to microblog my morning work on DFP in extreme detail on Mastodon, just in case it was of interest to people. It had a second purpose – to look at my own purpose and style, see what I could learn about my own way of operating (if anything useful at all).

For posterity, and in case it’s of interest people, I am putting the entire log, from about 9am to 12pm, here in this post.

Note: The italicised comments which look like this and begin with note are comments I have added while compiling these mastodon posts into this blog post. They are intended to add a bit more context, or correct something.

No, literally. Dungeons of Freeport’s new graphical version is designed to evoke the feeling of playing a pencil ‘n paper role-playing game.

I spent a long time deciding what graphics I wanted the shiny new version of DFP to have, and every time I came around to pixel art dungeon crawling, I realised something which I touched on last dev log: there are too many games like this. Or, more accurately, there are too many games that look like this. So, musing on what kind of thing I wanted to see, and noting that Roguelikes have a long tradition of using ASCII (or faux-ASCII) in graphical mode… it just made sense.

This blog post will be about the last few months of adaptation as I move the game’s UI from terminal mode to graphical – and my plans for the next few months.

(Note: the larger fonts shown in some of the below screen shots are WiP)

There’s a lot going on with Dungeons of Freeport right now, and while I found myself musing on a few important things with a figurative rubber ducky, I decided this might be a good time to use my blog as such an item.

So, let’s get started with this concept: finding the fun…

The end of the year had me busy with other things so I didn’t as much done as I’d wanted (on anything, really, apart from a robust form of melancholy) but… with the intended milestone finally hit, it’s time for another dev log.

This one is on tools and high level gameplay – that is, the map editor I created for DFP, how it’s used… and why it exists in a Roguelike.

When I first hacked together the early version of Dungeons of Freeport, I put together a very quick and dirty method for generating the dungeons. It’s the most common beginner’s one. But the last few weeks, I’ve been deciding which techniques to use for this game’s dungeons.

Before I start going into a bit more information about it, a few caveats:

This is my first Roguelike (or, Roguelike, depending on your perspective), but I’ve been doing proc gen in my games since the very start, really. My first game, TownCraft, used proc gen for every level. Super Death Fortress and its sequel did the same thing. But both used very simple proc gen techniques – just enough to do what I wanted them to, certainly noting that’d turn the head of anyone used to serious Roguelike work.

Secondly? If it’s not obvious already, what techniques (and there are many) to use to generate a dungeon is very subjective. Please don’t take my conclusions in this blog post as some kind of assertion that this is the One True Way. These techniques are what I chose for this specific game based on my needs and, frankly… what I enjoy coding.

I am, however going to talk a bit about different techniques I tried and rejected – and why.

Finally? Most everything I learned to do this came from numerous fantastic articles and talks which can be found online. I will link to all the relevant ones that helped me at the bottom of the article.

Okay, so I’m doing a new thing. It began when I installed Rogue and Nethack on the test server that my awesome testers help me with Swords of Freeport on. One quipped, “Dungeon crawl in Swords of Freeport when?”

I promptly began coding.