2019-08-23 Gridmapper inside Text Mapper

Gridmapper is an interactive web application. You can use it to draw multi-level dungeon maps. The drawback is that you cannot use it to generate images in order to use them elsewhere.

Gridmapper

A while ago I wrote a Megadungeon Generator which generates a random dungeon and allows you to open it in *Gridmapper*. That’s pretty cool, but I was still unhappy. The preview images I generated as part of it seemed to be on the right track: these were images, but much to small, and they didn’t use the *Gridmapper* tiles.

Megadungeon Generator

Recently, I added the ability to generate square maps within *Text Mapper*. Now all I was missing was the *Gridmapper* tiles and some encouragement.

square maps

The last few days, as I was talking with Brian Green, J. Alan Henning, and ktrey parker on Diaspora the topic turned to mapping again. ktrey parker suggested using the Face Generator or something similar for dungeon maps. Something smaller, combining geomorphs, something like the five room dungeon, not something big like Dave’s Mapper. Robin Green linked to The Nine Forms of the Five Room Dungeon | Gnome Stew, and started drawing sketches of the kinds of geomorphs we could use, how they’d fit together, and so on.

on Diaspora

Face Generator

Dave’s Mapper

The Nine Forms of the Five Room Dungeon | Gnome Stew

And suddenly... that was the kind of social enthusiasm I needed and I started writing code...

This is a new mapping algorithm for *Text Mapper* based on all of the above. It doesn’t do the special rooms Brian had sketched, yet; and it doesn’t always place the initial stairs correctly; and there are no “extras” such as pillars, chests, pits, and so on. But all of this can still be added.

As always with these algorithms, you can use them to generate a new text description for you to edit, or you can just keep reloading this link.

generate a new text description

keep reloading this link

��#Gridmapper ​#Text Mapper ​#RPG ​#Maps