iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

man i keep getting stalled because every time i open the project i just end up staring at the scene #gamedev #godot

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

you're in an unfinished dungeon and this guy walks up to you. what's your next move? 👀 #gamedev #godot

A cartoonish 3D character with dots for eyes and a simple line for mouth, dressed in a white shirt and shoulders, gray cloak and pants, and black leather boots. A golden sun symbol on his shirt, partially obscured by Z-fighting.

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

While there's more to do, we now have a solution that is conceptually simple, runs under a second, avoids boring, long corridors, supports verticality, and produces interesting layouts with multiple choices. The next step is content and variety so you don't get lost in the grey.

screenshot of the generated map in first person, showing a tower in the background

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

With this setup, it's easy to create room variations, have treasure rooms, minibosses, puzzles, optional challenges, etc. Un/fortunately, the maps are only as interesting as the rooms they are made of.

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Let's talk about those rooms. The generator works with a Mapset, which contains a bunch of room templates. These have all the data on how and where they should be placed, where to put enemies, and where could players spawn. They bring their own navmesh, so we don't need to bake.

empty room showing entrances as green rectangles with arrows pointing outside

empty room showing enemy spawn points as demon icons

empty room showing player spawn points as helmet icons

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Same budget-system for items. With the difference that only a few rooms get any budget. The budgets are sampled randomly from a curve, that favors mid results, with the occasional jackpot.

Godot editor showing configuration for bonus budgets - min budget, max budget, curve, empty chance

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Still need to place enemies to fight. Each room gets a difficulty budget, which increases based on room depth - the further along you're on the map, the harder it gets. Enemies get picked randomly based on rarity, as long as they fit the budget.

Godot editor showing configuration values for enemy budget - base budget, max budget, deviation, empty chance

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This was the time for riding down the bell curve. How about we just place rooms randomly, and line up their exits? Much, much simpler, way faster, always succeeds, no boring tunnels. Line up room entrances, and make sure rooms don't overlap. We have achieved legos.

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is where things were getting *really* brittle. Since corridors can't overlap, the algo would often pathfind itself into an impossible situation. Ignore corridor overlaps, you'd get these long, winding corridors. Pulling rooms closer would mean the algo won't converge.

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Graphs tell you what rooms exist, but not *where*. My first attempt was placing rooms randomly in space and nudging them around until they make sense. Rules: - Push when overlapping - Push when too close - Pull when too far ( Footage greatly slowed down here )

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Graph generation is simple and cheap here. Place a starting room, then fanning out until there's enough. At the end, make some random cross-links, i.e. links between rooms of the same depth. Depth here means how many rooms you have to visit starting from the entry room.

a graph of rooms scattered around, colored from green to red, based on their depth, i.e. distance from the starting room r0

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I wanted to have a graph. It tells you what rooms exist, and their connections. This way the generator has an estimate on the order the players encounter rooms. This can allow placing "story beats" in order. E.g. putting a key in one room, and then locking the next room.

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I use a few exported properties which are checked regularly, but you can also do setters. I've implemented everything as a coroutine that regularly takes a break, so I don't crash the editor or freeze the game. Also added a stop button - more useful than you'd hope!

@tool
extends Node
class_name MapGenerator

@export_group("Editor actions")
@export var _randomize := false
@export var _do_clear := false
@export var _do_run := false
@export var _do_stop := false
@export var _is_running := false

func _physics_process(_dt: float) -> void:
if _do_clear and not _is_running:
clear()
_do_clear = false

if _do_run and not _is_running:
_do_run = false
if _randomize:
_seed = randi()

clear()
await get_tree().process_frame
_is_running = true
await generate(_seed)
_is_running = false
_do_stop = false

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

long time no post, let's do a writeup on procedural mapgen! 🧵 on how it went from a complicated mess to placing legos #godotengine #gamedev

bell curve going from "put room after room" through "heuristic based gradient desctent layout generation" back to "put room after room"

screenshot of the Godot editor showing a procedurally generated dungeon

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

beat you to it by two 😄 basing my addon on autoloads is a decision that didn't age that well 😄

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elementbound @elementbound.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

In case you're looking for icons for your custom nodes - you've found it 😄 I've made a custom icon pack, specifically to work with Godot's UI conventions, licensed as CC0! github.com/foxssake/ple... foxssake.github.io/plenticons/ #godot #godotengine

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