Thanks a lot for this small gem. It's really a great small tool and I really appreciate that you allowed to use those images also on commercial products. I've of course supported it with a donation hoping that you will continue to improve it.
How did you program this? I've been trying to make one of those dungeon games but I can't quite wrap my head around auto-populating a map like this.A youtube video of you coding this together would be crazy good. You are so good. <3
This is lovely. You may wish to consider an option for adding a legend to the maps? There are hundreds of other things I could suggest, but feature creep often makes a beautiful simple thing bloated and unwieldy.
These are the best procedurely generated dungeons I've ever seen. They absolutely look handcrafted. I would love to understand your method of building them. Are they prefabs stitched together? How is it that they are so often semisymetrical? Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the quick reply! I was able to glean some from your Reddit post. If you ever write up a detailed process, I'd be very interested in reading it.
I can think of some exciting features. Different doorways or major entranceway. Sewer style maps. Wilderness maps. Setting a % mix of sewer vs wilderness vs dungeon. Rounded rooms. Layers with index key for each level of a linked dungeon with an icon/location to show links between dungeon levels. Also cave / rough hewn style walls in addition than straight. Excellent work as ever! How about adding a keyed dungeon entrance beneath buildings in your town/village generator.
It would be ace to be able to save out a map that does not have all the white space e.g. If the title could dynamically shift down to the top of map and therefore reduce white space on the downloaded png (without having to save to collection first). Thanks - amazing tool!
Can someone explain all the iconography to me? Because I don't understand the significance of things like the black star in the double lined half circle the black dots instead of doors, and similar such occurrences. Otherwise this is an incredible resource filled will good ideas and a surprisingly robust generator.
Is it possible to get a toggle to turn off showing secret rooms (aka a map I can show my players)? Or a 2-page version, one without secret rooms & notes (Player version) and another for me as a DM?
I'm confused about something on the maps. Some of the corridors and rooms are separated by walls from the rest of the dungeon. As rooms 4, 5, 6 and 8 on the example map, Monastery of the Silent Dragon.
So cool, I haven't played D&D since my teen years in the late 1970's, but this powerfully evoked the intense sense of narrative possibility and the excitement of adventure that I recall experiencing as a minor player in the Cornell University campaign of that decade. Brilliant!
As always, your work is really inspirational for me, as I've always been into procedural gen as long as I can remember.
This one is nothing less than amazing: the visual result is almost perfect <3
Do you think it would be possible to export the generated map as a JSON or something similar, so I can add an import function on my RPG Map tool (available on Itch.io)?
A very first step would simply be to export collisions, doors and texts (which are the main elements) :) For the decoration elements, it's up to you as it depends on how you actually draw them 🤔
This is delightful for a number of reasons. Back in the paleolithic age, some buddies of mine and I that were working together on a linguistic computing project on an IBM 370/138 wrote a bunch of programs in SNOBOL4 to do just this - text only, of course, but they still run in my Virtual XP mode. We could specify number of rooms, level of complexity, and other parameters as well.
Example:
There are stairs leading down into an antechamber. The chamber is square, 40 x 40 in size, with two passages leading off to the southeast.
Room number 2 is rectangular, 20 x 30 in size. The door through which this room is entered is a secret door made of metal and is locked with an invisible button on the right side of the door. In addition, there are 3 other exits from the room. There are 12 skeletons in the room! There is also treasure here, which is contained in stone jars and is hidden by an illusion. The trove consists of 3000 silver pieces. In addition, you find 750 gold pieces here.
Room number 3 is trapezoidal, about 3400 sq. ft. in size. The door through which this room is entered is made of wood and is open. In addition, there are 2 other exits from the room. There are 3 shriekers in the room!
Etc.
I'm delighted that someone took up the torch and brought this idea into the 21st century! <3
A text based dungeon generator actually sounds super awesome for solo play! You've inspired me to build my own game lol. Do you have any insights or tips for designing the logic behind the dungeon generator?
My initial plan was to create a generator that would generate stories (just text) about wandering in such dungeons :)
There will be a post where I'm going to outline how my generator works, but actually there are dozens of algorithms of all kinds for creating dungeon maps.
