STRAK'S PROFILE

Great questions! I'll try to answer them as best I can.

So for the first question, the game doesn't actually save any of the parallaxes. The game uses the BLT method to temporarily overwrite the parallax for that map ID by taking samples from each of the individual rooms, then splicing them onto the main parallax as a cached graphic. Nothing actually gets saved. This does mean that if you close and reload the game, the map will be blank, but since this game doesn't allow saving in dungeons, it works perfectly for this game. Usually if you save and load in a dungeon, you'll be warped back to the home base.

I'll get to the second question last, since it's a bit of a longer answer.

As for the entrance and boss rooms, or places such as the home base, yes those will be created individually. There isn't really much reason to have them be randomized. This system is just for the purpose of dungeon crawling.

Now, advantages and disadvantages. For advantages, this means that I have less than 1/6th the amount of work I had previously in order to release this game. It's very likely that I can have this finished in the next two years now. From a gameplay perspective, this also means that dungeons are much more random, with far less repetition as to where chests, exits, monsters, item bags, and player spawn points are placed. Before, you could pretty easily figure out where all the potential spawn points are for each map if you'd played them enough. As the main test player/developer, I can attest to this myself. With this system, even I will have no idea where anything is on any given dungeon floor, encouraging more detailed exploration and immersion. In addition, the potential dungeon layouts can get VERY interesting and winding, far more so than they were before.

However, there are disadvantages. Mainly, there is quite a bit more limitation in exactly how dungeon "rooms" can connect to each other. In order for a more seamless transition between sections of the map, the room borders do need to be a bit more generic and standard. This means no more diversity between what constitutes a "wall" in a dungeon. For example, in the mine, you used to have cave walls OR vast underground ponds that dictated the border of the room. With this system, I can still have tiny ponds within the rooms themselves, but the border of each room will be essentially the same.

Now, there are ways around this. I'm currently working on an "overlap" feature for map generation, which will allow me to create borders that blend together a bit more, making for a more natural layout. I should also be able to create a system where instead of generating the "room," I can instead generate the "walls," allowing for more control over the things I just mentioned. This system is still in development, so the potential is still untapped, but as it currently stands the main disadvantage is that maps will be SLIGHTLY less detailed and deliberate than the originals, but will ultimately be far less repetitive and far more random than before.

Already shared this on the discord, but I made a procedural dungeon generator! Blog post coming at the end of this month to talk more about this.

Doesn't get better than this.

The actual splicing of the maps and establishing proper collision and event spawn points is easy enough, now I'm just trying to figure out a formula for making the map fully connected, with no inaccessible portions, while still filling the full space.

Couple more videos for y'all. Here's one about how I created a custom Experience and Leveling system for Thrall, and why it was important.



Also, here's a video detailing how the color-changing armor system works, and how cached graphics can be temporarily modified for use in cutscenes.



And finally, I made a brand new difficulty system that currently isn't available in the demo, but will be in the next update (whenever that is). The system is largely inspired by the Hades Heat System, for any of you Supergiant fans out there.



That's all for now! Stay tuned for more.