V4: Gameplay notes

[Pete Mack]

What about map generation? That seems like a big deal. I assume you are using Dijkstra path finding?

[Derakon]

Fizzix has a pretty good handle on map generation; the current version handles the basic rooms and corridors, and will be ready for vaults whenever someone gets around to translating the relevant data files. The current generator is a bit slow (takes a second or two to generate the level), but it hasn't been optimized at all so that's to be expected, really.

I initially implemented pathfinding using A*, but since that's 1-to-1 it doesn't scale well when there's lots of monsters around. Currently I'm working with optimizing Dijkstra -- it certainly works better than A* but your average turn in a dungeon level (mostly not open space) takes about .07s, which I consider to be unacceptably slow.

[Pete Mack]

OK, Got home and tried it.
* Installed Python 2.7
* installed WX 2.9

Ran python:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File ".\pyrel.py", line 19, in <module>
import procs.procLoader
File "C:\Users\Peter\Documents\GitHub\pyrel\procs\procL oader.py", line 9, in <module>
import proc
File "C:\Users\Peter\Documents\GitHub\pyrel\procs\proc. py", line 132, in <module>
import aiProc
ImportError: No module named aiProc

[Pete Mack]

PS: ToME 4 was the same kind of deal, using lua instead of Python...

[Derakon]

Oh dear, thanks for catching that. Looks like I didn't add aiProc.py to the repo. Shame on me!

Unfortunately that file is currently in a state of flux (since I'm modifying it while optimizing pathfinding), but if you just want to get things running, you can open up things/creatures/creature.py and modify the update() function to this older version:

    ## Update state. For now, just wander at random.
    def update(self):
        import random
        spaces = [[-1, -1], [-1, 0], [-1, 1], [0, -1], [0, 1],
                [1, -1], [1, 0], [1, 1]]
        random.shuffle(spaces)
        for dx, dy in spaces:
            target = (self.pos[0] + dx, self.pos[1] + dy)
            if not self.gameMap.moveMe(self, self.pos, target):
                break
        self.addEnergy(-1)

[Pete Mack]

No rush. I do figure you want to start tracking changes to AI sooner than later.