On Dungeon Geomorphs

Lately I’ve been thinking about dungeon geomorphs.  Hack/ has a great tile geomorph based dungeon generator.  A few other writers have been posting new geomorph tiles in other styles and have been posting interesting ways to use them.

I’ve long thought about doing my own dungeon generator based on geomorph tiles, which led to the Random Inn Generator project, but I also don’t want to just do something someone else is doing unless I can put a different spin on it.  And I think I’ve got an idea, even though I’m only going to fall behind on my other projects.

Here is what I think I can do differently:

• It seems that most tiles all have a single join point in the center of each side.  This makes it easy to see where the tiles join and it limits the options to a small degree.  I think I’ve identified a way to allow for any number of squares on each side to be join points and to allow the algorithm putting the tiles together to smartly assemble a dungeon level based on these restrictions.
• I also have a way to rotate the tiles en masse so I can do one design for each tile and rotate them all 3 times automagically with a tool that will also rename it appropriately so the algorithm can correctly place it.
• Although tile based random dungeon generators are almost impossible to stock (determine which rooms have which monsters and traps) I think I can do something that does at least half the work for the user.

So expect to see a new tool soon!