Cool! Did your generator take the geometry of a dungeon into account? I mean was it possible to map a dungeon following the descriptions or it was more like a graph without specific coordinates for its nodes?
This is fantastic, and very entertaining! Would you consider changing the subheading to read "...until recently it was..." or "...until it was recently..."?
Yes, it sounds wrong - but you only need to add "it" to make it sound right! Alternatively, you could take the "was" out: "...until recently rediscovered...".
Me again - sorry! "Was squatted" needs to be "squatted in", and you can't have "a scale mail" - it should be "a suit of scale mail" or "some scale mail" (or possibly just "scale mail").
There's a small bug: if you toggle the title several times, the notes start wandering around. Toggling the notes again restores them to their correct position : )
Hiding the title makes more room on the screen, so I lay out notes in the hope that there is a better placement for them. I could try to preserve the original layout if the new one is not significantly better, but it's too much work :)
This is quite impressive! I hope you add some more goodies in the future, like round rooms, curving corridors, some irregularities in the walls like alcoves... I know you keep improving your creations, so I am looking forward to future additions :D
I've seen a lot of dungeon generators with a lot of bells and whistles, but they always inevitably produce dungeons with a lot of errant hallways, dead ends, and weird layouts. This is the first procedural dungeon generator I've seen that actually makes dungeons that feel like they'd make sense, and doesn't lead to a lot of winding, unnecessary paths.
If it's procedural generation of the dungeon what you're interested in, this tutorial might come in handy. Part 3, in particular, shows you how to create a basic dungeon generator that will produce something similar to this tool. Alternatively, I have some code here, made in Processing.
It's a programming environment with an unfortunate name, hehe. It makes googling a pain. It's very easy to draw stuff, you can find it here: https://processing.org/ The dungeon generation algorithm doesn't really require it though, it should possible to follow in whatever language you're using.
Beautiful! Can't tell you how timely this is. I had dungeon tiles at the ready but needed a quick randomizer for our game tonight. Thanks for everything you do! Our table really benefits from your work.
very nice. some rooms come with no door though. it would be nice to have an option to enter a minimum/maximum size. if interested in dungeon tiles or probs I don't mind sharing what I have or draw extra stuff if you want.
You can right-click and choose "Save image as..." (or something similar) in most browsers! It'll export the whole dungeon, including the title and text at the top.
If you change toggle the notes off/on and repeat the image save, you can create a DM copy and a player copy!
That's super weird, I'm not sure why Firefox is just outputting an empty PNG. @watabou says below that he may add a proper export button in the future if he continues development, but in the meanwhile, you may need to install Chrome to save it without just taking a screenshot.
Surprisingly the method described by @alamantus doesn't work in Firefox, but you still can take a screenshot. If I decide to continue developing this generator, I'll add a proper export button.
The generator wasn't planned as something really useful, it's just a toy. It chooses the size basing on the name, for example abbeys are always large and chapels are small. Depending on the future of the project I'll probably add some customization options.
This is seriously awesome for something you've just bashed together for a monthly challenge. I think the notes would work better as prompts rather than specific things. Use the old DMG room classifications of of Guardian, Challenge, puzzle, combat, Trap, Treasure, Treasure with monster, treasure with trap.
I'm not familiar with this classification, but it sounds very close to what I was going to implement initially. For example, I had Monsters, Trap, Guarded Treasure (=Monsters+Treasure) etc. Only Treasure and Event (NPC | Curiosity) got into the published version.
In older versions of D&D they provided some basic guidelines for stocking new dungeons or restocking dungeons that had been left idle or abandoned by the players. These rules were more useful in the days when modules were rare or expensive and budding DMs were forced to use their limited skills and imaginations. There is a nice little summary of methods used between editions here: http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/10/random-dungeon-stocking.html
Here is also some newer interpretations of the idea with sub tables in practice should you wish to investigate further.
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Thanks a lot for this small gem. It's really a great small tool and I really appreciate that you allowed to use those images also on commercial products. I've of course supported it with a donation hoping that you will continue to improve it.
