Infinite Maps

[fcheadle]

It would be really cool if GoRogue could support infinitely scrolling maps out of the box. This would be handy for mathematical representations, and any game that wishes to implement open-world anything, or arbitrarily large maps.

The way that I've started down in past projects is by means of Chunking. Visualize a map (as the exist now) that takes up 320 x 320 tiles. Call this our "CurrentMap". In the current system, we create a single map of size 320x320. In an infinitely scrolling map, we would generate a "CurrentMap" of roughly the same size, by means of generating Chunks (say, 64x64 tiles across), and then treating a composite of generated chunks as a single, continuous map.

To support this, we would need to make a new class, InfiniteMap. This map would need to know of a Center Point (such as a player character's position), a RenderDistance, a GenerativeDistance, and a ChunkSize. An InfiniteMap would then keep track of it's own AbsolutePosition, which would work with a Viewport with a negative position. Chunks are sized ChunkSize * ChunkSize. We load a precursory generation when a new chunk is discovered in our GenerativeDistance, so that large structures like buildings already exist at the time they are rendered. Our RenderDistance is the amount of space, in chunks, that we want to do logic in; ie don't calculate pathfinding or updates for things that are too far away.

These will also require Continuous Map Generation algorithms.