Re: Design Tool: Dungeon Generator

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on Jun 23, 2010; 2:38pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Dungeon-Builder-Development-Thread-tp5062933p5213544.html

Before I start with the feed back, a few notes for those of us using PCs (which I rather biasedly assume will be most us)

SamuelF wrote

 For the moment it's screen capture time. (On the mac it is as simple as apple-shift-3 or 4. Is there an equivalent for PC users?)

The PC equivalent is [Alt Gr] + [Print Screen] and then you can Paste ([Crtl] + [V]) the screen shot into MS Paint and Save it

SamuelF wrote

Another new feature is hot-keying. If you hold down the command key during editing, it will cycle backwards through the options (very handy!).

Although normally Command key + clicking on a MaC is the equivalent of Right Click (back-click) on the PC, back-clicking on a SWF application on a PC merely brings up the Flash Player Menu. If you are using a PC, simply hold down [Ctrl] and Click with the Left mouse-button to cycle backward through the click-cycle.


Ok with that out of the way ... on to the feed back:

Excellent! I've got to say that this has to be the most useful dungeon generator I've used and it keeps getting better! I spent most of yesterday evening playing with this making all kinds of dungeons.

I think the best thing about this dungeon generator that sets it above all the rest, is that it has the edit modes, I'm not aware of any other dungeon generator that lets you play around with the map after editing (most just generate the map and that's it)

The hot-key reverse click-cycling really speeds up editing and makes drawing-in the corridors a breeze

The new Doors Mode is brilliant, again very intuitive and easy to use

Annotation Mode works well, I was going ask that you make the font size a point or 2 bigger but after using the program I can see why it is the size it is.

SamuelF wrote

would you be happy with room numbers if they were not on the lines?

When I did the mock-up I put the numbers on the lines to keep them out of the way of the other symbols, but having used the real Annotation Mode now, I see that isn't really a problem like I though it would be. The numbers are just fine in the squares

Just out of interest what font are you using? The old PC trick of holding down [Alt] and punching the 3-digit character-code into the NumPad to get up non-keyboard symbols works in your program, but I can't seem to find a character-code table that corresponds to the character-map your program uses
With is in mind can I request that you add an extra drop-down menu to Annotation Mode of all the most useful non-keyboard characters/symbols this would make the Annotation Mode more user-friendly and much easier to use for people with compact keyboards like on a laptop.

Also, I'm not sure if it's possible to embed fonts or special characters into a SWF program, but there are a few D&D map-symbol fonts out there (most of them free) which would be very useful to add to the map editor. This triggers the further thought that Annotation Mode could be sub divided into a 'Lettering/Numbers Mode' and 'Symbols Mode' (if it helps I can make some bitmaps of common dungeon map symbols, just tell me the dimensions and/or format you'd need)

One final request is a mode that lets you put down a boarder like the walls but light grey or maybe dashed to allow the user to represent raised or lowered floors such as a Pool or Dais. (no extra colours though I think it's best the program generates traditional looking B/W dungeon maps)

Over all excellent work, I look forward to the next version and in the mean time I will be enjoying the current version

SamuelF wrote

ps- Mort, I'm thinking of changing the title of this post to something like: "Dungeon Generator - Developement Thread". What do you think?

Yea that's fine, go ahead.
On a related note the Forum will be getting a 'Useful Software' Category soon when I get around to doing the re-shuffle