Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
This week Ian returns to tell Ben he’s still busy coding javascript. Ben tells us of his adventures hanging a new studio door, getting an acoustic guitar, and working on his entry for Stencyl Jam 15. Then Ian brings us this week’s headlines.
FedEx, UPS Say They Won’t Ship ‘Ghost Gunner’ Machines. Indiegogo removes funding page supporting SC cop accused of murder. Low-budget real-life Batsuit stops knives and punches. This working computer is smaller than a grain of rice. Secrecy on the Set: Hollywood Embraces Digital Security. Judge Rejects Antitrust Lawsuit Over Studio Antipoaching Pacts. This is how rich people watched Furious 7 last weekend.
In related news, Ben asks Ian if he’s seen the Edward Snowden interviews on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Ben then shares with us some of the cool things he’s found recently relating to roguelike dungeon generation. Resources like RogueBasin and The Roguelike Development Megathread. Rooms and Mazes: A Procedural Dungeon Generator has some cool examples to click and watch. You can read about different ways of generating dungeons like Basic BSP Dungeon generation, Cellular Automata Method for Generating Random Cave-Like Levels, and Grid Based Dungeon Generator. You can see how the classic version of Spelunky generates it’s levels in the two part Spelunky Generator Lessons. You can also download various generation systems like these for GameMaker and these for Unity. There’s also examples of algorithms you can download and try out for yourself. Some are great for tabletop campaigns. Here’s the procedure the developer of TinyKeep uses. It’s quite the rabbit hole for game designers to dig into. Ian and Ben spend awhile discussing where the line is blurred between artistic design and coding with procedural generation. Ben brings up the game No Man’s Sky and how people had to figure out and design assets for the billions of worlds it can create.
Finally our two hosts hunker down for a round of movie trivia. Who will emerge victorious this week? Tune in to find out!
Don’t forget you can watch the video version of the podcast here: