RuinedTower

Featured in the Mayhem that started on Aug 5th, 2009, RuinedTower is a 4-player exploration map, based on Ruth’s ChooseYourOwnAdventure. Like CYOA, the players destroy neutral units obscuring the battlefield to find the walls scattered randomly underneath. (The walls are different each game.) Added to the mix this time are a small number of “treasures” to find.

Details: the Walls

Here are a number of things you might like to know about the details of the wall generation routine, arranged in an order intended to be approximately diminishing usefulness per boringness or complexity.

• walls can occur under any given square of rubble.
  * probabilities will vary
  * non-rubble sections are always as shown at the beginning, some walls and some windows. They do not change.
  
• walls are always generated in 3×1 or 1×3 chunks.
  
• where two or more chunks overlap, there will be a window; otherwise, it will be solid wall.
  
• Note the five areas: the four corners and the central circle. There will be four chunks generated in each of these sections.
  * of the four chunks in each of the four corner sections, three of the chunks will be the “same” in each section (with respect to the boundaries of the section; in other words, there is a rotational symmetry with regard to those three chunks).
  * the fourth (in each corner section) is randomly generated for each section and thus very likely to be different.
  * the four chunks in the middle are independently randomized.
  
• the placement of each chunk is determined by first choosing the location of middle point of the chunk, then choosing an orientation (vertical or horizontal). Thus, rubble that borders on non-rubble is less likely to contain a wall (and much less likely to contain a windowed wall). Every valid location for the center of a chunk is weighted equally.
  
• There is no path-checking; it is theoretically possible for one player to be completely walled off from the other players. This is considered highly unlikely, and potentially kinda funny, at least after the fact.