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Isa
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Thursday, August 1 2013, 8:40 am EST
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'jebby' said:
Are you saying you want a version of Generate that starts off with a completely empty cave and then fills it with "terrain islands"? Would just be a case of inverting the tile types in the generation algorithm. Would generate some weird caves though with some inaccessible rooms.

Yeah, that's what I expected would happen, and it'd be a cool feature I believe. =p
jebby
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Thursday, August 1 2013, 9:23 am EST
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Noted. So do all the features work for you then? i.e. You can draw generate passages AND draw willies in the map?
jebby
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 4:23 pm EST
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UPDATE: thanks to soccerboy and Quirvy, I have been able to figure out how to make an installer for CaveGen that installs .NET Framework 4.0 on to your computers (the thing that you need for CaveGen to run properly). The downside to this is that the download is bloated to roughly 60MB; hopefully, this isn't enough to put you off downloading. When you unzip the folder, run the setup.exe Application file (the one that's about 60MB in size). Once the installation is finished, you should be good to go. The new download is here.  
Isa
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 4:25 pm EST
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What if I already have .NET Framework 4.0, can I get a more lightweight version to download?
jebby
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 4:29 pm EST
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'Isa' said:
What if I already have .NET Framework 4.0, can I get a more lightweight version to download?


Yeah, that's the next thing I'll be working on. I think the solution to that would be a web installer, which I believe can be created via InstallShield. From what you said in your previous posts, CaveGen seemed to be working okay for you (which it should if you have .NET 4 already). I'm still not clear on whether you can paint or not; can you clarify that you can draw your name in the cave to be generated?

EDIT: Just to clarify what web installers would entail: you'd download something about 1MB in size and that would then download the 60MB only if you didn't already have .NET Framework 4.0. In the next version of CaveGen, I'll definitely use something like that. For the meantime, the heavyweight installer is fine as most people here won't have .NET 4 anyway, though the web installer is obviously much more efficient for future releases.
Quirvy
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 4:48 pm EST
  

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This is a fixed version and won't blow up my computer this time, right?



spooky secret
jebby
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 4:51 pm EST
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'Quirvy' said:
This is a fixed version and won't blow up my computer this time, right?


Yes. It worked for soccerboy and it crashed for him before the fix as it did for you. Just make sure you run setup.exe to get .NET 4 on your system first. Then CaveGen should run just fine.  
Teo
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 4:55 pm EST

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Good job, Jebby! That will definitely help in making caves for a great bunch of people. That's so bad that I haven't had such a program when I was making Geographical Expedition.
Quirvy
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 5:00 pm EST
  

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Sweet, it now works.

One thing that would be cool is if you could make it so that we could have the option to generate terrain a little bit more randomly, in the sense that a lot of dead ends are very square-shaped. Like very sharp, defined corners. And what if you made it so that we could have a range for junction sizes, so that the tunnel sizes vary?



spooky secret
jebby
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 5:10 pm EST
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'Teo' said:
Good job, Jebby! That will definitely help in making caves for a great bunch of people. That's so bad that I haven't had such a program when I was making Geographical Expedition.


Thank you very much!

'Quirvy' said:
Sweet, it now works.

One thing that would be cool is if you could make it so that we could have the option to generate terrain a little bit more randomly, in the sense that a lot of dead ends are very square-shaped. Like very sharp, defined corners. And what if you made it so that we could have a range for junction sizes, so that the tunnel sizes vary?


These are among the features that I wanted to implement next. Changing the passage shape from square to something with more curved ends would not be too difficult. Neither would varying the tunnel sizes. A similar, though perhaps less important addition that I'd like to make would be to provide a selection of brush shapes (e.g. cross and circle, as well as the square that is the default at the moment).

Would you (or anyone else for that matter) be interested in the ability to adjust the 'spikiness' of the generated cave? For example, setting 'Spikiness' to the left side of the slider would result in a sprinkling of spikes on floors and ceilings. Setting it all the way to the right would result in all the terrain being covered in spikes. As a more precise/useful alternative, you could perhaps select a region of the cave map and all floors and ceilings in that region would be 'spiked up'.  
soccerboy13542
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 5:16 pm EST
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All of these suggestions would be great. I feel like there isn't a way, but would it be possible to do something where you could insert a sprite and it would take the outline of it and change that to terrain?


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Saturday, August 3 2013, 5:24 pm EST
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'soccerboy13542' said:
All of these suggestions would be great. I feel like there isn't a way, but would it be possible to do something where you could insert a sprite and it would take the outline of it and change that to terrain?


Could you give me an example of the user interaction involved and the purpose of such a feature?

My interpretation of your suggestion: The user imports a semi-transparent image of appropriate size and then drags it on the cave map. They press a "Cookie Cutter" button or something. Everything inside the image would be turned into space. The outline of the image would be turned into terrain. Maybe you could use this to stamp a template of your signature onto each of your caves. Is that what you were thinking of?
shos
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Sunday, August 4 2013, 3:25 pm EST
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This looks neat.

It should allow for much better 'portrait' caves, I think. I'm glad Jeb is back here and active


jebby
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Sunday, August 4 2013, 3:35 pm EST
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'shos' said:
This looks neat.

It should allow for much better 'portrait' caves, I think. I'm glad Jeb is back here and active


Welcome back, shos! If you get a chance to download CaveGen, let us know how you get on with it.
shos
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Sunday, August 4 2013, 3:45 pm EST
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I can probably try it out (and probably even attempt to make a small decent cave) on Tuesday.



jebby
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Thursday, September 12 2013, 3:02 pm EST
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I finally got round to working on this again today, managing to implement all three of the requested features:

Quote:
#1: Alternative generation method: start with empty space and then generate terrain islands in the space.