How did you program this? I've been trying to make one of those dungeon games but I can't quite wrap my head around auto-populating a map like this.A youtube video of you coding this together would be crazy good. You are so good. <3
This is lovely!
Outstanding work!
Thank you
This is lovely. You may wish to consider an option for adding a legend to the maps? There are hundreds of other things I could suggest, but feature creep often makes a beautiful simple thing bloated and unwieldy.
Really nice work, I will definitely play one of them as a quick one shot!
Absolutely awesome! Congrats for the work
These are the best procedurely generated dungeons I've ever seen. They absolutely look handcrafted. I would love to understand your method of building them. Are they prefabs stitched together? How is it that they are so often semisymetrical? Keep up the great work!
https://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/comments/dl1tl1/one_page_dungeon_for_the_procedural_challenge_4/f4npjrb/
Thanks for the quick reply! I was able to glean some from your Reddit post. If you ever write up a detailed process, I'd be very interested in reading it.
This is very cool.
One using caverns would be nice. Also one for castles forts and towers.
And no I do not have the knowledge or skills to create those myself.
im going to use this forever!!
would love if you did add traps to it and/or options to add stuff myself
what font do you use?
I liked the fonts too, so I checked: it's Grenze Bold for the title, Neuton for everything else. Specifically Neuton Extra-Bold for the room numbers.
I can think of some exciting features. Different doorways or major entranceway. Sewer style maps. Wilderness maps. Setting a % mix of sewer vs wilderness vs dungeon. Rounded rooms. Layers with index key for each level of a linked dungeon with an icon/location to show links between dungeon levels. Also cave / rough hewn style walls in addition than straight. Excellent work as ever! How about adding a keyed dungeon entrance beneath buildings in your town/village generator.
It would be ace to be able to save out a map that does not have all the white space e.g. If the title could dynamically shift down to the top of map and therefore reduce white space on the downloaded png (without having to save to collection first). Thanks - amazing tool!
Some of the notes reference directions (North, South, East, West). A compass on the map would be beneficial for understanding these better.
Right now north is always up, so it shouldn't be too hard to orient. But I'll consider adding a compass for aesthetic reasons.
Can someone explain all the iconography to me? Because I don't understand the significance of things like the black star in the double lined half circle the black dots instead of doors, and similar such occurrences. Otherwise this is an incredible resource filled will good ideas and a surprisingly robust generator.
These icons are classic rpg map icons. You can look up a key on Google by searching for crpg map icons.
The star in circle for example usually signifies a statue.
As @GentlemanGames said, these are pretty standard. For example, here is a key from Dyson Logos: link.
Is it possible to get a toggle to turn off showing secret rooms (aka a map I can show my players)? Or a 2-page version, one without secret rooms & notes (Player version) and another for me as a DM?
I'm adding this to my to-do list
https://www.funvideogames.biz/2019/10/today-is-new-day-and-lovely-one.html
I'm confused about something on the maps. Some of the corridors and rooms are separated by walls from the rest of the dungeon. As rooms 4, 5, 6 and 8 on the example map, Monastery of the Silent Dragon.
I assume those are rooms with secret entrances, where you have to figure out there's a room, how to find the entrance and then get through it?
Yes, @eunice-h is right - these are secret rooms separated from the rest of the dungeon by some kind of secret doors, which are drawn as thin walls.
Oh thanks!
Really nicely done!
So cool, I haven't played D&D since my teen years in the late 1970's, but this powerfully evoked the intense sense of narrative possibility and the excitement of adventure that I recall experiencing as a minor player in the Cornell University campaign of that decade. Brilliant!
I personally think that it's the power of Dyson hatching :) Thank you!
Hi :)
As always, your work is really inspirational for me, as I've always been into procedural gen as long as I can remember.
This one is nothing less than amazing: the visual result is almost perfect <3
Do you think it would be possible to export the generated map as a JSON or something similar, so I can add an import function on my RPG Map tool (available on Itch.io)?
Hi Sebastien!
Thanks for your kind words :) Sure, we can do it. Do you have any preferences for the details of format?
