So what is procedural generation? In short, it's about generating randomness. In vanilla Minecraft, environments are procedurally generated by a AI, creating landscapes as you go. Dungeons does that too, but instead of generating everything block by block, the game generates levels room by room. However, these "rooms", are built by hard-working developers, creating a pool of content for the AI to pick from. This means that Minecraft Dungeons doesn't have "set" levels per se, but set pieces. So how are these pieces made?
Laura: We actually build all rooms within vanilla Minecraft with a special editor that we made just for Dungeons!
Christian: It's like creative mode with a few extra tools; we have different sets of brushes and marking tools. For example, if you want to delete a large section, we can just select the delete tool, double click, and all the geometry that connects to that one block will disappear at once. We can also raise the ground level with a single click or create large structures much, much faster than normal – which is a relief because building things in Minecraft takes a long time! (Laughs)
Laura: So it's like a bit more advanced creative mode with world edit, basically. Then we import everything directly into Unreal and in Unreal we prettify it with extra bits and bobs.
I love bits and bobs! It must be an interesting challenge since Minecraft tends to be first-person while Dungeons uses an isometric top-down perspective?
Laura: Yeah, we build it in first-person. So it's a bit of back and forth between building things in vanilla and trying it out in the Dungeons perspective, making sure that all the rooms weave together nicely and that they make sense with each other.
Christian: I think it's important to know that after you build levels for a certain time, you'll eventually get used to the measurements and distances between things, so you'll know that "Alright, a pathway this wide or this tall will work, whereas one this tall or wide won't" and what kind of geometry to avoid to not obscure the player with geometry and such.
While many rooms are randomly generated throughout the levels of Minecraft Dungeons, there are also ones that are fixed and never change. These rooms serve as landmarks, or set pieces, meant to create red threads for every mission – a good thing if you ask Laura and Christian, as procedurally generated content needs boundaries.
Christian: Let's say that, after you have cleared five rooms, you encounter a landmark room. That room can have four different variations, but it will still make you realise that "Alright, I have cleared five rooms" even if you didn't really keep track of that in your head. It will also make you realise that "Alright, I've now reached an environment that is different from the rest" – and that will tell the player that they've made progress through the level itself. It also breaks up the monotony and makes the level look more interesting!
Laura: Landmarks are important for the sake of the missions and the story. But in our secret missions, we don't need as much, because they are bonus quests, so then those are a lot less landmark-y and are a lot more labyrinthic and wild in that sense, so there's still a bit of both!
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