This was Isa's idea. I was a little sceptical at first that it would be of any use, but it turns out to have the potential to generate some interesting caves, especially if either low junction size or low junction count is used. The feature can be toggled via a check-box labelled "Inverted Terrain". If desired, I can add the option to remove the permanent terrain border to complement this feature. Something else I need to do is to enable disconnected passages so that this mode actually produces separate islands rather than one big octopus-shaped lump.

#2: Circular passages/dead-ends rather than square.

Quirvy's idea. There is now a check-box for turning on circular junctions (or rough approximations of circles), which make the passages look a lot smoother. This feature also affects the paintbrush.

#3: Ability to specify range of passage sizes so that they vary in the generated cave.

Another idea from Quirvy. This is possibly the most useful change as it makes the caves look more organic and have a less uniform layout. The above two features have resulted in some very nice-looking terrain structures. For example...

Old (square junctions size 4)

New (circular junctions size 3-6)


The range is specified as a min and a max in two text boxes. Currently, junction size is limited to 6 tiles across. The reason for this is that I chose to hard-code the "circle" templates - it seemed the quickest way of getting circles that looked okay given the small number of tiles used to make them (plus me being too lazy to write a circle-drawing algorithm to generate them). If desired, I can extend the junctions to unlimited sizes in the future.



Before I release this as version 1.1, I want to implement a few of my own features first. Firstly, I want to add an option to increase the cave's "loopiness" to try and get away from the tree structures that tend to be generated in the current version. Secondly, I'd like to enable the user to select a region within the cave and press a button that attaches spikes to any floors and ceilings in that region. Maybe there could be some "spikiness" numbers that could be altered by the user to determine the probability of a spike being attached to any given floor/ceiling. Perhaps a spike brush as well, but I might leave that for a later version. Something else I need to consider is the UI - the more features I add, the more cluttered it's going to become. I'm looking into some kind of menu to pack it all away - perhaps an accordion control. Maybe even a conventional menu bar.  

I'll try and keep you guys up to date with anything new that happens. Please let me know if there is anything you'd like to see added.
soccerboy13542
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Thursday, September 12 2013, 6:08 pm EST
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You haven't made an actual level in a while. I feel like you should make a level of your own using cavegen to see how user friendly that passage ways are.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Thursday, September 12 2013, 6:21 pm EST
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I tried a few weeks back and just couldn't get into it - the process of copy/pasting, uploading and then loading the level is just too tedious for me. I've become used to level editors with faster workflows. I think I'll stick to writing programs for now, especially ones that make HATPC cavemaking simpler.

And there's a few prolific cavemakers on here - there's no reason why they couldn't make a level using CaveGen. Could be a fun challenge to generate a random structure and see if a good cave could be made from it without changing any terrain.  
soccerboy13542
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Thursday, September 12 2013, 6:28 pm EST
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for me, using fiddler, it takes a few seconds to play a level. it doesn't take that long really. I'll try making a level, and I have, but it's a bit hard.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Friday, September 13 2013, 3:21 pm EST
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Today, I added a Connectedness slider. This has values ranging from -25 to 25. At -25, there are no passageways between junctions; each one is a blob floating on its own. Some may overlap due to close proximity. At 0, the junctions are connected as a tree like normal. At 25, there are many additional passageways added to the tree structure, so that there are loops.

Here is an example of a cave that was produced using high connectedness and circular junctions ranging from sizes 3-6:
Spoiler:


Disconnectedness is best used for inverted caves (i.e. Isa's floating islands). I'm not sure what a good example of this would be, but here's a mildly disconnected cave that uses inverted terrain and circular junctions of size 6:
Spoiler:


I'm a little doubtful that inverted terrain will be used much, but I think it could lead to the creation of some interesting/unorthodox caves. I'd like to see what could be done with a cave that was filled with lots of little islands.  
soccerboy13542
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Friday, September 13 2013, 6:09 pm EST
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I like what I see so far. I attempted to make a level, but it was bad... really bad.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Friday, September 13 2013, 6:42 pm EST
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Version 1.1 should produce terrain that is easier to build around than the existing one. Bear in mind that CaveGen isn't going to produce perfect cave structures every time; that's why the Brush is there. However, with the new settings that are available in 1.1, it does give you a good start to quickly starting a level. I'll try and get 1.1 out as soon as I can so people can experiment with it to see how much easier it is to build caves than with 1.0.
jebby
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Saturday, September 14 2013, 11:38 am EST
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Behold... The Spike Brush! You can now create spike-filled passages with ease!


jebby
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Saturday, September 14 2013, 5:48 pm EST
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UPDATE: Version 1.1 is live! Download it from here. This is one is a web downloader, so it only downloads .NET if you don't already have it. This means that, for most people, the download should be much smaller than before. Run setup.exe to install it.  Please let me know if you have any problems with the installer or with the new version in general.

New features:
#1: Smooth passages - no more blockiness. To get the old blocky passages, turn off "Circular Junctions".
#2: Specify range of passage sizes. Your caves can now have passages ranging from width 1-6.
#3: Inverted terrain option - when this is turned on, the generator starts with a blank canvas and paints terrain on it. Leads to unusual "floating island" caves.
#4: Disconnected passages - break up the cave by lowering the "Connectedness" slider. Good for making islands when inverted terrain is turned on.
#5: Caves with more loops - turning "Connectedness" up adds additional passages to the generated cave to make it less linear.
#6: Spike brushes. SpikeFiller correctly paints spikes on floors and ceilings without affecting terrain or creating floating spikes. Can be removed with SpikeRemover. SpikeDigger is like the Space brush, but applies spikes to the floors and ceilings it creates.
Yimmy
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Saturday, September 14 2013, 5:51 pm EST
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i might actually get this... tommorow


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