It really is up to you, as long as it's readable :) Any JSON would be perfect!
A very first step would simply be to export collisions, doors and texts (which are the main elements) :) For the decoration elements, it's up to you as it depends on how you actually draw them 🤔
This is delightful for a number of reasons. Back in the paleolithic age, some buddies of mine and I that were working together on a linguistic computing project on an IBM 370/138 wrote a bunch of programs in SNOBOL4 to do just this - text only, of course, but they still run in my Virtual XP mode. We could specify number of rooms, level of complexity, and other parameters as well.
Example:
There are stairs leading down into an antechamber. The chamber is square, 40 x 40 in size, with two passages leading off to the southeast.
Room number 2 is rectangular, 20 x 30 in size.
The door through which this room is entered is a secret door made of metal and is locked with an invisible button on the right side of the door. In addition, there are 3 other exits from the room.
There are 12 skeletons in the room! There is also treasure here, which is contained in stone jars and is hidden by an illusion. The trove consists of 3000 silver pieces. In addition, you find 750 gold pieces here.
Room number 3 is trapezoidal, about 3400 sq. ft. in size.
The door through which this room is entered is made of wood and is open. In addition, there are 2 other exits from the room.
There are 3 shriekers in the room!
Etc.
I'm delighted that someone took up the torch and brought this idea into the 21st century! <3
A text based dungeon generator actually sounds super awesome for solo play! You've inspired me to build my own game lol. Do you have any insights or tips for designing the logic behind the dungeon generator?
My initial plan was to create a generator that would generate stories (just text) about wandering in such dungeons :)
There will be a post where I'm going to outline how my generator works, but actually there are dozens of algorithms of all kinds for creating dungeon maps.
Cool! Did your generator take the geometry of a dungeon into account? I mean was it possible to map a dungeon following the descriptions or it was more like a graph without specific coordinates for its nodes?
Wow ! Awesome work. You really are a good fellow ! I'd like to get it in another language (french). Is your code ready for easy translation ?
Not ready, no:) But I'll try to find a way to fix it.
This is fantastic, and very entertaining! Would you consider changing the subheading to read "...until recently it was..." or "...until it was recently..."?
Does it sound wrong/bad? I tried to keep the wording in accordance with a kind of abrupt style of notes...
Yes, it sounds wrong - but you only need to add "it" to make it sound right! Alternatively, you could take the "was" out: "...until recently rediscovered...".
One more change: "Pleads to borrow a torch."
👍
Me again - sorry! "Was squatted" needs to be "squatted in", and you can't have "a scale mail" - it should be "a suit of scale mail" or "some scale mail" (or possibly just "scale mail").
This is quite awesome!
There's a small bug: if you toggle the title several times, the notes start wandering around. Toggling the notes again restores them to their correct position : )
The pitfalls of mutable state. ;)
Hiding the title makes more room on the screen, so I lay out notes in the hope that there is a better placement for them. I could try to preserve the original layout if the new one is not significantly better, but it's too much work :)
This is quite impressive! I hope you add some more goodies in the future, like round rooms, curving corridors, some irregularities in the walls like alcoves... I know you keep improving your creations, so I am looking forward to future additions :D
I've seen a lot of dungeon generators with a lot of bells and whistles, but they always inevitably produce dungeons with a lot of errant hallways, dead ends, and weird layouts. This is the first procedural dungeon generator I've seen that actually makes dungeons that feel like they'd make sense, and doesn't lead to a lot of winding, unnecessary paths.
This is very good tbh.
Thank you! That was one of the goals - to make dungeons, which would look like once they had some normal purpose other than to be a "death maze" :)
I feel so dumb, but, how do i use it?, i don't know where the generator is
Ty
Hit refresh in your browser.
ty
Just press enter.
Awesome! \m/ Thank you very much!
Fantastic stuff! Thanks for sharing.
This generator looks great! Where did you get the tile set/textures for your maps? Were they created by hand?
Thank you. Nothing here is created by hand, everything is built and drawn procedurally.
Do you have any resources on how the textures/art were created procedurally? I'm impressed by the hashing against the walls. Thanks!
