Runtime Random Level Generation / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Runtime Random Level Generation.

Persistent levels paragraph confusion

runevision 22 Aug 2010 10:55

The paragraph about persistent levels currently reads:

With persistent levels, either a) the each 'floor' of the game is always the same once generated and all exits from the current level lead to one of two adjacent levels, or b) each exit from a level leads to a new level, which results in the game space consisting of a tree of levels branching away from the root which the player first entered where the number of children of the level equals the number of exits from that level, minus the one that the player arrived from.

Why is it only the case in a) that "each 'floor' of the game is always the same once generated". I would think this by definition is always true for persistent levels.

In b) I'm confused if it's meant that in the tree of levels, the player can go up to the 'parent' of the current level (i.e. the level where he came from) or not. If he can't, and a given level is only ever entered once, I'd say it's a case of non-persistent levels - unless they're the same the next time the game is played from scratch. If he can, then surely the parent levels should be the same as before in order for this to qualify as persistent levels?

Also, I would like to rewrite the paragraph to say that levels can be connected by arbitrary graphs rather than saying they must be connected either in sequence or in a tree structure, which is an arbitrary limitation of the definition in my opinion.

Re: Persistent levels paragraph confusion

andrewdoull 22 Aug 2010 11:03

I was meaning by a) that if you down one set of stairs, then back up a second set, you will reach the first level you left. With b) this is not necessarily the case. In b) if you take the stairs you originally descended from, you return to the original level. But if you take another set of stairs up elsewhere, you could arrive on a new level. The geometry in b) is non-Euclidean.

And feel free to rewrite this to make it clearer. You can certainly have a graph in b), the naive implementation is a tree.