Advanced Dungeon Generator is getting its first major update. Now what?

A bit of context.

At the beginning of the year, around mid-February I shared my first asset through the Unity Asset Store. Advanced Dungeon Generator was my humble attempt to provide a simple but powerful set of tools that could facilitate the creation of random dungeons.

A lot of things have happened since then, mostly bad things, but I’ve finally been able to post an update! Well to be honest, this update has been ready for quite some time but I’ve been thinking for some time what I really want to do with this tool because even the low expectations I had at the time I published it were not met. I mean it's not the end of the world, but I've certainly considered whether I should continue or just change my main project.

The thing is, I know that ADG is still in a basic state and I really want to continue working on it, I see a lot of potential and I want to keep improving my tool, so here's the deal, for the rest of the year I'm going all in on the Christmas sales!

 

A Roadmap!

Yeah, graphic design is not my passion :P

So, here’s my plan, ADG will be updated every single month for the rest of the year, each update will add new key elements for dungeon generation, some of these updates will add new assets as example dungeons and, in the background, all essential and high priority code will be updated and refactored.

And that's it, if at the end of the year ADG does not perform as well as I expected its development will stop. Kind of a bitter end but at least I will leave a solid tool behind me.

But what if ADG performs well? Or even better, what if it overperforms? Oh boy, that will be a ride because I want to add a complex event system that will serve as a base for a Turn System and a Creature System.

The Creature System will allow you to create Dungeon Creatures, in these objects you will be able to link 3D models to various attributes. For example, you will be able to determine how and where they can spawn, what terrain they can navigate, how they will interact with the environment, how they will interact with the player, whether they are enemies or allies, the moves and attacks they can use, in short, all their AI.

The Turn System will handle all the user inputs and Dungeon Creatures interactions. It will also allow you to choose the order of these interactions, how they will proceed in a standard turn and the requirements for a turn to end, including elapsed time!

And that's not all, I definitely want to improve the dungeon border system because it is quite primitive, and I also want to move ADG to its own dedicated window. 

I know that these are very ambitious promises and I also know that by its very nature ADG is a very specific tool with a limited growth, yet I remain optimistic about the future and what ADG can become.

I mean, not everything is going to be hope, to ensure some success I will rebrand ADG Free to ADG Lite. There will continue to be no difference between both versions Core (the actual tools offered by the free and paid version will always be the same) but for now there will be certain assets, in the form of example dungeons, that will be exclusive to the paid version.

Also, ADG will increase its price from $8.99 to $10.99. This is something I had planned from the beginning, as more content is added to ADG, I will continue to increase its price.

 

But what’s in this update?

This has been the update of Standardization and all the previous weird specifications have been removed! Now Dungeon Components are linked to specific Tile Types, so each Tile Type can have its own Dungeon Brush and Dungeon Decoration. In addition, both Dungeon Brush and Dungeon Decoration have been expanded!

Additions

- A whole new Dungeon Demo has been added! Mess around with the new 2D_Dungeon.

- Ground tiles now have its own Dungeon Brush.

- You can now add Decorations to Structure Tiles.

- You can now add Transition Decorations in all Tile Types.

- New smooth transition in failed Dungeon Shape rooms.

- More drawing options in Shape Visualizer.

- All your Dungeon Components have a new look!

Overhauls

- Complete overhaul to Dungeon Brush, now each Tile Type can have its own brush and each brush handles its own tile specifications.

- Complete overhaul to Dungeon Decoration, now each Tile Type can have its own decoration, there is a separation between Main and Transition decorations and most decorations are merged by default.

- Partial overhaul to the Dungeons, several of its elements have been transferred to other Dungeon Components.

- Partial overhaul to Dungeons generation and Dungeon Maps generation.

- The point of origin of the Dungeons has been changed from the center of the Dungeon to the lower left corner of the Dungeon.

Refactoring

- A lot of individual classes have been merged into libraries.

- The scripts for creation and processing of the Dungeon Maps have been refactored and commented.

Bug Fixes

- Adjusted the Room Border of the maps in Shape Visualizer.

- Several problems with the handling and editing of Scriptable Objects at runtime have been solved.

Unity and the Future.

If you are part of the Unity community you may be aware of the recent news.

After multiple layoffs, a merger with ironSource and a controversial CEO interview, Unity has experienced some backlash from its community, and well, even from the game development sector itself.

Personally, I’ve been working with Unity for years. In my days Unity was the only free option for game development, I’m kind of used to Unity’s wacky nature and yet, the las few years have been somewhat unnerving.

Since Unity went public in 2020, I have been uncertain about the future of the company. My more cynical side tells me that Unity is becoming a company focused solely on mobile app monetization and that they will eventually end up selling their game engine.

Well, maybe they're just diversifying, but these last months have been strong motivators to start fooling around with other game engines.

Lately I've become very dependent on Unity’s part and having all my eggs in one basket will only end up causing me problems, so even if ADG goes well, I will keep releasing new and exciting projects!

 

Anyway, let's see what the future holds.

Best regards, Oscar.