I think I'll have to write post about this hatching...
I would definitely read a post on that! that sounds amazing
I'm learning to code, I would love to learn how to do something like ...
Is there a chance to see the source code?
If it's procedural generation of the dungeon what you're interested in, this tutorial might come in handy. Part 3, in particular, shows you how to create a basic dungeon generator that will produce something similar to this tool. Alternatively, I have some code here, made in Processing.
Well..like I said I'm just starting out, but this goes a long way. Thanks!
So quick question: what is Processing?
It's a programming environment with an unfortunate name, hehe. It makes googling a pain. It's very easy to draw stuff, you can find it here: https://processing.org/ The dungeon generation algorithm doesn't really require it though, it should possible to follow in whatever language you're using.
http://openprocessing.org is a good place to start...
https://www.reddit.com/r/FantasyCities/comments/dl72sk/one_page_dungeon_for_the_procedural_challenge_4/f4ordrn/
Awesome, thanks! Hopefully one day I can learn enough to actually do this on my own!
nice work. would there be anyway to add an option to save a generated dungeon as a PDF file ?
Thanks, definitely will be nice to see it progress forward.
Currently, you can save by right clicking.
neat, this is an excellent beginning to what i hope will be a tool as robust as your fantasy city generator! Excellent work.
This is dope!
My inner 1977 DM approves 100%!
Edit: Just figured out you are the creator of Myst (not that myst but another myst) always impressed with your work. Tossed you a coin!
Cheers!
Nice! I have no use for this at the moment, but I love the idea :)
amazing
Beautiful! Can't tell you how timely this is. I had dungeon tiles at the ready but needed a quick randomizer for our game tonight. Thanks for everything you do! Our table really benefits from your work.
very nice. some rooms come with no door though. it would be nice to have an option to enter a minimum/maximum size. if interested in dungeon tiles or probs I don't mind sharing what I have or draw extra stuff if you want.
https://www.deviantart.com/gabrielbaroen/gallery/62473719/dungeontiles
probably secret doors, or at least that's what I assumed.
Exactly:
how do you export / save generated dungeons?
You can right-click and choose "Save image as..." (or something similar) in most browsers! It'll export the whole dungeon, including the title and text at the top.
If you change toggle the notes off/on and repeat the image save, you can create a DM copy and a player copy!
mmmm it looks like it doesn't work on Firefox :/
That's super weird, I'm not sure why Firefox is just outputting an empty PNG. @watabou says below that he may add a proper export button in the future if he continues development, but in the meanwhile, you may need to install Chrome to save it without just taking a screenshot.
Surprisingly the method described by @alamantus doesn't work in Firefox, but you still can take a screenshot. If I decide to continue developing this generator, I'll add a proper export button.
the "Export" function is working great! Thank you!
I think generator should include the size of dungeon option.
The generator wasn't planned as something really useful, it's just a toy. It chooses the size basing on the name, for example abbeys are always large and chapels are small. Depending on the future of the project I'll probably add some customization options.
This is seriously awesome for something you've just bashed together for a monthly challenge. I think the notes would work better as prompts rather than specific things. Use the old DMG room classifications of of Guardian, Challenge, puzzle, combat, Trap, Treasure, Treasure with monster, treasure with trap.
I'm not familiar with this classification, but it sounds very close to what I was going to implement initially. For example, I had Monsters, Trap, Guarded Treasure (=Monsters+Treasure) etc. Only Treasure and Event (NPC | Curiosity) got into the published version.
In older versions of D&D they provided some basic guidelines for stocking new dungeons or restocking dungeons that had been left idle or abandoned by the players. These rules were more useful in the days when modules were rare or expensive and budding DMs were forced to use their limited skills and imaginations. There is a nice little summary of methods used between editions here: http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/10/random-dungeon-stocking.html
Here is also some newer interpretations of the idea with sub tables in practice should you wish to investigate further.
http://aeonsnaugauries.blogspot.com/2011/11/dungeon-stocking-table.html
Thanks again for the generator by the way. I have used it to flesh out two mini side treks in a sandbox I'm developing. It really is a wonderful tool.